Tony Bennett was a true American legend, with
one of the richest voices ever committed to vinyl. From his humble beginnings to his low points
with addiction, this is the story of how he hit the big time in the early 1950s, and stayed
there for the rest of his life. If you want to get good at something, you've
got to do that thing a lot. By the time he was ten years old in 1936,
Anthony Benedetto was already singing for crowds, including at the opening of the Triborough
Bridge in New York City. At the age of 16, he dropped out of school
to earn money for his family, and he naturally pursued what he was good at: singing. Benedetto landed a job as a singing waiter
in a Queens, New York, restaurant. Interrupted briefly by a stint in the military
during World War II, Benedetto returned to the States and performed at any place that
would have him. One day in 1949, the legendary Broadway performer
Pearl Bailey heard Bennett sing at an audition, and asked him to be her opening act for a
run of shows in Greenwich Village. Bob Hope, arguably the most famous and popular
entertainer of the day happened to be in the house one night and asked him to come perform
in his show, too. But Hope wanted the crooner to drop the "Joe
Bari" moniker. Hope asked Benedetto to tell him his real
name, and quipped that it was "too long for the marquee." So, he shortened the singer's real name, Anthony
Benedetto, to Tony Bennett, and a star was born. In November 1944, 18-year-old Tony Bennett
got his draft papers and was shipped out for army training at Fort Robinson in Arkansas. Almost immediately, Bennett realized that
military life was not for him. He wrote in his autobiography, "The Good Life," "They treated us like animals. I began to have a really hard time with the
whole military philosophy. From top to bottom, it went against every
single thing I believed in." Even worse than the training that was designed
to, "brutalize us and break our spirit," Bennett had to deal with some pernicious racism. He wrote, "Our sergeant was an old-fashioned southern
bigot, and he had it in for me right from the start because I was an Italian from New
York City." He also revealed that it was "just as bad
for other ethnic groups," particularly African-American and Jewish soldiers. Bennett found himself stationed in Germany
during the waning days of the war. Along with the rest of the 255th Regiment,
Bennett captured several Nazi SS soldiers. In their last mission, they were tasked with
liberating a concentration camp. Bennett said, "I'll never forget the desperate faces and
empty stares of the prisoners. They had been brutalized for so long that
at first, they couldn't believe that we were there to help them and not to kill them." His wartime experiences left Bennett a pacifist
for life. "I really dislike war. See, to me, life is a gift, and you should
enjoy it. As an Italian-American entertainer living
in New York City in the 1940s, it wasn't hard for Bennett to run into the mob, or to employ
their services. According to David Evanier's "All the Things
You Are: The Life of Tony Bennett," by 1949, Bennett was tired of getting nowhere under
his old manager, so he hired a new one. Ray Muscarella was a promoter with purported
ties to organized crime families. He used his money and connections to get Bennett
in touch with a vocal coach, arrangers, composers, a publicist, and a record promoter. Muscarella also funded the whole operation,
meaning Bennett ultimately owed the mob and he owed them big. According to sources in "All the Things You
Are," the money that launched Bennett's career came from the Capone family. The singer dutifully performed at mafia-sponsored
gigs for years, and it wasn't until the late '60s Bennett set himself free, paying $600,000
to organized criminals so as to be left alone. Tony Bennett signed with Columbia Records
in the early 1950s, but he was a bit skeptical of his record deal. He signed with Columbia right when its biggest
star, and Bennett's idol, Frank Sinatra, was leaving the label. But his worries ended up being unfounded. Columbia allowed him to sing in his own style,
and it definitely helped him get noticed. Bennet was praised for his voice, even by
Frank Sinatra who said of the singer, "For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer
I've ever heard." Bennett considered Sinatra a mentor. Even after he'd scored two #1 hits in "Because
of You" and "Cold, Cold Heart," Bennett still had some stage fright. In an interview he gave on "The Tonight Show,"
Bennett revealed that Sinatra gave him some very good advice. "He taught me, that the audience are your
friends, they come to see you." Bennett continued by saying, "And he changed my whole psychology about
that, there's no such thing as a bad audience. There's a bad performance, but there's not
a bad audience." Bennett even lived in Ol' Blue Eyes' stomping
ground of Las Vegas for nearly 20 years, and yet he politely refused to join the Rat Pack,
Sinatra's semi-official bad-boy friend group. Bennett didn't think he was as tough as the
