Legendary American singer Tony Bennett dies at 96

Tony Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" graced a decades-long career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, has died.

He died in his hometown of New York on Friday at age 96, just two weeks short of his birthday. Publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed his death

There was no specific cause, but Bennett had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2016.

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."

He released more than 70 albums, bringing him 19 competitive Grammys — all but two after he reached his 60s — and enjoyed deep and lasting affection from fans and fellow artists.

Bennett didn’t tell his own story when performing; he let the music speak instead — the Gershwins and Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern.

Bennett appealed with an easy, courtly manner and an uncommonly rich and durable voice — “A tenor who sings like a baritone,” he called himself — that made him a master of caressing a ballad or brightening an up-tempo number.

“I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,” he told The Associated Press in 2006. “I think people ... are touched if they hear something that’s sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humour. ... I just like to make people feel good when I perform.”

Bridging new generations

Bennett was praised often by his peers, but never more meaningfully than by what Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine interview:

“For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”

He not only survived the rise of rock music but 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 performer 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 such contemporary stars as Gaga, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse, in her last studio recording.

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

Preserving the 'Great American Songbook'

For Bennett, one of the few performers to move easily between pop and jazz, such collaborations were part of his crusade to expose 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.”

Ironically, his most famous contribution came through two unknowns, George Cory and Douglass Cross, who in the early ’60s provided Bennett with his signature song at a time his career was in a lull.

They gave Bennett’s musical director, pianist Ralph Sharon, some sheet music that he stuck in a dresser drawer and forgot about until he was packing for a tour that included a stop in San Francisco.

“Ralph saw some sheet music in his shirt drawer ... and on top of the pile 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 in the club in Little Rock, Arkansas, said, ‘If you record that song, I’m going to be the first to buy it.’”

Later Bennett would win Grammys for his tributes to female vocalists (“Here’s to the Ladies”), Billie Holiday (“Tony Bennett on Holiday”), and Duke Ellington (“Bennett Sings Ellington — Hot & Cool”).

He also won Grammys for his collaborations with other singers: “Playin’ With My Friends — Bennett Sings the Blues,” and his Louis Armstrong tribute, “A Wonderful World” with lang, the first full album he had ever recorded with another singer.

He celebrated his 80th birthday with “Duets: An American Classic,” featuring Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder among others.

“They’re all giants in the industry, and all of a sudden they’re saying to me ‘You’re the master,’” Bennett told the AP in 2006.