Tony Bennett
(born Anthony Dominick Benedetto
; August 3, 1926) is an American singer of popular music, standards and jazz.
Raised in New York City, Bennett began singing at an early age. He fought in the final stages of World War II as an infantryman with the U.S. Army in the European Theatre. Afterwards, he developed his singing technique, signed with Columbia Records, and had his first number one popular song with "Because of You" in 1951. Several top hits such as "Rags to Riches" followed in the early 1950s. Bennett then further refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached an artistic peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart
and Basie Swings, Bennett Sings.
In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". His career and his personal life then suffered an extended downturn during the height of the rock music era.
Bennett staged a remarkable comeback in the late 1980s and 1990s, putting out gold record albums again and expanding his audience to the MTV Generation while keeping his musical style intact. He remains a popular and critically praised recording artist and concert performer in the 2000s. Bennett has won fifteen Grammy Awards, two Emmy Awards, been named an NEA Jazz Master and a Kennedy Center Honoree. He has sold over 50 million records worldwide. Bennett is also a serious and accomplished painter, creating works under the name Benedetto
that are on permanent public display in several institutions.
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TONY BENNETT TICKETS
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Early life
Anthony Benedetto was born in
Astoria,
Queens,
New York City, the son of Ann (
née Suraci) and John Benedetto.
[1] His father was a
grocer who had emigrated from
Podàrgoni,
[2] a rural eastern district of the
southern Italian city of
Reggio Calabria, and his mother was a
seamstress.
With two other children and a father who was ailing and unable to work, the siblings grew up in poverty.
John Benedetto died when Anthony was 10 years old.
Young "Tony" Benedetto grew up listening to
Al Jolson,
Eddie Cantor,
Judy Garland and
Bing Crosby as well as jazz artists such as
Louis Armstrong,
Jack Teagarden and
Joe Venuti. An uncle was a
tap dancer in
vaudeville, giving him an early window into
show business.
By age 10 he was already singing, and performed at the opening of the
Triborough Bridge.
[3] Drawing and
caricatures were also an early passion of his.
He attended New York's
High School of Industrial Art where he was studying
painting and
music,
but dropped out at age 16 to help support his family.
He worked as a copy boy and runner for the
Associated Press in Manhattan.
[4] [5] But mostly he set his sights on a professional singing career, performing as a singing waiter in several Italian restaurants around the borough of Queens.
[6]
World War II and after
Benedetto was drafted into the
United States Army in November 1944, during the final stages of
World War II.
He did
basic training at
Fort Dix and
Fort Robinson as part of becoming an
infantry rifleman.
[8] Benedetto ran afoul of a sergeant from the South who disliked the Italian from New York City and heavy doses of
KP duty or
BAR cleaning resulted.
Processed through the huge
Le Havre replacement depot, in January 1945, he was assigned as a replacement infantryman to
255th Infantry Regiment of the
63rd Infantry Division, a unit filling in for the heavy losses suffered in the
Battle of the Bulge.
[9] He moved across
France, and later, into
Germany.
As March 1945 began, he joined the
front line and what he would later describe as a "front-row seat in hell."
As the German Army was pushed back to their homeland, Benedetto and his
company saw bitter fighting in cold winter conditions, often hunkering down in
foxholes as German
88 mm guns fired on them.
[10] At the end of March, they crossed the
Rhine and entered Germany, engaging in dangerous house-to-house, town-after-town fighting to clean out German soldiers;
during the first week of April, they crossed the
Kocher River, and by the end of the month reached the
Danube.
[11] During his time in combat, Benedetto narrowly escaped death several times.
The experience made him a patriot and also a
pacifist;
he would later write, "Anybody who thinks that war is romantic obviously hasn't gone through one."
At the war's conclusion he was involved in the liberation of a
Nazi concentration camp near
Landsberg,
where some American
prisoners of war from the 63rd Division had also been held.
Benedetto stayed in Germany as part of the occupying force, but was assigned to an informal Special Services band unit that would entertain nearby American forces.
His dining with a black friend from high school – at a time when the Army
was still segregated – led to his being demoted and reassigned to
Graves Registration Service duties.
[12] Subsequently, he sang with the
Army military band under the stage name
Joe Bari
, and played with many musicians who would have post-war careers.
[13]
Upon his discharge from the Army and return to the States in 1946, Benedetto studied at the
American Theater Wing on the
GI Bill.
He was taught the
bel canto singing discipline,
which would keep his voice in good shape for his entire career. He continued to perform wherever he could, including while
waiting tables.
