Tony Bennett Biography
If he’d retired after his first decade of record-making, Tony Bennett would still be regarded as one of the finest popular singers that America has ever produced. Instead, he’s maintained a remarkably prolific and productive recording career that spans six decades. In that time, he’s experienced multiple comebacks, and managed to maintain his musical relevance for new generations of fans without altering his established musical style or making concessions to current pop trends.
Growing up in a single-parent household in the Astoria section of Queens, New York, Anthony Dominick Benedetto studied painting at the High School of Industrial Arts, before dropping out in order to earn money for his struggling family. By then, he’d decided to make music his career. After serving in the Army in Europe during World War II, he gained notoriety performing around New York and won the attention of Bob Hope, who added him to his stage show and suggested that he change his stage name to Tony Bennett.
Columbia Records’ A&R director Mitch Miller signed the rechristened singer to his company in 1950, and Bennett soon scored a series of hits, including “Because of You,” “Rags to Riches,” “Stranger in Paradise” and his genre-crossing reading of Hank WIlliams’ “Cold, Cold Heart.” He remained one of America’s favorite male vocalists through the rest of the ’50s, while developing a popular nightclub act that emphasized standards from the Great American Songbook. He also recorded a series of adventurous albums that emphasized his natural affinity for jazz, including 1957’s The Beat of My Heart and 1959’s In Person! With Count Basie and His Orchestra.
The rise of rock ‘n’ roll in the late ’50s temporarily interrupted Bennett’s run of hits. But he returned to the pop charts in 1962 with the song that would become his signature number, the title track of his album I Left My Heart In San Francisco. That smash was followed by a string of popular albums and singles that ran through the rest of that decade. Although his sales figures slowed in the ’70s, Bennett remained a massively popular concert performer.
Bennett experienced unprecedented career resurgence, beginning with his return to Columbia Records in the late ’80s. By the ’90s, he was back on top, with such concept albums as the Sinatra-themed Perfectly Frank, the Fred Astaire tribute Steppin’ Out, Here’s to the Ladies, On Holiday: A Tribute to Billie Holiday and Bennett Sings Ellington: Hot & Cool. The most remarkable thing about Bennett’s latest comeback—as underlined by the platinum success of his Grammy-winning 1994 release MTV Unplugged—is that he won a completely new, youthful fan base without changing his time-honored musical approach or altering his choice of material.
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