Tony Bennett dies: ‘The best singer in the business’ – how words from his idol Frank Sinatra changed his career
“For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business.”
Coming from Frank Sinatra himself, in an interview in 1965, there could be no higher compliment.
Sinatra was a huge influence on Bennett, who has died aged 96.
The pair had become firm friends and went on to perform together several times over the years.
Bennett was the younger singer – Sinatra died in May 1998 at the age of 82.
But as they both matured, Sinatra always continued to call Bennett “kid” – even into old age.
Bennett said his idol’s words in that 1965 article changed his career.
Two years earlier, a then 36-year-old Bennett had picked up his first Grammy for his signature song I Left My Heart In San Francisco.
In 2022, almost 60 years later, the pop and jazz singer was awarded his 20th, sharing the honour with his superstar collaborator Lady Gaga – at the tender age of 95.
Bennett performs with Lady Gaga
During a career in entertainment spanning eight decades, Bennett was one of the last of America’s great crooners – one who achieved the rare feat of only seeming to grow in popularity in later life.
With more than 70 albums to his name, he is perhaps the only artist ever to have had new albums charting in the US in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s – and in 2014, he broke his own record as the oldest living artist to hit the top of the weekly Billboard 200 album chart.
Performing well into his 90s, even after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, Bennett was an entertainer beloved by all generations; Gaga was just one of the modern-day artists he collaborated with in later years.
Paul McCartney, John Legend, Christina Aguilera and Michael Buble, as well as Sinatra, all feature on the long list of others, and his 2011 duet with Amy Winehouse, Body And Soul, was the last song she recorded before her death.
“To me, life is a gift, and it’s a blessing to just be alive,” the singer once said.
It was a quote he became known for, the title of one of his memoirs, and one he used again when he went public about his illness in 2021.
“Life is a gift – even with Alzheimer’s,” was the message shared on his social media accounts in February 2021.
Later that year, he performed his final farewell shows.
Grief, war and discovery
Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto on 3 August 1926, in Queens in New York City, to parents John and Anna, the young Tony and his older brother and sister, John and Mary, were raised by their mother following his father’s death when he was aged just 10.
As a child, he loved to sing and paint, and his passions were nurtured at the High School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan.
As he grew older, he developed a love of music listening to artists such as Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong and James ‘Jimmy’ Durante on the radio.
During his teenage years, Bennett sang while waiting tables, before enlisting in the army during the Second World War.
He served in the Battle of the Bulge – the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front, launched in 1944 through the forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg – and participated in the liberation of a concentration camp, according to his official website’s biography.
During his time in Europe, he performed with military bands and, following his return to America, he went on to have vocal studies at the American Theatre Wing School in New York.
The singer’s first nightclub performance came in 1946, alongside trombonist Tyree Glenn at the Shangri-La in Queens’ Astoria neighbourhood.
Three years later came his big break, when comedian Bob Hope noticed him working with actress and singer Pearl Bailey in Greenwich Village.
At the time, he was performing under the stage name of Joe Bari.
‘We’ll call you Tony Bennett’
Hope liked Bennett’s singing so much that he met him in his dressing room afterwards to ask him to perform with him at the city’s famed Paramount Theatre.
There was just one condition.
“But first he told me he didn’t care for my stage name and asked me what my real name was,” Bennett recalled. “I told him, ‘My name is Anthony Dominick Benedetto’. And he said, ‘We’ll call you Tony Bennett’.
“And that’s how it happened. A new Americanised name – the start of a wonderful career and a glorious adventure.”
Bennett’s first singles came in the 1950s, including chart-toppers Because Of You, Rags To Riches, and a remake of Hank Williams’ Cold, Cold Heart.
Dozens more singles followed and his voice took him around the world, selling millions of records and performing to sold-out venues – as well as to numerous stars and presidents.
He went on to release dozens of albums throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, but began to struggle with drug use as his style of music fell out of style.
Following a 10-year absence from the US album charts, he returned with The Art Of Excellence in 1986 and continued releasing music at pace in the 1990s, becoming an unlikely favourite of MTV.
Pic: AP
Legendary duets add to his longevity
In 2001, well into his 70s, the singer was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys – but there was no sign of him slowing down.
He became known for his collaborations and his first modern-day duets album, Duets: An American Classic, was released in 2006, featuring performances with artists including McCartney, Elton John, Barbra Streisand and Bono.
After more than 50 years in the business, it was one of the bestselling records of his career.
Pic: AP
Duets II came in 2011, featuring artists including Aretha Franklin and John Mayer, as well as Gaga and Winehouse.
Debuting at the top of the Billboard charts, it went on to win two Grammys, and his friendship with Gaga led to the release of their first collaborative album, Cheek To Cheek, in 2014.
Their second, Love For Sale, Bennett’s final album, came in 2021.
As well as his music, Bennett was also known for his painting, and had his work exhibited at galleries around the world.
He was even commissioned by the United Nations, painting one piece for the organisation’s 50th anniversary.
