![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/2021-02-01T153612Z_2_LYNXMPEH101O3_RTROPTP_4_PEOPLE-TONY-BENNETT-ALZHEIMERS-2048x1366-1-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tony Bennett, the American singer whose career spanned more decades than most of us will live, died in New York Friday at age 96. A man who proved that greatness in his field and appreciation may not happen until later in life (a la Colonel Sanders, Abe Lincoln, and numerous others) Bennett was awarded 20 Grammy awards (article errs and says 19) – 17 of them after he reached the age of 60.<\/p>\n
Bennett didn\u2019t tell his own story when performing; he let the music speak instead \u2014 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\u2019s, Bennett appealed with an easy, courtly manner and an uncommonly rich and durable voice \u2014 \u201cA tenor who sings like a baritone,\u201d he called himself \u2014 that made him a master of caressing a ballad or brightening an up-tempo number.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,\u201d he told The Associated Press in 2006. \u201cI think people … are touched if they hear something that\u2019s sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humor. … I just like to make people feel good when I perform.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cCheek to Cheek,\u201d his duets project with Lady Gaga. Three years earlier, he topped the charts with \u201cDuets II,\u201d featuring such contemporary stars as Gaga, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse, in her last studio recording.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Born Anthony Dominick Bennetto in 1926, Bennett served in the US Army as an infantryman in the closing days of WWII, earning a Bronze Star in the 63d Infantry,\u00a0 and had his first #1 in 1951.<\/p>\n
Bennett was praised often by his peers, but never more meaningfully than by what Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine interview: \u201cFor my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"