American singer Tony Bennett has died at the age of 96 in New York, announces the American press, including the Associated Press (AP). The cause of death is not yet known but he was diagnosed in 2021 with Alzheimer’s disease, a disease he had actually had since 2016. His death was confirmed by his agent Sylvia Weiner to AP.
He was particularly known for his hits I left my heart in San Francisco (1962) or Because of You in 1951. The crooner from Queens won 19 Grammy awards – American award for the best artists – during his career, during which he recorded no less than 70 albums.
His latest album released in 2021 Love for Sale includes a duet with Lady Gaga on the song Night and Day. He also recorded a duet with American jazz singer Aretha Franklin. Le Figaro in 2012, he explained that he had never worked “a single day of [his] life, since [he] chose to devote [his] existence to music and painting”.
Tony Bennett – whose godfather at the beginning of his musical career was Frank Sinatra – comes from an Italian-American family. “He was ten years older than me. The first time I heard it, I thought “this is what I want to do”. One day he called me his favorite singer. From there, his fans started listening to me, which gave me a huge boost. He remains my absolute master, and we remained close until his death.
Anthony Benedetto, his baptismal name, was born in the Queen’s in New York on August 3, 1926. His family is of Calabrian origin. His uncle, a tap dancer, is a music lover and made him appreciate the crooner Bing Crosby and the legendary jazzman Louis Armstrong at a very young age. Tony is fascinated and decides to embrace the career of an artist by following the teaching of the High School of Industrial Art where he works both music and painting. After the Second World War, which he saw badly as a soldier on the European front, he began his career as a host of a Chicago talk show at the end of the 1940s. In 1951, he experienced his first as a singer with Because of You, of which he sold nearly a million records. A few months later, he married Patricia Beech. He was then only 26 years old.
In 1963, I Wanna Be Around became the second huge success of his career. It is the translation into Shakespeare’s language of Sacha Distel’s standard, La Belle Vie. In the mid-1970s, Bennett, who had been an ardent pacifist since the war, became involved in the defense of the civil rights of African Americans by participating in the Marches from Selma to Montgomery. Resolutely anti-racist, he will refuse years later to perform in South Africa then under the apartheid regime.
After crossing the desert, Tony Bennett returned to the fore with The Art of Excellence in 1986 and Astoria: Portrait of the Artist in 1990. Returning to fashion, adored by his admirers who saw him as the last Italian-American crooner alive since the disappearance of Frank Sinatra, the Queen’s singer was asked to participate in prestigious duets. Stevie Wonder, Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Celine Dion, Sting, Michael Bublé, George Michael, Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga, all the stars of the new generation will record with him. Because they knew that he sang with a unique voice and that, all his life, he would have sought what he called “the art of excellence”.