New York, 21 July 2023 (dpa/tca/MIA) - Singer , the velvet-voiced son of Astoria whose enduring appeal earned him 18 Grammys and fans from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, has died at 96.

 

Born in Long Island City, Queens on August 3, 1926, the chart-topping Bennett's remarkable longevity covered seven decades, stretching from the administration of President Harry S. Truman through the White House of Donald Trump.

 

Bennett's singular vocal stylings earned him a reputation as a singer's singer, and he became revered by fellow performers as disparate as Barbra Streisand and Bono.

 

His old pal Sinatra declared him the heavyweight champion of crooning: "For my money Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business."

 

The Queens-born Bennett earned his first of his Grammys in 1962, winning three awards for his signature West Coast torch song "I Left My Heart in San Francisco "

 

"Fifty-three years later, Bennett captured his 18th and last Grammy for "The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern" to end a remarkable run of musical relevancy.

 

Bennett scored his first hit single with "Because of You" in 1951 - and never stopped recording or performing in a career that peaked, collapsed and peaked once more.

 

Forty years after his debut smash, Bennett appeared on "MTV Unplugged." Two decades later, he teamed with Lady Gaga for the album "Cheek to Cheek."

 

Bennett was also an acclaimed artist, working under his given name of Anthony Benedetto on paintings featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian.

 

His earliest musical gigs found him billed as "Joe Bari" before Bob Hope - an early fan, along with Pearl Bailey - hired the young singer and advised him to perform as Tony Bennett.

 

It was 1949, and "I've been on the road ever since," Bennett once said.

 

Anthony Dominick Benedetto, raised in Astoria by Italian immigrants, grew up during hard times. His father was a local grocer who died when Bennett was just age 10, leaving his mother alone to raise three kids. Anna Benedetto worked as a seamstress, collecting a penny per dress.

 

Her son dropped out of the High School of Industrial Arts to help with the family finances, taking work as a singing waiter while his widowed mom raised the family alone. Bennett came home after serving as an Army infantryman during World War II and launched his singing career under the "Bari" nom de tune - the surname lifted from a city in Italy.

 

His career took off with the success of "Because of You," followed up by now-familiar hits like "I Wanna Be Around," "The Good Life" and "The Shadow of Your Smile."

 

His chart-topping single "Rags to Riches" resurfaced decades later as the opening of Martin Scorsese's classic 1990 mob movie "Goodfellas."

 

By the 1970s, with rock and roll dominating the charts, Bennett found himself at odds with his record company - where the brass suggested a move into 'contemporary" music for the singer of jazz and standards.

 

Bennett was no fan of rock music, once dismissing the Rolling Stones with a charge that their music promoted "juvenile delinquency."

 

Bennett split from his label, Columbia Records, in 1972. His artistic issues came with personal problems as Bennett started popping pills, smoking pot and snorting cocaine.

 

"I was in a completely self-destructive tailspin," he confessed years later. Bennett's mom died in 1977, and he found himself more than $1 million in debt.

 

His wife actually saved Bennett's life when he overdosed and passed out in the bathtub.

 

But it was his son Danny who came to the rescue, taking over as Bennett's manager in 1979.

 

Danny helped settle his dad's back taxes and reoriented Bennett's career. He was re-signed by Columbia Records in 1986, a major break.

 

The seminal event in the comeback was a 1994 concert on "MTV Unplugged," typically a bastion for the likes of Kurt Cobain and Eric Clapton.

 

Bennett was indicted into the Grammy Hall of Fame that same year. In 2001, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys.

 

Bennett continued painting every day into his 90s, and three of his works are in the Smithsonian's permanent collection.

 

He was married three times, with the first two - to Patricia Bennett, mother of sons Danny and Dae, and to actress Sandy, mother of daughters Joanna and Antonia - ending in divorce.

 

He married longtime girlfriend Susan Crow in 2007 after 20 years together.

 

Bennett, in a 2008 interview, maintained his late-in-the-game renaissance came as no surprise to him.

 

"Good music is good music," he explained. "The late Duke Ellington once said to me that he was really offended by the word 'category.' Music has no category. It's either good or it isn't."

 

Photo: EPA archive