He was also the author of five books, including the New York Times bestseller Life Is A Gift: The Zen Of Bennett, published in 2012, and Just Getting Started, released in 2016.
Pic: AP
Family and charitable legacy
A father of four, Bennett was married three times.
At his wedding to first wife Patricia Beech in 1952, some 2,000 female fans reportedly gathered outside the ceremony – dressed in black in mock mourning. The couple went on to have two sons, Danny and Dae, before they separated.
Bennett went on to marry actress Sandra Grant, with whom he had daughters Joanna and Antonia, and in 2007 married long-term partner Susan Crow, now Susan Benedetto.
In 1999, he founded Exploring the Arts with Susan, to help strengthen the role of the arts in public high school education in the US.
One of the organisation’s first projects was the establishment of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a public high school set up in 2001 in Bennett’s hometown of Astoria, Queens.
The singer’s other charitable endeavours included helping to raise millions of dollars for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, which established a research fund in his name, and lending his artwork to the American Cancer Society’s annual holiday greeting cards to raise funds.
Along with his many gongs for his music, Bennett was also honoured with the Martin Luther King Center’s “salute to greatness” award for his efforts in fighting racial discrimination, after joining the activist in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in 1965.
The singer’s retirement from performing was announced in 2021, with his son Danny, also his manager, saying it was down to doctor’s orders due to the strain of travelling.
Performing a medley tribute to the man she described as “an incredible mentor, and friend, and father figure” at the Grammys in 2022, Gaga appeared emotional as she finished on stage. “I love you, Tony. We miss you.”
Following the singer’s death, the music industry mourns one of the last great performers of his generation.
For Bennett, life was a gift – and for millions of fans over the decades, it was a gift he gave right back.
Hip hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has lost a bid to delay his upcoming sex-trafficking trial by two months.
US district judge Arun Subramanian said the 55-year-old rapper made his request too close to his trial, which is due to start next month.
Jury selection is currently scheduled for 5 May with opening statements set to be heard seven days later.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to five criminal counts including racketeering and sex trafficking.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan US attorney’s office accuse Combs of using his business empire to sexually abuse women between 2004 and 2024.
Combs’s lawyers say the sexual activity described by prosecutors was consensual.
In a court filing on Wednesday, Combs’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo asked Mr Subramanian to delay the trial because he needed more time to prepare his defence to two new charges which were brought on 4 April.
The charges were of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Mr Agnifilo also said his team needs extra time to review emails it wants an alleged victim to turn over.
The new allegations brought the total number of criminal charges against the rap mogul to five – following the three original counts, which also included racketeering conspiracy, filed in September.
Federal prosecutors were opposed to any delay, writing in a Thursday court filing that the additional charges brought
earlier this month did not amount to substantially new conduct.
They also said Combs was not entitled to the alleged victim’s communications.
Read more: Everything you need to know about the Sean Combs trial
A sketch of Combs during one of his court appearances. Pic: Reuters
Meanwhile, Mr Subramanian is weighing other evidentiary issues, such as whether to allow alleged victims to testify under pseudonyms.
Also known during his career as Puff Daddy and P Diddy, Combs founded Bad Boy Records and is credited with helping turn rappers and R&B singers such as Notorious B.I.G, Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans and Usher into stars in the 1990s and 2000s.
But prosecutors have said his success concealed a dark side.
They say his alleged abuse included having women take part in recorded sexual performances called “freak-offs” with male sex workers, who were sometimes transported across state lines.
Combs has been in jail in Brooklyn since September, having been denied bail.
He also faces dozens of civil lawsuits by women and men who have accused him of sexual abuse.
Combs has strenuously denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
Entertainment
Warfare’s Alex Garland: ‘Being anti-war is not the same as saying it should never happen’
Alex Garland says while it’s “the most obvious statement about life on this planet” that the world would be a better place without war, it “doesn’t mean it should never happen”, and there are “circumstances in which war is required”.
The Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director told Sky News: “I don’t think it is possible to make a statement about what war is really like without it being implicitly anti-war, inasmuch as it would be better if this thing did not happen.
“But that’s not the same as saying it should never happen. There are circumstances in which war is required.”
(L-R) Co-writers and co-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza. Pic: A24
His latest film, Warfare, embeds the audience within a platoon of American Navy SEALs on an Iraqi surveillance mission gone wrong, telling the story solely through the memories of war veterans from a real 2006 mission in Ramadi, Iraq.
Garland says the film is “anti-war in as much as it is better if war does not happen,” adding, “and that is about the most obvious statement about life on this planet that one could make.”
Comparing it to ongoing geopolitical conflict across the world, Garland goes on: “It would be better if Gaza had not been flattened. It would be better if Ukraine was not invaded. It would it better if all people’s problems could be solved via dialogue and not threat or violence…
“To be anti-war to me is a rational position, and most veterans I’ve met are anti-war.”
The screenwriter behind hits including Ex Machina, 28 Days Later and The Beach says this film is “an attempt to recreate something as faithfully and accurately as we could”.