He developed an unusual approach that involved imitating, as he sang, the style and phrasing of other musicians—such as that of
Stan Getz's saxophone and
Art Tatum's piano—helping him to improvise as he interpreted a song.
[14] He made a few recordings as Bari in 1949 for small
Leslie Records, but they failed to sell.
[15]
In 1949,
Pearl Bailey recognized Benedetto's talent and asked him to open for her in
Greenwich Village.
She had invited
Bob Hope to the show. Hope decided to take Benedetto on the road with him, but suggested he use his real name simplified as
Tony Bennett
.
In 1950, Bennett cut a demo of "
Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and was signed to the major
Columbia Records label by
Mitch Miller.
First successes
Warned by Miller not to imitate
Frank Sinatra [16] (who was just then leaving Columbia), Bennett began his career as a
crooner singing
commercial pop tunes. His first big hit was "
Because of You", a ballad produced by Miller with a lush orchestral arrangement from
Percy Faith. It started out gaining popularity on
jukeboxes, then reached #1 on the pop charts in 1951 and stayed there for 10 weeks,
[17] selling over a million copies.
This was followed to the top of the charts later that year
by a similarly-styled rendition of
Hank Williams' "
Cold, Cold Heart", which helped introduce Williams and country music in general to a wider, more national audience.
[18] The Miller and Faith tandem continued to work on all of Bennett's early hits. Bennett's recording of "
Blue Velvet" was also very popular and attracted screaming teenaged fans at concerts at the famed
Paramount Theater in New York (Bennett did seven shows a day, starting at 10:30 a.m.)
[19] and elsewhere.
On February 12, 1952,
[20] Bennett married Ohio art student and jazz fan Patricia Beech, whom he had met the previous year after a nightclub performance in
Cleveland.
Two thousand female fans dressed in black gathered outside the ceremony at New York's
St. Patrick's Cathedral in mock mourning.
[21] Bennett and Beech would have two sons, D'Andrea (Danny, born around 1954) and Daegal (Dae, born around 1955).
A third #1 came in 1953 with "
Rags to Riches". Unlike Bennett's other early hits, this was an up-tempo
big band number with a bold,
brassy sound and a double
tango in the instrumental break; it topped the charts for eight weeks.
Later that year the producers of the upcoming
Broadway musical
Kismet
had Bennett record "
Stranger in Paradise" as a way of promoting the show during a New York newspaper strike.
The song reached the top, the show was a hit, and Bennett began a long practice of recording
show tunes.
[22] "Stranger in Paradise" was also a #1 hit in the
United Kingdom a year and a half later
[23] and started Bennett's career as an international artist.
Once the
rock and roll era began in 1955, the dynamic of the music industry changed and it became harder and harder for existing pop singers to do well commercially.
Nevertheless, Bennett continued to enjoy success, placing eight songs in the
Billboard
Top 40 during the latter part of the 1950s, with "
In the Middle of an Island" reaching the highest at #9 in 1957.
[24]
For a month in August–September 1956, Bennett hosted a
NBC Saturday night television
variety show,called
The Tony Bennett Show
, as a summer replacement for
The Perry Como Show
.
[25] Patti Page and
Julius La Rosa had in turn hosted the two previous months, and they all shared the same singers, dancers, and orchestra.
In 1959, Bennett would again fill in for
The Perry Como Show
, this time alongside
Teresa Brewer and
Jaye P. Morgan as co-hosts of the summer-long
Perry Presents.
[26]
A growing artistry
In 1954, the guitarist
Chuck Wayne became Bennett's
musical director.
[27] Bennett released his first long-playing album in 1955,
Cloud 7
. The album was billed as
featuring Wayne and showed Benett's leanings towards jazz. In 1957,
Ralph Sharon became Bennett's
pianist and musical director,
[28] replacing Wayne. Sharon told Bennett that a career singing "sweet saccharine songs like 'Blue Velvet'" wouldn't last long, and encouraged Bennett to focus even more on his jazz inclinations.
The result was the 1957 album
The Beat of My Heart
. It used well-known jazz musicians such as
Herbie Mann and
Nat Adderley, with a strong emphasis on percussion from the likes of
Art Blakey,
Jo Jones, Latin star
Candido Camero, and
Chico Hamilton. The album was both popular and critically praised.
Bennett followed this by working with the
Count Basie Orchestra, becoming the first male pop vocalist to sing with Basie's band.
The albums
Basie Swings, Bennett Sings
(1958) and
In Person!