likes of Dean Martin and Peter Lawford, and besides, as he told The Independent, "They
kept awfully long hours." In the late 1950s, songwriters George Cory
Jr. and Douglass Cross ran into Bennett's pianist, Ralph Sharon, in New York, and gave
him the sheet music for several new songs, including "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Sharon didn't think much about them and tossed
the papers into his shirt drawer where they sat for nearly two years. While packing for a tour with Bennett in 1961,
he came across that sheet music and rediscovered "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." After a show in Arkansas one evening, Sharon
played the song at a piano in a hotel bar, and Bennett loved it. Not too long after, the tour took Bennett
and Sharon to San Francisco, where they performed what became Bennett's signature song for the
first time at the Venetian Room in the Fairmont Hotel just before Christmas. Initially, Columbia Records placed Bennett's
recording as the B-side of the single "Once Upon a Time." But DJs around the country discovered the
vastly superior song and played it over the A-side track. It also helped that Bennett sang the song
during Johnny Carson's first night as host of "The Tonight Show." These days, artists aren't shy about utilizing
their voices and visibility to advance a cause, but in the '60s, it wasn't done that way. Only a handful of famous people were willing
to risk alienating their fanbase to stand up for what was right, and Tony Bennett was
among them. In the 1960s, Bennett advocated for the Civil
Rights Movement, participating in the Selma March of 1965 organized by Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. While he was a worldwide star, Bennett refused
to perform concerts in South Africa due to the country's separatist apartheid laws. His reasons for doing so were wonderfully
simple. He told PBS, "We are all human and we are all on this planet
together. So what better reason do you need to not tolerate
any form of violence against another human being?" Bennett did so much work in the name of justice
that he was honored by the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame and was awarded the Martin
Luther King Center's Salute to Greatness Award. For most of Tony Bennett's career, he stood
firm in his preferred genre of music. He crooned jazz standards and entries in the
great American songbook for more than 60 years. He didn't care much for rock n' roll and its
offshoots, and he once said that the Rolling Stones promoted "juvenile delinquency." But Bennett did try to keep up with the hip
young kids once, and it didn't go well. In 1967, he covered Stevie Wonder's smooth
and jazzy "For Once in My Life" at the behest of Columbia Records' new president, Clive
Davis, who wanted to bring old crooners like Bennett into the new age. Bennett reluctantly recorded an album in 1970
called "Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!" The album cover featured Bennett rocking some
groovy threads, and the record inside featured Bennett's take on Wonder's "My Cherie Amour"
and The Beatles' "Something" and "Eleanor Rigby." The album didn't sell well, and neither did
a hastily released follow-up "Tony Bennett's Something." Then, In 1972, Columbia dropped Bennett after
two decades with the label. Tony Bennett doesn't seem like the kind of
performer who would fall into the traps of the rock n' roll lifestyle, but Bennett fell
into drug abuse and nearly destroyed his life during the 1970s. He admitted in his book, "All the Things You
Are: The Life of Tony Bennett" that he "used to take pills — uppies, downies, and sleepies." He identified the '70s as his "darkest period." After Columbia Records dropped him from its
roster in the face of changing musical tastes, he fell deeply into debt. He said, "I owed something like $1.2 million, which
was a fortune in those days. At least half of it was in back taxes I couldn't
afford to pay." The death of his mother on Thanksgiving 1977
was unbelievably painful, and he, quote, "turned more and more recklessly to drugs for relief." Things got even worse in 1979. That's when Bennett, freaked out over a call
to his accountants from the IRS threatening to seize his house, overdosed on cocaine,
and passed out while in his bath. His then-wife Sandy Grant arrived home just
in time to get him to a hospital. Bennett eventually got clean and sober and
his son, Danny, helped him settle his financial problems. Tony Bennett was the last man standing from
the pre-rock era, by virtue of surviving and performing into his 90s as well as a slow
and savvy marketing plan. Danny Bennett took over his father's career
in 1979 and got his father a new deal with his old label, Columbia Records. In 1986, "The Art of Excellence," the first
album under that contract, became Bennett's first record in 14 years to hit the charts. Around that time, Spin publisher Bob Guccione
Jr., called Bennett one of the two biggest influences on rock n' roll and published a
featured profile of the crooner. Before long, Bennett was regularly appearing
