Tony Bennett
Anthony Dominick Benedetto (August 3, 1926 – July 21, 2023), known professionally as Tony Bennett, was an American jazz and traditional pop singer. He received many accolades, including 20 Grammy Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Bennett was named an NEA Jazz Master and a Kennedy Center Honoree and founded the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, New York.[1] He sold more than 50 million records worldwide and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
This article is about the American singer. For other people with the same name, see Tony Bennett (disambiguation).
Tony Bennett
August 3, 1926
July 21, 2023 (aged 96)
Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York City
- Singer
- painter
1936–2021
4, including Antonia
1944–1946
- World War II
Bennett began singing at an early age. He fought in the final stages of World War II as a U.S. Army infantryman in the European Theater. Afterward, he developed his singing technique, signed with Columbia Records and had his first number-one popular song with "Because of You" in 1951. Several popular tracks such as "Rags to Riches" followed in early 1953. He then refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached an artistic peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings, Bennett Sings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". His career and personal life experienced an extended downturn during the height of the rock music era. Bennett staged a comeback in the late 1980s and 1990s, putting out gold record albums again and expanding his reach to the MTV Generation while keeping his musical style intact.
Bennett continued to create popular and critically praised work into the 21st century. He attracted renewed acclaim late in his career for his collaboration with Lady Gaga, which began with the album Cheek to Cheek (2014); the two performers toured together to promote the album throughout 2014 and 2015. With the release of the duo's second album, Love for Sale (2021), Bennett broke the individual record for the longest run of a top-10 album on the Billboard 200 chart for any living artist; his first top-10 record was I Left My Heart in San Francisco in 1962. Bennett also broke the Guinness World Record for the oldest person to release an album of new material, at the age of 95 years and 60 days.
In February 2021, Bennett revealed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2016.[2] Due to the slow progression of his illness, he continued to record, tour, and perform until his retirement from concerts due to physical challenges, which was announced after his final performances on August 3 and 5, 2021, at Radio City Music Hall.[3]
Early life[edit]
1926–1943: Family and education[edit]
Anthony Dominick Benedetto was born on August 3, 1926,[4] at St. John's Hospital in Long Island City, Queens, in New York City.[5] His parents were grocer John Benedetto and seamstress Anna (Suraci) Benedetto, and he was the first member of his family to be born in a hospital.[6] In 1906, John had emigrated from Podargoni,[7] a rural eastern district of the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria. Anna had been born in the U.S. shortly after her parents also emigrated from the Calabria region in 1899.[6][7] Other relatives came over as well as part of the mass migration of Italians to America.[6][7] Tony grew up with an older sister, Mary, and an older brother, John Jr.[8] With a father who was ailing and unable to work, the children grew up in poverty.[9] John Sr. instilled in his son a love of art and literature, and a compassion for human suffering,[10] but died when Tony was ten years old.[9] The experience of growing up in the Great Depression and a distaste for the effects of the presidency of Herbert Hoover would make the child a lifelong Democrat.[11]
Bennett grew up listening to Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Judy Garland, and Bing Crosby as well as jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, and Joe Venuti. His uncle Dick was a tap dancer in vaudeville, giving him an early window into show business,[12] and his uncle Frank was the Queens borough library commissioner.[13] By age 10 he was already singing, and performed at the opening of the Triborough Bridge,[14] standing next to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia who patted him on the head.[13] Drawing was another early passion of his;[9] he became known as the class caricaturist at P.S. 141 and anticipated a career in commercial art.[15] He began singing for money at age 13, performing as a singing waiter in several Italian restaurants around his native Queens.[15][16]
Bennett attended New York's School of Industrial Art where he studied painting and music[17] and would later appreciate their emphasis on proper technique.[18] But he dropped out at age 16 to help support his family.[19] He worked as a copy boy and runner for the Associated Press in Manhattan[20] and in several other low-skilled, low-paying jobs.[21] He mostly set his sights on a professional singing career, returning to performing as a singing waiter, playing and winning amateur nights all around the city, and enjoying a successful engagement at a Paramus, New Jersey, nightclub.[16][21]
