Tony Bennett dead at 96: Legendary crooner best known for ‘Rags to Riches’ and his performances with Frank Sinatra and Lady Gaga, sold millions of records around the world

Iconic crooner Tony Bennett has passed away at the age of 96 – just two weeks shy of his 97th birthday.

The eminent musician, who was born in 1926 in Long Island City, Queens and enjoyed a decades-long career collaborating with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, passed away Friday in his hometown of New York, his publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed.

No cause of death was given, but Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, a condition he privately battled for five years before revealing it to the world in 2021.

It was revealed at the time that in 2018 Bennett began showing symptoms of mental decline, struggling with memory – though he continued to sing with perfect pitch and dynamics.

Indeed, Bennett continued to perform for years after being diagnosed – even releasing a new album in September 2021 with his close friend and collaborator Lady Gaga.

In April, Bennett was seen in New York City in a wheelchair in what is believed to be one of his last public appearances before his passing.

Bennett (seen in 1952) started singing when he was just a young boy – and signed his first recording contract in the early 1950s after serving in the US Army during World War II

The crooner was photographed in April driving around in a wheelchair in New York City – one of his last public appearances

The last of the great saloon singers of the mid-20th century, Bennett often said his lifelong ambition was to “create a hit catalog rather than hit records.”

In his lifetime, he released more than 70 albums and earned 19 Grammys — all but two after turning 60 — and enjoyed the adoration of millions of fans around the world.

Bennett did not tell his own story during the performance; instead he let the music do the talking – the Gershwins and Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern.

Unlike his friend and mentor Sinatra, he interpreted a song rather than embodying it.

If his singing and public life lacked Sinatra’s high drama, Bennett appealed with an easy, courtly manner and an unusually rich and enduring voice.

“A tenor who sings like a baritone,” he called himself, a skill that made him a master at caressing a ballad or brightening up an uptempo song.

“I enjoy entertaining the public, making them forget their problems,” he told The Associated Press in 2006. “I think people… are touched when they hear something that is sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humor…

“I just like making people feel good when I perform.”

Bennett was often praised by his peers, but never more meaningfully than what Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine interview: “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He turns me on when I look at him. He moves me.

“He’s the singer who conveys what the composer has in mind, and probably a little bit more.”

During his career, Bennett has worked with numerous famous faces, from Rosemary Clooney (left) to Liza Minelli (right).

Perhaps his most famous collaboration was with his close friend Lady Gaga, whom he has collaborated with several times, and the pair released an album together in September 2021.

Not only did he survive the rise of rock music, but he endured so long and so well that he gained new fans and collaborators, some young enough to be his grandchildren.

In 2014, at age 88, Bennett broke his own record as the oldest living artist with a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for “Cheek to Cheek,” his duet project with Lady Gaga.

Three years earlier, he topped the charts with “Duets II,” featuring contemporary stars such as Gaga, Carrie Underwood, and Amy Winehouse, in her final studio recording.

His bond with Winehouse was documented in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Amy,” in which Bennett patiently encouraged the insecure young singer through a performance of “Body and Soul.”

His latest album, the 2021 release “Love for Sale,” featured duets with Lady Gaga on the title track, “Night and Day,” and other Porter songs.

For Bennett, one of the few artists who could switch between pop and jazz with ease, such collaborations were part of his crusade to introduce new audiences to what he called the Great American Songbook.

“No country has given the world such great music,” Bennett said in a 2015 interview with Downbeat Magazine. ‘Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern. Those songs will never die out.’

Ironically, his most famous contribution came from two unknowns, George Cory and Douglass Cross, who provided Bennett with his signature song in the early ’60s at a time when his career was in a slump. They gave Bennett’s music director, pianist Ralph Sharon, some sheet music which he put in a dresser drawer and forgot about until he was packing for a tour that had a layover in San Francisco.

“Ralph saw some sheet music in his shirt drawer… and on top of the stack was a song called I Left My Heart In San Francisco. Ralph thought it would be good material for San Francisco,” Bennett said.

“We were rehearsing and the bartender at the club in Little Rock, Arkansas, said, ‘If you record that song, I’ll be the first to buy it.'”

Released in 1962 as the B-side of the single “Once Upon a Time,” the reflective ballad became a grassroots phenomenon that remained on the charts for more than two years and earned Bennett his first two Grammys, including Record of the Year.

In his early forties, he seemed out of fashion. But after turning 60, an age when even the most popular performers settle for pleasing their older fans, Bennett and his son and manager, Danny, found creative ways to market the singer to the MTV generation.

He made cameo appearances on ‘Late Night with David Letterman’ and became a famous guest performer on ‘The Simpsons’. Wearing a black T-shirt and sunglasses as the host of the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards, his own video of “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” from his Grammy-winning Fred Astaire tribute album landed on MTV’s snazzy “Buzz Bin.”