on "Late Night with David Letterman" and booking spots in alternative rock radio station-sponsored
concerts – such as at Radio City Music Hall. "Yeah, they've commissioned me to sing all
the great songs that were introduced right at Radio City." All the while, Bennett didn't change a thing
about his act. He sang great songs and the rock fans loved
him for it. Columbia Records played up the nostalgia factor,
and released two Bennett concept albums in 1992 and 1993: the Frank Sinatra tribute "Perfectly
Frank" and the Fred Astaire tribute "Steppin' Out." Those won Bennett back-to-back Grammy Awards
for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. A video for the title track from "Steppin'
Out" received heavy MTV airplay in late 1993, prompting the network to book Bennett for
an episode of its "Unplugged'' concert series. In 1994, the live recording of Bennett's "Unplugged"
won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. A survey of Tony Bennett's romantic history
is almost as long and involved as his discography. In 1952, he married Patricia Beach, the mother
of his two sons, one of whom, Danny, is his manager. She filed for divorce in 1969, after Bennett
allegedly cheated with actress Sandra Grant, whom the singer married and helped raise two
daughters. That relationship lasted until 1979, and Bennett
wouldn't marry for a third time until 2007, saying I do to Susan Crow, a woman 40 years
younger than the singer. According to Bennett's book "Just Getting
Started," they first met decades earlier. At 19, Crow was the president of Bennett's
Bay Area fan club and requested to say hello backstage after one of his shows. Bennett wrote that he was touched "that someone
of her age was so devoted to my music." Crow got that backstage pass, and a little
bit more, as Bennett asked her out on a date. But this is where it gets weird. Crow's parents were big Bennett fans, too. In 1966, they caught one of his concerts in
San Francisco. Bennett posed for a picture with the Crows,
and Marion Crow happened to be pregnant at the time, with Susan. Tony Bennett's struggles with drug addiction
left him near death in the 1970s, and he worked hard to get sober. But his experiences with drugs didn't leave
him hardened as to their wider use in society. In 2012, Bennett was at a pre-Grammy party
when news of Whitney Houston's death from drowning, with drugs being a complicating
factor. Coming soon after the deaths of Michael Jackson
and Amy Winehouse, Houston's death moved Bennett to speak. During the party he spoke to the guests, saying, "I'd like to have every gentleman and lady
in this room commit themselves to get our government to legalize drugs." He noted that such a policy would at least
put access to dangerous drugs in the hands of doctors rather than drug dealers. Bennett faced some criticism for his remarks,
but also support from several police officers and rehab professionals who agreed with his
opinions about the legality of drugs. As Tony Bennett, he was a world-renowned singer. Under his birth name, Anthony Benedetto, he
maintained a side career as a painter. Bennett had been fascinated by art and painting
since childhood, and according to PBS's "American Masters," he made it a daily practice. It's a habit he maintained even while touring. "Well I'm still painting, and I still love
it very, very much." His paintings were the subject of his first
book, "What My Heart Has Seen," published in 1996. Bennett's art has appeared in several museum
galleries. A painting of David Hockney is part of the
Butler Institute of American Art's permanent collection, and he has pieces in the National
Arts Club and the Smithsonian's American Art Museum. He's been commissioned by the Kentucky Derby
for promotional material and the United Nations for an anniversary painting. And Bennett's art has been a regular part
of the American Cancer Society's holiday fundraising; he painted many of their greeting cards. Tony Bennett kept busy throughout the 2010s,
carrying out touring concerts and striking up a friendship and collaboration with Lady
Gaga. However, in 2017, Bennett was diagnosed with
Alzheimer's disease. The bad news was initially kept private, and
Bennett insisted on keeping up with his performances. But by 2021, though his voice and musical
recall were still strong, his physical condition at 95 couldn't endure his performing schedule
anymore. That year, Bennett made public that he had
Alzheimer's, and his son Danny announced that there would be no more concerts. Danny told Variety: "This was a hard decision for us to make,
as he is a capable performer. This is, however, doctor's orders." Danny added that his father would be doing
"other things," though he didn't elaborate on what those might be. The family didn't issue permission for a post-retirement
use of Bennett's image in an episode of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," though there were
no hurt feelings. A year after retirement, Danny shared that
his father still rehearsed three times a week. Danny told Variety: "That's how you do it. It's like "How do you get to Carnegie Hall,
right? Practice.'"