(1959) were the well-regarded fruits of this collaboration, with "
Chicago" being one of the standout songs.
Bennett also built up the quality, and therefore, the reputation of his
nightclub act; in this he was following the path of Sinatra and other top jazz and standards singers of this era.
In June 1962, Bennett staged a
highly-promoted concert performance at Carnegie Hall, using a stellar line-up of musicians including
Al Cohn,
Kenny Burrell, and
Candido, as well as the Ralph Sharon Trio. The concert featured 44 songs, including favorites like "
I've Got the World on a String" and "
The Best Is Yet To Come". It was a big success, further cementing Bennett's reputation as a star both at home and abroad.
Bennett also appeared on television, and in October 1962 he sang on the first night of the
Johnny Carson The Tonight Show
.
[30]
Also in 1962, Bennett released the song "
I Left My Heart in San Francisco". Although this only reached #19 on the
Billboard Hot 100,
it spent close to a year on various other charts and increased Bennett's exposure.
The
album of the same title was a
top 5 hit and both the single and album achieved
gold record status.
The song won
Grammy Awards for
Record of the Year and
Best Male Solo Vocal Performance. Over the years, this would become known as Bennett's
signature song.
In 2001, it was ranked 23rd on an
RIAA/
NEA list of the most historically significant
Songs of the 20th Century.
Bennett's following album,
I Wanna Be Around
(1963), was also a top-5 success,
with the
title track and "The Good Life" each reaching the
top 20 of the pop singles chart
along with the
top 10 of the
Adult Contemporary chart.
[31]
The next year brought
The Beatles and the
British Invasion, and with them still more musical and cultural attention to rock and less to pop, standards, and jazz. Over the next couple of years Bennett had minor hits with several albums and singles based on
show tunes – his last top-40 single was the #34 "
If I Ruled the World" from
Pickwick
in 1965
– but his commercial fortunes were clearly starting to decline. An attempt to break into
acting with a role in the poorly received 1966 film
The Oscar
met with middling reviews for Bennett; he did not enjoy the experience and did not seek further roles.
[32] [33]
A firm believer in the
American Civil Rights movement,
Bennett participated in the 1965
Selma to Montgomery marches.
[34] Years later he would continue this commitment by refusing to perform in
apartheid South Africa.
Years of struggle
Ralph Sharon and Bennett parted ways in 1965.
There was great pressure on singers such as
Lena Horne and
Barbra Streisand to record "contemporary" rock songs, and in this vein Columbia Records'
Clive Davis suggested that Bennett do the same.
Bennett was very reluctant, and when he tried, the results pleased no one. This was exemplified by
Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!
(1970),
before which Bennett became physically ill at the thought of recording.
It featured misguided attempts at Beatles and other current songs and a ludicrous psychedelic art cover.
[35] [36]
Years later Bennett would recall his dismay at being asked to do contemporary material, comparing it to when his mother was forced to produce a cheap dress.
[37] By 1972, he had departed Columbia for
MGM Records, but found no more success there, and in a couple more years he was without a recording contract.
Bennett and his wife Patricia had been separated since 1965, their marriage a victim of Bennett's spending too much time on the road, among other factors.
In 1971, their divorce became official. Bennett had been involved with aspiring actress
Sandra Grant since filming
The Oscar
, and on December 29, 1971 they married. They had two daughters, Joanna (born around 1969) and Antonia (born 1974), and moved to
Los Angeles.
[38]
Taking matters into his own hands, Bennett started his own record company, Improv.
He cut some songs that would later become favorites, such as "What is This Thing Called Love?", and made two well-regarded albums with jazz pianist
Bill Evans,
The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album
(1975) and
Together Again
(1976),
[39] but Improv lacked a distribution arrangement with a major label and by 1977 it was out of business.
A stint living in
England, like other American jazz
expatriates, did not change his fortunes.
As the decade neared its end, Bennett had no recording contract, no manager, and was not performing any concerts outside of
Las Vegas.
His second marriage was failing (they would completely separate in 1979, but not officially divorce until 2007).
[40] He had (like many musicians) developed a
drug addiction, was living beyond his means, and had the
Internal Revenue Service trying to seize his Los Angeles home.
He had hit bottom.
Turnaround
After a near-fatal
cocaine overdose in 1979, Bennett called his sons Danny and Dae for help. "Look, I'm lost here," he told them. "It seems like people don't want to hear the music I make."
