The Best of Tony Bennett: 15 Essential Musical Moments to Lose Your Heart To
variety.comA.D. Amorosi Tony Bennett was the last man standing – the saloon crooner, the jazz interpreter, the subtlest of stylists of the Great American Songbook, the man that Sinatra called the greatest popular singer in the world.“Your old man takes chances” is what Frank Sinatra told Danny Bennett, Tony’s son and manager. “When others zig, Tony zags,” said Danny.
Those risks involved the vocal dynamics of grandeur (no Tony Bennett concert was complete without him shutting down all amplification, singing a cappella without a mic, and rocking the room), of pensive emotional nuance, of a whisper’s near-silence.
With Bennett’s passing on Friday morning at age 96, after his struggle with Alzheimer’s since 2016 and retirement from the stage in 2021, his era of grace and elegance in vocal song is gone.
He left a rich, long body of work that will last forever. Choosing 150, let alone 15, of Tony Bennett’s finest musical moments is a tough call to make with early sweeping singles such as “Because of You” and jazzy signatures such as “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” So Variety has mixed the hits with the rarities in touching on his legendary career.“Cold Cold Heart” (1951)Country songwriter Hank Williams had only written and released his melancholy romancer a year before Tony Bennett made it into a smash pop hit.
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