Tag: Tony Bennett

  • Tony Bennett, masterful stylist of American musical standards, dies at 96

    By Associated Press

    NEW YORK: Tony Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as”I Left My Heart In San Francisco” graced a decadeslong career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday. He was 96, just two weeks short of his birthday.

    Publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed Bennett’s death to The Associated Press, saying he died in his hometown of New York. There was no specific cause, but Bennett had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016.

    The last of the great saloon singers of the mid-20th century, Bennett often said his lifelong ambition was to create “a hit catalogue rather than hit records.” He released more than 70 albums, bringing him 19 competitive Grammys — all but two after he reached his 60s — and enjoyed deep and lasting affection from fans and fellow artists.

    Bennett didn’t tell his own story when performing; he let the music speak instead — the Gershwins and Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. Unlike his friend and mentor Sinatra, he would interpret a song rather than embody it. If his singing and public life lacked the high drama of Sinatra’s, Bennett appealed with an easy, courtly manner and an uncommonly rich and durable voice — “A tenor who sings like a baritone,” he called himself — that made him a master of caressing a ballad or brightening an up-tempo number.

    “I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,” he told The Associated Press 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 was praised often by his peers, but never more meaningfully than by what Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine interview: “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”

    He not only survived the rise of rock music but endured so long and so well that he gained new fans and collaborators, some young enough to be his grandchildren. In 2014, at age 88, Bennett broke his own record as the oldest living performer with a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for “Cheek to Cheek,”  his duets project with Lady Gaga. Three years earlier, he topped the charts with “Duets II,” featuring such contemporary stars as Gaga, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse, in her last studio recording. His rapport with Winehouse was captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Amy,” which showed Bennett patiently encouraging the insecure young singer through a performance of “Body and Soul.”

    His final album, the 2021 release “Love for Sale,” featured duets with Lady Gaga on the title track, “Night and Day” and other Porter songs.

    For Bennett, one of the few performers to move easily between pop and jazz, such collaborations were part of his crusade to expose new audiences to what he called the Great American Songbook.

    “No country has given the world such great music,” Bennett said in a 2015 interview with Downbeat Magazine. “Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern. Those songs will never die.”

    Ironically, his most famous contribution came through two unknowns, George Cory and Douglass Cross, who in the early ’60s provided Bennett with his signature song at a time his career was in a lull. They gave Bennett’s musical director, pianist Ralph Sharon, some sheet music that he stuck in a dresser drawer and forgot about until he was packing for a tour that included a stop in San Francisco.

    “Ralph saw some sheet music in his shirt drawer … and on top of the pile was a song called ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco.’ Ralph thought it would be good material for San Francisco,” Bennett said. “We were rehearsing and the bartender in the club in Little Rock, Arkansas, said, ‘If you record that song, I’m going to be the first to buy it.’”

    Released in 1962 as the B-side of the single “Once Upon a Time,” the reflective ballad became a grassroots phenomenon staying on the charts for more than two years and earning Bennett his first two Grammys, including Record of the Year.

    By his early 40s, he was seemingly out of fashion. But after turning 60, an age when even the most popular artists often settle for just pleasing their older fans, Bennett and his son and manager, Danny, found creative ways to market the singer to the MTV Generation. He made guest appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman” and became a celebrity guest artist on “The Simpsons.” He wore a black T-shirt and sunglasses as a presenter with the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards, and his own video of “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” from his Grammy-winning Fred Astaire tribute album ended up on MTV’s hip “Buzz Bin.”

    That led to an offer in 1994 to do an episode of “MTV Unplugged” with special guests Elvis Costello and k.d. lang. The evening’s performance resulted in the album, “Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged,” which won two Grammys, including Album of the Year.