Danny Bennett, an aspiring musician himself, also came to a realization. The band Danny and his brother had started,
Quacky Duck and His Barnyard Friends, had foundered and Danny's musical abilities were limited. However, he had discovered during this time that he did have a head for business. His father, on the other hand, had tremendous musical talent but was having trouble sustaining a career from it and had little financial sense. Danny signed on as his father's manager.
[41]
Danny got his father's expenses under control, moved him back to New York, and began booking him in colleges and small theaters to get him away from a "Vegas" image.
After some effort, a successful plan to pay back the IRS debt was put into place.
Tony Bennett had also reunited with Ralph Sharon as his pianist and musical director.
By 1986, Tony Bennett was re-signed to Columbia Records, this time with creative control, and released
The Art of Excellence
. This became his first album to reach the charts since 1972.
An unexpected audience
By the mid-1980s, the excesses of the
disco,
punk rock, and
new wave eras had given many artists and listeners a greater appreciation for the classic American song. Rock stars such as
Linda Ronstadt began recording albums of standards, and such songs began showing up more frequently in movie soundtracks and on television commercials.
Danny Bennett felt strongly that younger audiences, although completely unfamiliar with Tony Bennett, would respond to his music if only given a chance to see and hear it.
[42] More crucially, no changes to Tony's appearance (tuxedo), singing style (his own), musical accompaniment (The Ralph Sharon Trio or an orchestra), or song choice (generally the
Great American Songbook) were necessary or desirable.
Accordingly, Danny began to regularly book his father on a show with a younger, hip audience,
Late Night with David Letterman
.
This was subsequently followed by appearances on
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
,
The Simpsons
, and various
MTV programs.
In 1993, Bennett played a series of benefit concerts organized by
alternative rock radio stations around the country.
The plan worked; as Tony later remembered, "I realized that young people had never heard those songs. Cole Porter, Gershwin – they were like, 'Who wrote that?' To them, it was different. If you're different, you stand out."
During this time, Bennett continued to record, first putting out the acclaimed look back
Astoria: Portrait of the Artist
(1990), then emphasizing themed albums such as the Sinatra homage
Perfectly Frank
(1992) and the
Fred Astaire tribute
Steppin' Out
(1993). The latter two both achieved gold status and won Grammys for
Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance (Bennett's first Grammys since 1962) and further established Bennett as the inheritor of the mantle of a classic American great.
As Bennett was seen at
MTV Video Music Awards
shows side by side with the likes of the
Red Hot Chili Peppers and
Flavor Flav, and as his "
Steppin' Out With My Baby" video received MTV airplay,
it was clear that, as
The New York Times
said, "Tony Bennett has not just bridged the generation gap, he has demolished it. He has solidly connected with a younger crowd weaned on rock. And there have been no compromises."
[43]
The new audience reached its height with Bennett's appearance in 1994 on
MTV Unplugged
.
Featuring guest appearances by rock and country stars
Elvis Costello and
k.d. lang (both of whom had a profound respect for the standards genre), the show attracted a considerable audience and much media attention.
The resulting
MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett
album went
platinum and, besides taking the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance Grammy award for the third straight year, also won the top Grammy prize of
Album of the Year.
At age 68, Tony Bennett had come all the way back.
Painting
Tony Bennett's career as a painter, done under his real name of Benedetto, has also flourished.
[44] [45] He followed up his childhood interest with serious training, work, and museum visits throughout his life. He sketches or paints every day, even of views out of hotel windows when he is on tour.
[46]
He has exhibited his work in numerous galleries around the world.
He was chosen as the official artist for the 2001
Kentucky Derby, and was commissioned by the
United Nations to do two paintings, including one for their 50th anniversary.
His painting "Homage to Hockney" (for his friend
David Hockney, painted after Hockney drew him) is on permanent display at the highly regarded
Butler Institute of American Art in
Youngstown, Ohio.
His "Boy on Sailboat, Sydney Bay" is in the permanent collection at the
National Arts Club in
Gramercy Park in New York, as is his "Central Park" at the
Smithsonian American Art Museum in
Washington, D.C. His paintings and drawings have been featured in
ARTnews
and other magazines, and sell for as much as $80,000 apiece.
Many of his works were published in the art book
Tony Bennett: What My Heart Has Seen
in 1996. In 2007, another book involving his paintings,
Tony Bennett in the Studio: A Life of Art & Music
, became a best-seller among art books.
No retirement
Since his comeback, Bennett has financially prospered; by 1999, his assets were worth $15 to 20 million.
He had no intention of retiring, saying "If you study the masters – Picasso, Jack Benny, Fred Astaire – right up to the day they died, they were performing. If you are creative, you get busier as you get older."
Indeed, Bennett has continued to record and tour steadily, doing 100 to 200 shows a year.
In concert Bennett often makes a point of singing one song (usually "
Fly Me to the Moon") without any microphone or amplification, demonstrating to younger audience members the lost art of vocal projection.
[47] [48] [49] One show,
Tony Bennett's Wonderful World: Live From San Francisco
, was made into a
PBS special. Bennett also created the idea behind, and starred in the first of, the
A&E Network's popular
Live By Request
series, for which he won an
Emmy Award.
In addition to numerous television guest performances, Bennett has had
cameo appearances as himself in films such as
The Scout
,
Analyze This
, and
Bruce Almighty
. Bennett also published
The Good Life: The Autobiography of Tony Bennett
in 1998.
A series of albums, often based on themes (
Duke Ellington,
Louis Armstrong,
Billie Holiday,
blues, duets) has met with good acceptance; Bennett has won seven more Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance or
Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album Grammys in the subsequent years, most recently for the year 2006. Bennett has sold over 50 million records worldwide during his career.
at the White House on February 25, 2009.
Accolades came to Bennett. For his contribution to the recording industry, Tony Bennett was given a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560
Vine Street.
[50] Bennett was inducted into the
Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1997, was awarded the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, and received a lifetime achievement award from the
American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) in 2002.
[51] In 2002,
Q
magazine named Tony Bennett in their list of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die".
[52] On December 4, 2005, Bennett was the recipient of a
Kennedy Center Honor.
Later, a theatrical musical revue of his songs, called
I Left My Heart: A Salute to the Music of Tony Bennett
was created and featured some of his best-known songs such as "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", "Because of You", and "Wonderful".
[53] The following year, Bennett was inducted into the
Long Island Music Hall of Fame.
[54]
Bennett frequently donates his time to charitable causes, to the extent that he is sometimes nicknamed "Tony Benefit".
[55] In April 2002, he joined
Michael Jackson,
Chris Tucker and former President
Bill Clinton in a fundraiser for the
Democratic National Committee at
New York's
Apollo Theater.
[56] He has also recorded
public service announcements for
Civitan International.
[57] In the late 1980s, Bennett entered into a long-term romantic relationship with
Susan Crow (born c. 1960), a former New York City
schoolteacher.
Together they founded Exploring the Arts, a charitable organization dedicated to creating, promoting, and supporting arts education. At the same time they founded (and named after Bennett's friend) the
Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, a public high school dedicated to teaching the performing arts, which opened in 2001 and would have a very high graduation rate.
It was a tribute in return, for in a 1965
Life
magazine interview Sinatra had said that:
"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." [58]
Danny Bennett continues to be Tony's manager while Dae Bennett is a
recording engineer who has worked on a number of Tony's projects and who has opened Bennett Studios in
Englewood, New Jersey. Tony's younger daughter Antonia is an aspiring jazz singer.
In August 2006, Bennett turned eighty years old. The birthday itself was an occasion for publicity, which then extended through the rest of the following year.
Duets: An American Classic
reached the highest place ever on the albums chart for an album by Bennett
and garnered two Grammy Awards; concerts were given, including a high-profile one for New York radio station
WLTW-FM; a performance was done with
Christina Aguilera and a comedy sketch was made with affectionate Bennett impressionist
Alec Baldwin on
Saturday Night Live
; a
Thanksgiving-time,
Rob Marshall-directed television special
Tony Bennett: An American Classic
on
NBC, which would
win multiple Emmy Awards;
receipt of the
Billboard Century Award;
and guest-mentoring on
American Idol
season 6 as well as performing during
its finale. He received the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Humanitarian Award. Bennett was awarded the
National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award in 2006,
the highest honor that the United States bestows upon jazz musicians.
On June 21, 2007, Bennett married long-time partner Susan Crow in a civil ceremony in New York.
[59] 2008 saw Bennett making two appearances with
Billy Joel at the final concerts given at
Shea Stadium, and in October releasing the album
A Swingin' Christmas
with
The Count Basie Big Band, for which he made a number of promotional appearances at holiday time.
In January 2009, Bennett performed at the conclusion of the final
Macworld Conference & Expo for
Apple Inc., singing the "The Best Is Yet to Come" and "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" to a standing ovation.
[60] [61] On May 1, Bennett made his
Jazz Fest debut in
New Orleans.
[62]
Awards and recognition
Bennett has won fifteen
Grammy Awards,
[63] [64] as follows (years shown are the year in which the ceremony was held and the award was given, not the year in which the recording was released):
- Best Solo Vocal Performance, Male, 1963, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"
- Record of the Year, 1963, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, 1993, Perfectly Frank
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, 1994, Steppin' Out
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, 1995, MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett
- Album of the Year, 1995, MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, 1997, Here's to the Ladies
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, 1998, Tony Bennett on Holiday
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, 2000, Bennett Sings Ellington: Hot & Cool
- Lifetime Achievement Award, 2001
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, 2003, Playing with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, 2004, A Wonderful World
(with k.d. lang)
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, 2006, The Art of Romance
- Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, 2007, Duets: An American Classic
- Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, 2007, "For Once in My Life" (with Stevie Wonder)
Bennett has won two
Emmy Awards,
[65] as follows (years shown are the year in which the ceremony was held and the award was given, not the year in which the program aired):
- Primetime Emmy Award for Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program, 1996, Live by Request
- Primetime Emmy Award for Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program, 2007, Tony Bennett: An American Classic
Bennett has gained other notable recognition:
- Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
- Inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame, 1997
- Lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, 2002
- Kennedy Center Honoree, 2005
- Inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame
- United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Humanitarian Award, 2006
- National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award, 2006
Works
Discography
Bennett has released over 70 albums during his career, with almost all being for
Columbia Records. The biggest selling of these in the U.S. have been
I Left My Heart in San Francisco
,
MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett
, and
Duets: An American Classic
, all of which went
platinum for shipping one million copies.
[66] Eight other albums of his have gone
gold in the U.S., including several compilations.
Bennett has also charted over 30 singles during his career, with his biggest hits all occurring during the early 1950s and none charting since 1967.
Books
- Bennett, Tony. Tony Bennett: What My Heart Has Seen
. Rizzoli, 1996. ISBN 0-8478-1972-8.
- Bennett, Tony, with Will Friedwald. The Good Life: The Autobiography Of Tony Bennett
. Pocket Books, 1998. ISBN 0-671-02469-8.
- Bennett, Tony, with Robert Sullivan. Tony Bennett in the Studio: A Life of Art & Music
. Sterling, 2007. ISBN 1402747675.
See also
- List of best selling music artists
References
- Tony Bennett Biography (1926-)
- Tony Bennett: The musician and the artist
- Tony Bennett: Biography
- Celebrity Circuit: The Graduate
- Tony Bennett is still flying high on the good life
- Nightline Playlist: Tony Bennett
- Bennett, ''The Good Life'', p. 51.
- Bennett, ''The Good Life'', pp. 52–53.
- Bennett, ''The Good Life'', pp. 54–56.
- Bennett, ''The Good Life'', pp. 57–59.
- Bennett, ''The Good Life'', pp. 60–61.
- Tony Bennett
- Bennett, ''The Good Life'', pp. 74, 77.
- Tony Bennett
- Tony Bennett's Cleveland Connections
- Tony Bennett
- The Essential Tony Bennett
- Hank Williams: Biography
- Tony Bennett remains true to standards
- Tony Bennett and Susan Crow Marriage Profile
- He keeps coming back like a song
- Bennett, ''The Good Life'', pp. 124–125.
- This Day in Music: An Everyday Record of 10,000 Musical Facts
- The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits: 1955 to present
- The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present
- Total Television: A Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present
- Chuck Wayne
- Ralph Sharon: Biography
- The Beat of My Heart: Review
- Under the Tree: A Present that Captured History
- Tony Bennett: Charts & Awards: Billboard Singles
- Screen 'Oscar' Arrives
- Bennett, ''The Good Life'', p. 186.
- Selma-to-Montgomery 1965 Voting Rights March
- Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today
- Jazz Singing
- Bennett, ''The Good Life'', p. 33.
- Tony Bennett
- A Long-Distance Legend Who's Lapped the Field
- Didn't Leave Heart With Tony
- Talking Money With: Tony Bennett: His Heart's in San Francisco, His Money in His Son's Hands
- When He Croons, Slackers Listen
- Tony Bennett and MTV: Talk About Bedfellows
- Biography of Tony Bennett
- Tony Bennett
- Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends
- A Touch Of Class From Tony Bennett
- A Pop Master Delivers A Parade of Hits From Before Rock
- Tony Bennett
- Hollywood Icons: Tony Bennett
- Tony Bennett To Be Presented With The ASCAP Pied Piper Award At The 19th Annual ASCAP Pop Music Awards
- A Selection of Lists from Q Magazine
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