Bob Hope renamed Anthony Benedetto, and Tony Bennett sang for seven more decades
Anthony Benedetto was a Queens grocer's son who sang for tips as a waiter at 13. After Bob Hope shortened his name, Tony Bennett landed a number-one hit in 1951, and seventy years later, at 95, he became the oldest person Guinness has recorded putting out an album of fresh songs.
He was born on August 3, 1926, in Long Island City, Queens, the first in his family born in a hospital. His father, an immigrant from near Reggio Calabria, was too ill to work and died when Tony was ten, but passed on a love of art and literature. At ten the boy sang at the opening of the Triborough Bridge beside Mayor La Guardia. He studied painting and music at the School of Industrial Art, then left at 16 to help support the family, working as a copy boy for the Associated Press.
Drafted in November 1944, he served as an infantry rifleman in France and Germany during the last months of the war, an experience that left him a lifelong pacifist. He was demoted for dining with a Black school friend while the Army was still segregated, and later sang in an Army band as Joe Bari. Back home he trained in bel canto on the GI Bill and was told to mimic instrumentalists such as Stan Getz and Art Tatum to learn improvisation. In 1949 Pearl Bailey had him open for her, and Hope, in the audience, took him on tour and gave him a shorter name.
Signed to Columbia by Mitch Miller and warned not to copy Frank Sinatra, he topped the charts with Because of You for ten weeks, then Cold, Cold Heart and Rags to Riches. His pianist Ralph Sharon steered him toward jazz, producing The Beat of My Heart, and he became the first male pop singer to front Count Basie's band. His signature I Left My Heart in San Francisco arrived in 1962.
After lean years during the rock era he returned in the late 1980s and 1990s, winning over MTV viewers without changing his style. Duets with Lady Gaga began with Cheek to Cheek in 2014. In 2021 he revealed a 2016 Alzheimer's diagnosis and gave his final concerts at Radio City Music Hall. He won 20 Grammys, sold more than 50 million records and died on July 21, 2023.
Source: Tony Bennett