    Bennett would win Grammys for his tributes to female vocalists (“Here’s to the Ladies”), Billie Holiday (“Tony Bennett on Holiday”), and Duke Ellington (“Bennett Sings Ellington — Hot & Cool”). He also won Grammys for his collaborations with other singers: “Playin’ With My Friends — Bennett Sings the Blues,” and his Louis Armstrong tribute, “A Wonderful World” with Lang, the first full album he had ever recorded with another singer. He celebrated his 80th birthday with “Duets: An American Classic,” featuring Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder among others.

    “They’re all giants in the industry, and all of a sudden they’re saying to me ‘You’re the master,’” Bennett told the AP in 2006.

    Long associated with San Francisco, Bennett would note that his true home was Astoria, the working-class community in the New York City borough of Queens, where he grew up during the Great Depression. The singer chose his old neighbourhood as the site for the “Fame”-style public high school, the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, that he and his third wife, Susan Crow Benedetto, a former teacher, helped found in 2001.

    The school is not far from the birthplace of the man who was once Anthony Dominick Benedetto. His father was an Italian immigrant who inspired his love of singing, but he died when Anthony was 10. Bennett credited his mother, Anna, with teaching him a valuable lesson as he watched her work at home, supporting her three children as a seamstress doing piecework after his father died.

    “We were very impoverished,” Bennett said in a 2016 AP interview. “I saw her working and every once in a while she’d take a dress and throw it over her shoulder and she’d say, ‘Don’t have me work on a bad dress. I’ll only work on good dresses.’”

    He studied commercial art in high school but had to drop out to help support his family. The teenager got a job as a copyboy for the AP performed as a singing waiter and competed in amateur shows. A combat infantryman during World War II, he served as a librarian for the Armed Forces Network after the war and sang with an army big band in occupied Germany. His earliest recording is a 1946 air check from Armed Forces Radio of the blues “St. James Infirmary.”

    Bennett took advantage of the GI Bill to attend the American Theater Wing, which later became The Actors Studio. His acting lessons helped him develop his phrasing and learn how to tell a story. He learned the more intimate Bel Canto vocal technique which helped him sustain and extend the expressive range of his voice. And he took to heart the advice of his vocal coach, Miriam Spier.

    “She said please don’t imitate other singers because you’ll just be one of the choruses whoever you imitate whether it’s Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra and won’t develop an original sound,” Bennett recalled in the 2006 AP interview. “She said to imitate musicians that you like, find out how they phrase. I was particularly influenced by the jazz musicians like (pianist) Art Tatum and (saxophonists) Lester Young and Stan Getz.”

    In 1947, Bennett made his first recording, the Gershwins’ standard “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” for a small label under the stage name Joe Bari. The following year he gained notice when he finished behind Rosemary Clooney on the radio show “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.” Bennett’s big break came in 1949 when singer Pearl Bailey invited him to join her revue at a Greenwich Village club. Bob Hope dropped by one night and was so impressed that he offered the young singer a spot opening his shows at the famed Paramount Theater, where teens had swooned for Sinatra. But the comedian didn’t care for his stage name and thought his real name was too long for the marquee.

    “He thought for a moment, then he said, ‘We’ll call you Tony Bennett,’” the singer wrote in his autobiography, “The Good Life,” published in 1998.

    In 1950, Mitch Miller, the head of Columbia Records’ pop singles division, signed Bennett and released the single, “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” a semi-hit. Bennett was on the verge of being dropped from the label in 1951 when he had his first No. 1 on the pop charts with “Because of You.” More hits followed, including “Rags to Riches,” “Blue Velvet,” and Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart,” the first country song to become an international pop hit.

    Bennett found himself frequently clashing with Miller, who pushed him to sing Sinatra-style ballads and gimmicky novelty songs. But Bennett took advantage of the young LP album format, starting in 1955 with “Cloud 7,” featuring a small jazz combo led by guitarist Chuck Wayne. Bennett reached out to the jazz audience with such innovative albums as the 1957 “The Beat of My Heart,” an album of standards that paired him with such jazz percussion masters as Chico Hamilton, and Art Blakey. He also became the first white male singer to record with the Count Basie Orchestra, releasing two albums in 1958. Sinatra would later do the same.

