Arguably one of the most influential and longest lasting brilliant singers who was uniquely capable of crossing multiple generations of song, all while retaining that same smile. The legendary and irreplaceable Tony Bennett has died at the age of 96. Wow, what a life!
In the latter part of his career, with incredible and smooth duets with female pop stars (1990 – 2020), I once remarked that Bennett’s specific style of charm reminded me of a human Quokka, simply because of that incredible and authentic smile he carried. The guy was a class act.
Shine on Mr. Bennett. The sounds in heaven just got a whole lot more jazzed…

(Variety) […] He was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in Astoria, Queens, New York on Aug. 3, 1926, to Italian immigrant parents; his father was a grocer, his mother a seamstress. Raised in poverty, he began singing as a child, and studied music and his other lifelong love, painting, at New York’s High School of Industrial Art. His vocal influences included Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and, later, Frank Sinatra, as well as such female singers as Billie Holiday and Judy Garland.
Drafted at 18 in 1944, he served in World War II’s European theater, doing combat infantry duty and liberating a German concentration camp. After the end of the conflict, he sang as a member of an Armed Forces band.
On his return from service, he studied voice with Miriam Spier in the American Theatre Wing. He cut his first, unsuccessful sides for independent Leslie Records in 1949, as “Joe Bari.”
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