A Few Words About The Late Tony Bennett

by Noah

As is often the case, my wife delivered the first bit of fresh news to me this morning. This time it was that Tony Bennett, the singer Frank Sinatra called the best of them all, had passed away two weeks short of what would have been his 97th birthday. I just wanted to say a few words about him.

I never got to work with Tony directly but I did spend the last 19 years of my career associated with the label (Sony Music) that put out the lion's share of the immense catalog of recordings for which he is best known. It was then that I briefly got to meet him and see him in action. Every artist deals with their record company differently but none of them were ever more gracious than Tony Bennett. The man went out of his way to meet everybody no matter what they did at the company. He also came across as a walking history of the music business as it relates to what is called the great American songbook, seemed to have stories about everyone, and exhibited a sly sense of humor.

Anthony Benedetto (his name was shortened for him by Bob Hope although Ed Sullivan has also been credited with the change) was active almost to the very end of his life. Even in his mid to late 80s and starting to suffer from alzheimers, there was nothing in his voice that gave away his age and only a very few recording artists have had a successful career as long as the number of decades that Tony was able to record and release his vast output. His recordings number over 150. His sales number over 60 million and he was awarded 20 Grammy Awards, the last of which was for a duet of "Love For Sale" with Lady Gaga last year. The first was for his signature tune "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" in 1963. That came 13 years after the release of his first release, "The Boulevard Of Broken Dreams."

Tony's autobiography The Good Life is well worth picking up and in it you will find everything from the story of his humble beginnings in Astoria, Queens in New York, key moments in his career, his life on the front lines as an infantryman in Europe during World War Two, and his work in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The following is from his New York Times obituary:

A lifelong liberal Democrat, Mr. Bennett participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in 1965, and, along with Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr. and others, performed at the Stars for Freedom rally on the City of St. Jude campus on the outskirts of Montgomery on March 24, the night before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the address that came to be known as the “How Long? Not Long” speech. At the conclusion of the march, Viola Liuzzo, a volunteer from Michigan, drove Mr. Bennett to the airport; she was murdered later that day by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Tony also performed for Nelson Mandela during his state visit to England in 1996, for Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace during her 50th Anniversary Jubilee and sang at the White House for American presidents John Kenendy and Bill Clinton.

There is a wealth of fine Tony Bennett material to investigate. Here's a good place to start: