American music legend Tony Bennett has died at the age of 96
Tony Bennett, the last American crooner, has died at 96. The legendary interpreter of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” died today at his home in Manhattan. This was announced by her spokeswoman Sylvia Weiner.
The Italian-born singer had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease since 2016, according to what his wife Susan told AARP The Magazine in February 2021. He continued to perform and record despite his illness; his last public performance was in August of that year, when he appeared with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall in a show entitled “One Last Time”.
Over the course of a 70-year career, Bennett won 20 Grammys and sold more than 60 million records. After the deaths of Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como was considered the last of the great American crooners, among the custodians of American popular song written by Cole Porter, Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein and others.
Anthony Benedetto, his real name, was born in New York on August 3, 1926 into a family of Italian origins. He was one of three children of John Benedetto, a shopkeeper who in 1906 had emigrated to the United States from PodĂ rgoni, near Reggio Calabria, and Anna Suraci, a seamstress who was born in the United States soon after the emigration of her parents, also from Reggio, which took place in 1899.
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