    Bennett’s friendship with Black musicians and his disgust at the racial prejudice he encountered in the Army led him to become an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. He answered Harry Belafonte’s call to join Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march and perform for the protesters.

    Bennett’s early career peaked in the 1960s as he topped the charts with “San Francisco” and became the first male pop solo performer to headline at Carnegie Hall, releasing a live album of the 1962 concert.

    In 1966, he released “The Movie Song Album,” a personal favourite which featured Johnny Mandel’s Oscar-winning song “The Shadow of Your Smile” and “Maybe September,” the theme from the epic flop “The Oscar,” noteworthy because it marked Bennett’s first and only big-screen acting role.

    But as rock continued to overtake traditional pop, he clashed with Columbia label head Clive Davis, who insisted that the singer do the 1970 album “Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today,” with such songs as “MacArthur Park” and “Little Green Apples.” Bennett left Columbia in 1972 and went on to form his own record label, Improv, which in 1975-76 produced two duet albums with the impressionistic pianist Bill Evans now considered jazz classics.

    Despite artistic successes, Improv proved a financial disaster for Bennett, who also faced difficulties in his personal life. His marriage to artist Patricia Beech collapsed in 1971. He wed actress Sandra Grant the same year, but that marriage ended in 1984. With no recording deals, his debts brought him close to bankruptcy and the IRS was trying to seize his house in Los Angeles. After a near-fatal drug overdose in 1979, he turned to his son, Danny, who eventually signed on as his manager. Bennett kicked his drug habit and got his finances in order, moved back to New York and resumed doing more than 200 shows a year.

    He is survived by his wife Susan, daughters Johanna and Antonia, sons Danny and Dae and nine grandchildren.

    Bennett was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2005 and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2006. He also won two Emmy Awards — for “Tony Bennett Live By Request: A Valentine Special” (1996) and “Tony Bennett: An American Classic” (2007).

    Besides singing, Bennett pursued his lifelong passion for painting by taking art lessons and bringing his sketchbook on the road. His paintings, signed with his family name Benedetto — including portraits of his musician friends and Central Park landscapes — were displayed in public and private collections, including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

    “I love to paint as much as I love to sing,” Bennett told the AP in 2006. “It worked out to be such a blessing in my life because if I started getting burnt-out singing … I would go to my painting and that’s a big lift. … So I stay in this creative zone all the time.”

    NEW YORK: Tony Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as”I Left My Heart In San Francisco” graced a decadeslong career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday. He was 96, just two weeks short of his birthday.

    Publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed Bennett’s death to The Associated Press, saying he died in his hometown of New York. There was no specific cause, but Bennett had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016.

    The last of the great saloon singers of the mid-20th century, Bennett often said his lifelong ambition was to create “a hit catalogue rather than hit records.” He released more than 70 albums, bringing him 19 competitive Grammys — all but two after he reached his 60s — and enjoyed deep and lasting affection from fans and fellow artists.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    Bennett didn’t tell his own story when performing; he let the music speak instead — the Gershwins and Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. Unlike his friend and mentor Sinatra, he would interpret a song rather than embody it. If his singing and public life lacked the high drama of Sinatra’s, Bennett appealed with an easy, courtly manner and an uncommonly rich and durable voice — “A tenor who sings like a baritone,” he called himself — that made him a master of caressing a ballad or brightening an up-tempo number.

    “I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,” he told The Associated Press 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 was praised often by his peers, but never more meaningfully than by what Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine interview: “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”

    He not only survived the rise of rock music but endured so long and so well that he gained new fans and collaborators, some young enough to be his grandchildren. In 2014, at age 88, Bennett broke his own record as the oldest living performer with a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for “Cheek to Cheek,”  his duets project with Lady Gaga. Three years earlier, he topped the charts with “Duets II,” featuring such contemporary stars as Gaga, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse, in her last studio recording. His rapport with Winehouse was captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Amy,” which showed Bennett patiently encouraging the insecure young singer through a performance of “Body and Soul.”