1944–1950: World War II and after[edit]
Benedetto was drafted into the United States Army in November 1944, during the final stages of World War II.[9][22] He did basic training at Fort Dix and Fort Robinson as part of becoming an infantry rifleman.[23] Benedetto ran afoul of a sergeant from the South who disliked the Italian from New York City; heavy doses of KP duty or BAR cleaning resulted.[23] Processed through the huge Le Havre replacement depot, in January 1945, he was assigned as a replacement infantryman to the 255th Infantry Regiment of the 63rd Infantry Division, a unit filling in for the heavy losses suffered in the Battle of the Bulge.[24] He moved across France and later into Germany.[9] As March 1945 began, he joined the front line of what he would later describe as a "front-row seat in hell".[24]
As the German Army was pushed back to its homeland, Benedetto and his company saw bitter fighting in cold winter conditions, often hunkering down in foxholes as German 88 mm guns fired on them.[25] At the end of March, they crossed the Rhine and entered Germany, engaging in dangerous house-to-house, town-after-town fighting to clean out German soldiers;[25] during the first week of April, they crossed the Kocher River, and by the end of the month reached the Danube.[26] During his time in combat, Benedetto narrowly escaped death several times.[9] The experience made him a pacifist;[9] he would later write, "Anybody who thinks that war is romantic obviously hasn't gone through one",[24] and later say, "It was a nightmare that's permanent. I just said, 'This is not life. This is not life.'"[27] At the war's conclusion he was involved in the liberation of the Kaufering concentration camp, a subcamp of Dachau, near Landsberg, where some American prisoners of war from the 63rd Division had also been held.[26] He later wrote in his autobiography that "I saw things no human being should ever have to see."[28]
Benedetto stayed in Germany as part of the occupying force but was assigned to an informal Special Services band unit that would entertain nearby American forces.[9] His dining with a black friend from high school—at a time when the Army was still racially segregated—led to his being demoted and reassigned to Graves Registration Service duties.[29] Subsequently, he sang with the 314th Army Special Services Band under the stage name Joe Bari[30] (a name he had started using before the war, chosen after the city and province in Italy, and as a partial anagram of his family origins in Calabria).[31] He played with many musicians who would have post-war careers.[30]
Upon his discharge from the Army and return to the States in 1946, Benedetto studied at the American Theatre Wing on the GI Bill.[14] He was taught the bel canto singing discipline,[32] which would keep his voice in good shape for his entire career. He continued to perform wherever he could, including while waiting tables.[9] Based upon a suggestion from a teacher at the American Theatre Wing, he developed an unusual approach that involved imitating, as he sang, the style and phrasing of other musicians—such as that of Stan Getz's saxophone and Art Tatum's piano—helping him to improvise as he interpreted a song.[19][33] He made a few recordings as Bari in 1949 for a small outfit called Leslie Records, but they failed to sell.[34]
In 1949, Pearl Bailey recognized Benedetto's talent and asked him to open for her in Greenwich Village.[16] She had invited Bob Hope to the show. Hope decided to take Benedetto on the road with him and shortened his name to Tony Bennett.[34] In 1950, Bennett cut a demo of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and was signed to the major label Columbia Records by Mitch Miller.[14]
Artistry[edit]
Painting[edit]
Bennett also had success as a painter, done under his real name of Anthony Benedetto, or just Benedetto.[126] He followed up his childhood interest with professional training, work, and museum visits throughout his life. He sketched or painted every day, often of views out of hotel windows when he was on tour.[67]
He exhibited his work in numerous galleries around the world.[67] He was chosen as the official artist for the 2001 Kentucky Derby, and was commissioned by the United Nations to do two paintings, including one for its fiftieth anniversary.[67] His painting Homage to Hockney (for his friend David Hockney, painted after Hockney drew him) is on permanent display at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio.[126] His Boy on Sailboat, Sydney Bay is in the permanent collection at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park in New York City, as is his Central Park at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.[67] His paintings and drawings have been featured in ARTnews and other magazines, and have sold for as much as $80,000 a piece.[17][62] Many of his works were published in the art book Tony Bennett: What My Heart Has Seen in 1996. In 2007, another book involving his paintings, Tony Bennett in the Studio: A Life of Art & Music, became a bestseller among art books.[37]
Musical style[edit]
Regarding his choices in music, Bennett reiterated his artistic stance in a 2010 interview: