Tony Bennnett: a long and musical life

Tony Bennett learned early that life is short and time should be savored.
His paternal grandfather had died before his father was born. Eleven years later, his dad (disguised as a girl, so he could travel with his own mom) had survived a three-week trip from Italy.
Bennett (shown here) heard that story often from his dad, he wrote in “The Good Life” (Simon & Schuster, 1998), always being reminded that he wouldn’t be here if the ship had capsized. “He made light of it, but the joke only caused me, at a very young age, to contemplate the delicate balance of my own mortality.”
Except, of course, early mortality didn’t turn out to be a problem for him. He died today (Friday, July 21), two weeks shy of his 97th birthday.
Bennett lived another quarter-century after that memoir and added some of his greatest TV moments.
There were his two brilliant “Duets” specials, linking him with other top singers, from Lady Gaga to Amy Winehouse. There was a 90th birthday celebration, the Gershwin Prize and duo concerts with Gaga (rerunning at 9 p.m. July 23 on CBS) and with Diana Krall.
By his second Gaga concert, in 2021, Alzheimer’s had robbed him of most of his memories … except for the songs, which he performed beautifully, as usual.
Fortunately, those memories had already been preserved in the memoir he wrote when he was 72.
His parents were first cousins, he wrote; that wasn’t unusual for people whose families had come from small Italian villages. His dad was “a very poetic, sensitive man, full of love and warmth ….He had a beautiful voice. He used to sit on the stoop of our house and sing a cappella to my brother and me, in the gentle, sensitive voice I can still hear.”
That older brother was supposed to be the singing star and was dubbed “the little Caruso,” but lost interest as his voice changed. Tony drew less interest. One grade-school teacher split the students into two groups – the “golden birds” who could sing and the “black crows” who couldn’t. “You’re definitely a black crow,” she told Bennett.
Others would later disagree. “Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business,” Frank Sinatra told an interviewer in 1965. “He excites me when I watch him. He moves me.”
Even early, people realized this kiod was special. In 1936, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia cut the ribbon for a new bridge and 10-year-old Bennett (then Benedetto) sang “Marching Along Together.”
When I interviewed Bennett (at the time of the book), he admitted that he had no memory of that day – not because of Alzheimer’s, but because there had been six decades of memories since then.
They were vivid ones. His gentle father, frequently ill, had died of congestive heart failure at 41. His mother, widowed at 36, worked as a seamstress.
Bennett spent some years with his dad’s father’s family in Astoria. An indifferent student, he went to the High School of the Industrial Arts in New York, but knew his one art was singing.
“Benedetto means ‘the blessed one,’” he wrote. “And I feel that I have truly been blessed.”