    His final album, the 2021 release “Love for Sale,” featured duets with Lady Gaga on the title track, “Night and Day” and other Porter songs.

    For Bennett, one of the few performers to move easily between pop and jazz, such collaborations were part of his crusade to expose new audiences to what he called the Great American Songbook.

    “No country has given the world such great music,” Bennett said in a 2015 interview with Downbeat Magazine. “Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern. Those songs will never die.”

    Ironically, his most famous contribution came through two unknowns, George Cory and Douglass Cross, who in the early ’60s provided Bennett with his signature song at a time his career was in a lull. They gave Bennett’s musical director, pianist Ralph Sharon, some sheet music that he stuck in a dresser drawer and forgot about until he was packing for a tour that included a stop in San Francisco.

    “Ralph saw some sheet music in his shirt drawer … and on top of the pile was a song called ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco.’ Ralph thought it would be good material for San Francisco,” Bennett said. “We were rehearsing and the bartender in the club in Little Rock, Arkansas, said, ‘If you record that song, I’m going to be the first to buy it.’”

    Released in 1962 as the B-side of the single “Once Upon a Time,” the reflective ballad became a grassroots phenomenon staying on the charts for more than two years and earning Bennett his first two Grammys, including Record of the Year.

    By his early 40s, he was seemingly out of fashion. But after turning 60, an age when even the most popular artists often settle for just pleasing their older fans, Bennett and his son and manager, Danny, found creative ways to market the singer to the MTV Generation. He made guest appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman” and became a celebrity guest artist on “The Simpsons.” He wore a black T-shirt and sunglasses as a presenter with the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards, and his own video of “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” from his Grammy-winning Fred Astaire tribute album ended up on MTV’s hip “Buzz Bin.”

    That led to an offer in 1994 to do an episode of “MTV Unplugged” with special guests Elvis Costello and k.d. lang. The evening’s performance resulted in the album, “Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged,” which won two Grammys, including Album of the Year.

    Bennett would win Grammys for his tributes to female vocalists (“Here’s to the Ladies”), Billie Holiday (“Tony Bennett on Holiday”), and Duke Ellington (“Bennett Sings Ellington — Hot & Cool”). He also won Grammys for his collaborations with other singers: “Playin’ With My Friends — Bennett Sings the Blues,” and his Louis Armstrong tribute, “A Wonderful World” with Lang, the first full album he had ever recorded with another singer. He celebrated his 80th birthday with “Duets: An American Classic,” featuring Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder among others.

    “They’re all giants in the industry, and all of a sudden they’re saying to me ‘You’re the master,’” Bennett told the AP in 2006.

    Long associated with San Francisco, Bennett would note that his true home was Astoria, the working-class community in the New York City borough of Queens, where he grew up during the Great Depression. The singer chose his old neighbourhood as the site for the “Fame”-style public high school, the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, that he and his third wife, Susan Crow Benedetto, a former teacher, helped found in 2001.

    The school is not far from the birthplace of the man who was once Anthony Dominick Benedetto. His father was an Italian immigrant who inspired his love of singing, but he died when Anthony was 10. Bennett credited his mother, Anna, with teaching him a valuable lesson as he watched her work at home, supporting her three children as a seamstress doing piecework after his father died.

    “We were very impoverished,” Bennett said in a 2016 AP interview. “I saw her working and every once in a while she’d take a dress and throw it over her shoulder and she’d say, ‘Don’t have me work on a bad dress. I’ll only work on good dresses.’”

