Tony Bennett dead at 96 in his hometown of New York: ‘Good Italian stock’

nypost.com:

confirmed Bennett’s death, revealing he passed away in his hometown of New York. His cause of death — just two weeks shy of his 97th birthday — has not yet been announced.“I come from good Italian stock — but I’ve tried to stay fit through the years,” Bennett told me nearly 20 years ago.At the time he was a spry 72, meeting and greeting concertgoers with swagger before a benefit performance in the blazing hot Sonoran Desert of Tucson, Ariz.For two decades beyond that, the 20-time Grammy winner kept swinging as smoothly as ever — making history as one of the only artists to chart new albums in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and the first three decades of the 21st century.Anthony Dominick Bennedetto was born into a poor family of Italian immigrants living in Astoria, Queens, on Aug.

3, 1926. His father Giovanni, a grocer, died 10 years later, forcing his seamstress mother Anna Maria to find new ways to win bread amid the Great Depression.It wasn’t long before little Tony was cashing in with his vocal chords, performing at the opening of the Triborough Bridge in 1936.

The legendary baritone belter was a tender tenor way back then, and reportedly received pats on the head from Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.While attending the High School of Industrial Arts, the teen realized he wanted to be a professional singer — but also started training for his other lifelong artistic passion: Painting. (Decades later, his one-time hobby became a very classy — and lucrative — side hustle.)He took a career hiatus to serve in World War II.