Tony Bennett, legendary pop crooner, dies at 96

Tony Bennett, whose professional career spanned nearly 80 years, died on Friday morning in New York City, according to The Associated Press.

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He was 96. He would have turned 97 in August.

Publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed Bennett’s death, according to the AP, saying he died in his hometown of New York. No specific cause of death was reported.

Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016 but continued to perform — notably with Lady Gaga — until 2021. Bennett’s last public performance was with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall in August 2021 in a show titled “One Last Time,” The New York Times reported.

Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, Bennett is perhaps best known for his signature 1962 hit “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” He released more than 70 albums in his lifetime, bringing him 19 competitive Grammys.

“I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,” he told the AP in 2006. “I think people ... are touched if they hear something that’s sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humor. ... I just like to make people feel good when I perform.”

Bennett had his own share of troubles as his popularity waned with the onset of rock. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he suffered a failed marriage and had an addiction to drugs. He was able to turn his life around and see a resurgence in his career later in his life.

According to Bennett, in the midst of his addiction to cocaine, an entertainment manager said of him, “He sinned against his talent.”

“That one sentence just changed my life. It meant that I had to drop everything I was doing. I stopped all drugs completely,” Bennett said.

He was also an accomplished painter who has three of his works in the Smithsonian Museum’s permanent collection.

Bennett was a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat who was active in the civil rights struggle in the 1960s. He participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in Alabama in March 1965, and performed at the Stars for Freedom rally on the City of St. Jude campus on the outskirts of Montgomery on March 24, 1965.

Viola Liuzzo, a volunteer who participated in the march and helped with the concert, drove Bennett to the airport after the concert. She was murdered later that day by members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Times reported.

Bennett received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2001, and in 2022, he received one for the best traditional pop vocal album for two recordings with Lady Gaga, The Washington Post noted.

“I wanted to sing the great songs, songs that I felt really mattered to people,” he said in “The Good Life” (1998), an autobiography written with Will Friedwald.

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