    He studied commercial art in high school but had to drop out to help support his family. The teenager got a job as a copyboy for the AP performed as a singing waiter and competed in amateur shows. A combat infantryman during World War II, he served as a librarian for the Armed Forces Network after the war and sang with an army big band in occupied Germany. His earliest recording is a 1946 air check from Armed Forces Radio of the blues “St. James Infirmary.”

    Bennett took advantage of the GI Bill to attend the American Theater Wing, which later became The Actors Studio. His acting lessons helped him develop his phrasing and learn how to tell a story. He learned the more intimate Bel Canto vocal technique which helped him sustain and extend the expressive range of his voice. And he took to heart the advice of his vocal coach, Miriam Spier.

    “She said please don’t imitate other singers because you’ll just be one of the choruses whoever you imitate whether it’s Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra and won’t develop an original sound,” Bennett recalled in the 2006 AP interview. “She said to imitate musicians that you like, find out how they phrase. I was particularly influenced by the jazz musicians like (pianist) Art Tatum and (saxophonists) Lester Young and Stan Getz.”

    In 1947, Bennett made his first recording, the Gershwins’ standard “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” for a small label under the stage name Joe Bari. The following year he gained notice when he finished behind Rosemary Clooney on the radio show “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.” Bennett’s big break came in 1949 when singer Pearl Bailey invited him to join her revue at a Greenwich Village club. Bob Hope dropped by one night and was so impressed that he offered the young singer a spot opening his shows at the famed Paramount Theater, where teens had swooned for Sinatra. But the comedian didn’t care for his stage name and thought his real name was too long for the marquee.

    “He thought for a moment, then he said, ‘We’ll call you Tony Bennett,’” the singer wrote in his autobiography, “The Good Life,” published in 1998.

    In 1950, Mitch Miller, the head of Columbia Records’ pop singles division, signed Bennett and released the single, “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” a semi-hit. Bennett was on the verge of being dropped from the label in 1951 when he had his first No. 1 on the pop charts with “Because of You.” More hits followed, including “Rags to Riches,” “Blue Velvet,” and Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart,” the first country song to become an international pop hit.

    Bennett found himself frequently clashing with Miller, who pushed him to sing Sinatra-style ballads and gimmicky novelty songs. But Bennett took advantage of the young LP album format, starting in 1955 with “Cloud 7,” featuring a small jazz combo led by guitarist Chuck Wayne. Bennett reached out to the jazz audience with such innovative albums as the 1957 “The Beat of My Heart,” an album of standards that paired him with such jazz percussion masters as Chico Hamilton, and Art Blakey. He also became the first white male singer to record with the Count Basie Orchestra, releasing two albums in 1958. Sinatra would later do the same.

    Bennett’s friendship with Black musicians and his disgust at the racial prejudice he encountered in the Army led him to become an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. He answered Harry Belafonte’s call to join Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march and perform for the protesters.

    Bennett’s early career peaked in the 1960s as he topped the charts with “San Francisco” and became the first male pop solo performer to headline at Carnegie Hall, releasing a live album of the 1962 concert.

    In 1966, he released “The Movie Song Album,” a personal favourite which featured Johnny Mandel’s Oscar-winning song “The Shadow of Your Smile” and “Maybe September,” the theme from the epic flop “The Oscar,” noteworthy because it marked Bennett’s first and only big-screen acting role.

    But as rock continued to overtake traditional pop, he clashed with Columbia label head Clive Davis, who insisted that the singer do the 1970 album “Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today,” with such songs as “MacArthur Park” and “Little Green Apples.” Bennett left Columbia in 1972 and went on to form his own record label, Improv, which in 1975-76 produced two duet albums with the impressionistic pianist Bill Evans now considered jazz classics.