The film opens to Swedish dance hit Call On Me. Pic: A24
‘War veterans feel invisible and forgotten’
Almost entirely based on first-person accounts, the 15-rated film opens with soldiers singing along to the video of Swedish dance hit Call On Me – complete with gyrating women in thong leotards.
It’s the only music in the film. The remaining score is made up of explosions, sniper fire and screams of pain.
Garland co-wrote and co-directed the film alongside Hollywood stuntman and gunfight coordinator Ray Mendoza, whom Garland met on his last film, Civil War.
Mendoza, a communications officer on the fateful mission portrayed in the film, says despite the traumatic content, the experience of making the film was “therapeutic”.
Mendoza told Sky News: “It actually mended a lot of relationships… There were some guys I hadn’t spoken to in a very long time. And this allowed us to bury the hatchet, so to speak, on some issues from that day.”
Turning to Hollywood after serving in the Navy for 16 years, Mendoza says past war film he’d seen – even the good ones – were “a little off” because they “don’t get the culture right”.
Mendoza admits: “You feel like no one cares because they didn’t get it right. You feel invisible. You feel forgotten.”
With screenings of Warfare shown to around 1,000 veterans ahead of general release, Mendoza says: “They finally feel heard. They finally feel like somebody got it right.”
As to whether it could be triggering for some veterans, Mendoza says decisively not: “It’s not triggering. I would say it’s the opposite, for a veteran at least.”
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D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai plays communications officer Ray. Pic: A24
‘I’m an actor – I love my hair’
A tense and raw 90-minute story told in real time, the film’s ensemble cast is made up of young buzzy actors, dubbed “all of the internet’s boyfriends” when the casting was first announced.
Mirroring the Navy SEALs they were portraying, the cast initially bonded through a three-week bootcamp ahead of filming, before living together for the 25-day shoot.
Black Mirror’s Will Poulter, who plays Eric, the officer in charge of the operation, says the film’s extended takes and 360-degree sets demanded a special kind of focus.
Poulter said: “It required everyone to practise something that is fundamental to Navy SEAL mentality – you’re a teammate before you’re an individual.
“When a camera’s roaming around like that and could capture anyone at kind of any moment, it requires that everyone to be ‘on’ at all times and for the sake of each other.
“It becomes less about making sure that you’re performing when the camera lands on you, but as much about this idea that you are performing for the sake of the actor opposite you when the camera’s on them.”
Another of the film’s stars, Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, plays Mendoza and is the heart of the film.
Woon-A-Tai says the cast drew on tactics used by real soldiers to help with the intense filming schedule: “Laughter is medicine… A lot of times these are long takes, long hours, back-to-back days, so uplifting our spirit was definitely a big part of it.”
He also joked that shaving each other’s heads in a bonding ritual the night before the first day of filming was a daunting task.
“As actors, we love our hair. I mean, I speak personally, I love my hair. You know, I had really long hair. So yeah, it definitely takes a lot of trust. And you know, it wasn’t even at all, but you know it was still fun to do.”
Warfare is in cinemas now.
Birmingham band UB40 say the city’s striking bin workers and their union should “keep fighting” in their dispute over pay.
It comes as the government and the council urged them to accept a “fair and reasonable offer”.
“We’re fully on their side,” drummer Jimmy Brown told Sky News. “I think they shouldn’t give up, they should still be fighting.
“Working people shouldn’t have to take a reduction in their incomes, which is what we’re talking about here.
“We’re talking about people being paid less and it seems to me with prices going up, heating, buying food, inflation and rents going up then people need a decent wage to have a half decent life… keep going boys!”
Members of the Unite union in Birmingham earlier this month. Pic: PA
Workers joined picket lines again on Thursday, with some fearing they could be up to £600 a month worse off if they accept the terms.
“We have total utter support for the bin men and all trade unions,” said guitarist Robin Campbell.
“The other side is always going to say they’ve made a reasonable offer – the point is they’re the ones who’ve messed up, they’re the ones who’ve gone bankrupt, they’re the ones now trying to reduce the bin men’s wages.”
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Lead singer Matt Doyle told Sky News: “It’s a shame that what we’re seeing is all the images of rats and rubbish building up, that is going to happen inevitably, but we’ve just got to keep fighting through that.”
About 22,000 tonnes of rubbish accumulated on the city’s streets after a major incident was declared last month by Birmingham City Council.
Rubbish has blighted the city’s streets for weeks . Pic: PA
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Bin situation ‘pains me’ – council boss
On a visit to the city, local government minister Jim McMahon said the union and local authority should continue to meet in “good faith” and the government felt there was a deal that could be “marshalled around”.
He paid tribute to the “hundreds of workers” who have worked “around the clock” to clear the rubbish.
Read more:
Bin workers urged to accept ‘fair’ offer
Military planners help with bin crisis
“As we stand here today, 85% of that accumulated waste has been cleared and the council have a plan in place now to make sure it doesn’t accumulate going forward,” said Mr McMahon.
Sky News understands talks are not set to resume until next week.
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