Tony Bennett, legendary pop vocalist, dies at 96 (original) (raw)

For many, Tony Bennett was the last of a breed of velvet-voiced, impeccably elegant crooners who ruled America's mid-century musical landscape — and indeed, he remained active and culturally relevant well into his ninth decade. Bennett, who is survived by his third wife, Susan Benedetto, and four grown children, died Friday following a battle with Alzheimer's at the age of 96, his publicist confirmed to EW.

Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in 1926, the grocer's son from Queens, N.Y., served as an infantryman in Germany during World War II. He used the GI Bill to study singing, and by 1949 was signed to Columbia Records; a string of popular hits followed and by the mid-1950s, Bennett began to widen his musical reach, exploring jazz and swing with the likes of Count Basie and Art Blakey and developing his chops as a live performer. His track "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" only just cracked the top 20 when it was originally released in 1962, though it would go on to become one of his signature songs.

Tony Bennett. Virginia Sherwood/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

As rock & roll became the dominant art form of the late '60s, Bennett's style of music fell increasingly out of favor, and he struggled to maintain relevance. (A 1970 album called Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!, featuring ring-a-ding covers of singles from the Beatles and Stevie Wonder, hardly helped bridge the gap; by the end of that decade, his second marriage was foundering as well.) After a cocaine overdose nearly killed the singer, his son Danny stepped in to manage his career, and by the mid-1980s he was back in his tuxedo, touring the world with the songs he loved best. Tributes to Frank Sinatra and Fred Astaire in the early '90s brought him wide acclaim, but it was Bennett's 1994 appearance on MTV Unplugged that returned him full force to the world stage, earning him an entirely new generation of fans.

A charming and voluble guest, he became a regular on late-night talk shows and made memorable cameos in films including Bruce Almighty and Analyze This, while continuing to turn out well-received tributes to the likes of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. Duets: An American Classic, recorded to celebrate his 80th birthday in 2006, with guests including Bono, Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, and Elton John, would become one of the most successful recordings of his career, winning a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop-Vocal Album and spawning a follow-up five years later, Duets II.

That equally starry sequel — Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse, and Willie Nelson were among the bold-faced names on its track list — not only gave him the first No. 1 of his career at the age of 85 but also introduced him to a key future collaborator, Lady Gaga. (He later confessed his regret over not speaking to Winehouse about his own struggles with addiction during their recording session for "Body and Soul" shortly before her 2011 death.) Cheek to Cheek, his 2014 collection of jazz standards with the artist formerly known as Stefani Germanotta, showcased the younger singer's surprising range and also debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, spawning a globe-spanning tour and eventually winning Bennett another Traditional Pop Vocal Grammy.

Tony Bennett. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Late 2016 saw a flurry of celebrations for Bennett's 90th birthday, including a standalone concert special on NBC. And though he began to significantly slow down the hectic touring and recording schedule he had maintained for more than half a century, another Gaga duets album, Love for Sale, arrived in October 2021, after several years of on-and-off recording. The pair dubbed their emotional August concerts together at New York's famed Radio City Music Hall a two-part farewell.

Bennett also found success as a painter, exhibiting his work internationally and finding space in several museums' permanent collections. In all, he earned 20 Grammys (including a Lifetime Achievement Award), two Emmys, and at least one Guinness World Record entry for "the longest time between the release of an original recording and a re-recording of the same single by the same artist" for the George Gershwin song "Fascinating Rhythm."

An Alzheimer's diagnosis, which his family made public in early 2021, would keep him largely out of the public eye in his final years aside from his work with Gaga, though revisiting the classic tunes he knew so well also reportedly helped strengthen the singer in his fight against the disease's debilitating effects. The endurance of that gift seemed only fitting for a man who found his life's work interpreting the American Songbook, as both keeper of the flame and one of its greatest fans.

In a 2011 interview with EW's Melissa Maerz, Bennett recalled visiting his father's hometown of Podargoni, Italy: "I stood in the exact spot my father did. It was a cloudy day, and when I sang 'O Sole Mio,' the clouds went away and the sun hit me. Unbelievable! When people say that that's old music, that's incorrect. It's never gonna die."

In the wake of Bennett's death, his closest friends and collaborators have paid tribute, including Elton John, who sang "Rags to Riches" with Bennett on his Duets: An American Classic album. John posted a photo of the pair together on Instagram, calling Bennett "the classiest singer, man, and performer you will ever see."

"He's irreplaceable," he wrote. "I loved and adored him."

Mariah Carey, who sang "When Do the Bells Ring for Me" with Bennett, called working alongside him an "honor."

"Rest in peace, Tony Bennett," she wrote on Twitter. "It was such an honor to work with one of the world's most beloved, respected, and legendary singers of the past century. We will miss you."

Alec Baldwin, who played Bennett in several Saturday Night Live sketches, acknowledged in an Instagram post that he had not been "feeling so great" over the past year but maintained that he was always a "sweet guy."

"He's loved by everybody. Everybody loved Tony," Baldwin said in part. "He was a helluva guy. His music meant so much to me. I mean, when I was really down, and I needed to hear something beautiful, you know, I just put on that Carnegie Hall album… It's hard to say this, but it's true: There will never be someone like him again."