    Despite artistic successes, Improv proved a financial disaster for Bennett, who also faced difficulties in his personal life. His marriage to artist Patricia Beech collapsed in 1971. He wed actress Sandra Grant the same year, but that marriage ended in 1984. With no recording deals, his debts brought him close to bankruptcy and the IRS was trying to seize his house in Los Angeles. After a near-fatal drug overdose in 1979, he turned to his son, Danny, who eventually signed on as his manager. Bennett kicked his drug habit and got his finances in order, moved back to New York and resumed doing more than 200 shows a year.

    He is survived by his wife Susan, daughters Johanna and Antonia, sons Danny and Dae and nine grandchildren.

    Bennett was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2005 and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2006. He also won two Emmy Awards — for “Tony Bennett Live By Request: A Valentine Special” (1996) and “Tony Bennett: An American Classic” (2007).

    Besides singing, Bennett pursued his lifelong passion for painting by taking art lessons and bringing his sketchbook on the road. His paintings, signed with his family name Benedetto — including portraits of his musician friends and Central Park landscapes — were displayed in public and private collections, including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

    “I love to paint as much as I love to sing,” Bennett told the AP in 2006. “It worked out to be such a blessing in my life because if I started getting burnt-out singing … I would go to my painting and that’s a big lift. … So I stay in this creative zone all the time.”

  • Lady Gaga, Tony Bennett unveil ‘Love For Sale’ trailer ahead of album release

    By ANI

    WASHINGTON: American singers Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga released a new trailer that offers fans a peek behind the scenes of producing their upcoming album ‘Love for Sale’.

    ‘Love for Sale’ is a tribute album dedicated to late American composer and songwriter Cole Porter due to drop later this week on Friday.

    Lady Gaga shared the album’s trailer on her Instagram account.

    “Our new album “Love For Sale” is only 3 days away! A full album trailer is out now on my YouTube channel and features a few clips of new songs on the album and some special moments between Tony and me @itstonybennett,” she captioned the post.

    At the opening of the trailer, Gaga explains that Bennett, called her “right after” they released their first joint album ‘Cheek to Cheek’ in September 2014 to say that he wanted to work with her again.

    “I think it was the next day, after the record released and had gone No. 1, he said, ‘I wanna make this Cole Porter record with you,’ and I said I would do it, and then guess what?” Gaga says. “We did it!”

    “She’s got so much talent that the minute we’re together, something very good happens between the two of us,” Bennett adds in the trailer.

    Elsewhere in the new trailer promoting Gaga and Bennett’s latest project, the ‘Born This Way’ singer also says that she hopes the new album will inspire younger generations.

    “I really want young kids to listen to jazz music, because it’s important,” she says. “It is not something that should be left behind. It is something that should be coveted so sacredly forever.”

    For Gaga, recording the album also meant she got to spend more time with Bennett, who she considers a close and life-long friend.

    “I’m having the best time recording the music,” she says in the clip. “It’s a joy. I think it’s a joy that’s missing in a lot of music today, and so it’s extra special for me that I get to come into the studio and sing these songs because I feel like I’m getting the nectar of a happiness that the world doesn’t get to hear or see all the time. And then we’ll get to share it with them when the album comes out.”

    ‘Love For Sale’ will be the final studio recording of Bennett’s career and the culmination of Bennett and Gaga’s decade-long history together, reported Variety.

    In August, Gaga announced on Instagram that she and the legendary singer would be releasing the record. “I’m always honoured to sing with my friend Tony, so of course I accepted the invitation,” Gaga wrote at the time.

    Alongside previously released tunes ‘Love for Sale’ and ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’, the forthcoming LP also features tracks among the likes of ‘It’s De-Lovely’, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, ‘Let’s Do It’ and ‘You’re the Top’. The album’s release comes several months after Bennett’s family revealed that the singer lives with Alzheimer’s disease.

    At the time, his wife Susan Benedetto revealed that he still remembers Gaga. “Yes, but you know, Gaga is wonderful,” Benedetto said on CBS This Morning in February. “Most definitely. Gaga is hard to forget.”

    ‘Love for Sale’ will be released on October 1.

