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When his wife, Susan Benedetto, revealed in February 2021 that he’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 2016, few people thought they’d ever see him perform on stage again. With his advanced age, 96, and declining health, Lady Gaga knew Tony Bennett’s death was looming, which is why she considered it such “a gift” to escort him off stage for the last time ever.
Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in August 1926, he forged a legendary career in music spanning seven decades and is widely considered a champion of the American songbook, dedicated to preserving compositions penned by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein, among others. “I wanted to sing the great songs, songs that I felt really mattered to people,” he said in The Good Life (1998), an autobiography written by Will Friedwald. Frank Sinatra, whom Bennett counted as a mentor and friend, told Life magazine in 1965: “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business,” he said. “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.”