The latter number was memorably used under the opening credits of Martin Scorsese’s 1990 gangster epic “Goodfellas.”īennett was a reliable if not top-flight hitmaker at Columbia during the ‘50s. 1 pop singles: “Because of You” (1951), a recasting of Hank Williams’ country hit “Cold, Cold Heart” (1951) and the exuberant “Rags to Riches” (1953). In 1950, Bennett submitted a demo of Harry Warren’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” to Columbia Records’ head of A&R Mitch Miller, who signed him to the label and encouraged him to develop his own style.Ī remake of “Boulevard” was succeeded a trio of No. Taking the youthful vocalist under his wing, Hope rechristened him Tony Bennett (an abbreviation and Americanization of his given name) and hired him for his stage show at New York’s Paramount Theatre. On the strength of that appearance, songstress Pearl Bailey hired him as a club opener, and Bob Hope was in the Greenwich Village venue to catch the performance. An appearance on Arthur Godfrey’s talent show (where he placed second to Rosemary Clooney) led to a 1949 TV shot on Jan Murray’s “Songs for Sale.” He cut his first, unsuccessful sides for independent Leslie Records in 1949, as “Joe Bari.”Ī series of breaks raised his professional profile. On his return from service, he studied voice with Miriam Spier in the American Theatre Wing. After the end of the conflict, he sang as a member of an Armed Forces band. His vocal influences included Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and, later, Frank Sinatra, as well as such female singers as Billie Holiday and Judy Garland.ĭrafted at 18 in 1944, he served in World War II’s European theater, doing combat infantry duty and liberating a German concentration camp. Raised in poverty, he began singing as a child, and studied music and his other lifelong love, painting, at New York’s High School of Industrial Art. 3, 1926, to Italian immigrant parents his father was a grocer, his mother a seamstress. He was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in Astoria, Queens, New York on Aug. The source of Bennett’s generation-hopping appeal may be best summed up in an observation about his singing by composer and critic Alec Wilder: “There is a quality about it that lets you in.” He was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2005 and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2006. Winner of 18 Grammy Awards (with 36 total nominations), and a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in 2001, Bennett also garnered two Emmy Awards. Pondering Bennett’s unprecedented artistic longevity and enduring popularity in “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers,” critic Will Friedwald wrote, “The idea that someone who sang the great show tunes of the Eisenhower era and earlier could compete with heavy metal and rap would have previously seemed fodder for one of those rapidly aging comics who opened for Sinatra.” A pair of “Duets” albums in 20 enlisted new fans the latter release reached the apex of the U.S. His last public appearance came with Gaga at Radio City Music Hall in August 2021, two months before his last release, the Bennett-Gaga set “Love for Sale,” the sequel to their chart-topping 2014 collaboration “Cheek to Cheek.”Īfter gaining a young new audience with smartly booked TV appearances, his “MTV Unplugged” album of 1994 - released when Bennett was 67 - won a Grammy as album of the year. Even after the revelation in early 2021 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he remained active. In later years, he memorably dueted on the standard “Body and Soul” with Amy Winehouse, and released a full-length duet album with Diana Krall and a pair of recordings with Lady Gaga. Active as a recording artist from 1949, and one of the top pop performers in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, Bennett saw his career surge anew in the ‘90s and again in the new millennium, under the management of his son Danny.
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