  • Legendary singer Tony Bennett retires from performing

    By ANI

    WASHINGTON: Legendary singer Tony Bennett has stepped down from the stage as he is retiring from live performances, following his health issues.

    The 95-year-old singer, who has been fighting Alzheimer’s disease since 2016, has finally said goodbye to the stage for live performances.

    The iconic singer’s son Danny Bennett recently announced the news in an interview with Variety that his father is officially retiring from live music and scrapping his 2021 tour dates.

    “There won’t be any additional concerts. This was a hard decision for us to make, as he is a capable performer. This is, however, doctors’ orders,” Bennett’s son and manager Danny Bennett told Variety.

    This was in reference to Tony’s fall tour dates which were originally rescheduled from 2020 due to the pandemic but were cancelled as his family hopes to prioritise his health.

    “His continued health is the most important part of this, and when we heard the doctors — when Tony’s wife, Susan heard them — she said, ‘Absolutely not, he’ll be doing other things, but not those upcoming shows. It’s not the singing aspect but, rather, the travelling. Look, he gets tired,” Danny told Variety.

    Danny further explained that the decision made by the family was not because they are worried about him being able to sing but “we are worried, from a physical standpoint… about human nature” as he is 95.

    “They kept telling me that we lied, that there was no way Tony had Alzheimer’s, I assured everyone that he does. … Yes, here he was, at 95, and still singing like this: strong, Emotive. But still, it is a complex question: how can he do this?” Danny told Variety in reference to the fans’ response to the Grammy-winning singer’s last live concerts with Academy Award-winning singer Lady Gaga.

    “My answer is that this is where he has lived his whole life and where he is most happy — on the stage, making music. Dealing as we have with Alzheimer’s for the last four-five years, it’s cognitive,” he added telling the outlet that despite his father has “short-term memory loss” he still does not use a “teleprompter”.

    Danny continued, “Tony may not remember every part of doing that show. But, when he stepped to the side of the stage, the first thing he told me was: ‘I love being a singer.’”

    Tony Bennett is a singer known for his works in traditional pop standards, big bands, show tunes, and jazz. He is also a painter, having created works under his birth name that are on permanent public display in several institutions.

    Tony has released over 70 albums during his career, almost all for Columbia Records. He has also charted over 30 singles during his career, with his biggest hits all occurring during the early 1950s.

    On August 12, 2021, a few days after his 95th birthday, Tony’s retirement from concert performances was announced by his son and manager Danny Bennett.

    Danny stated that “though Bennett remained a capable singer, he was becoming physically frail and risked a major fall if he continued touring.” 

  • 94-year-old legendary singer Tony Bennett reveals Alzheimer’s diagnosis

    By PTI
    LOS ANGELES: Legendary singer Tony Bennett’s family on Monday shared that the music icon has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

    The family shared the news with America’s AARP magazine.

    The jazz legend, now 94, was officially diagnosed with the disease in 2016.

    Alzheimer’s is characterised by a progressive memory loss that deprives its sufferers of speech, understanding, memories and recognition of close ones.

    Bennett’s wife Susan Crow said even though Bennett has not developed extreme symptoms like episodes of terror, rage or depression, he is “not always sure where he is or what is happening around him” He, however, remembers all his family members, the singer’s wife told CBS news.

    “He knows all his kids, absolutely. And he knows me. When you’re somebody’s caregiver 24/7, it goes a long way if they still know you. You know, every night when we go to bed, he says, ‘I love you, Susan. ‘ And every morning when he wakes up he says, ‘I love you’.”

    Dr. Gayatri Devi, a neurologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, who diagnosed Bennett, told AARP magazine that the singer is a symbol of “hope”.

    “He is doing so many things, at 94, that many people without dementia cannot do. He really is the symbol of hope for someone with a cognitive disorder.”

    Bennett’s last public performance was on March 11, 2020 at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, New Jersey.