Biography of Tony Bennett

One of the great pop singers of his generation, Tony Bennett reached stardom with a series of hits starting with "Because of You," a ten-week # 1 in 1951. Other chart-toppers were "Cold, Cold Heart" (1951) and "Rags to Riches" (1953). Bennett scored fewer hits in the second half of the '50s as popular music turned toward the rock & roll style of Elvis Presley, but he became more interested in jazz, recording albums with Count Basie and other jazz musicians. He scored a major popular comeback with "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" in 1962, a tune that won him a Grammy and became his signature song. Through the rest of the '60s, Bennett's albums were top-sellers, and he put his mark on a series of excellent songs from old standards to new movie themes.In the '70s, Bennett made a couple of outstanding albums with jazz pianist Bill Evans, but he then stayed out of the recording studio for many years, preferring to avoid commercial pressures while performing for fans all over the world. He made a triumphant return to recording in 1986 with The Art of Excellence and was the subject of a four-CD boxed-set retrospective of his career, Forty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett in 1991.Bennett's career accelerated amazingly as the '90s went on. In 1992, he released Perfectly Frank, featuring his versions of songs associated with Frank Sinatra, and he followed it with Steppin' Out, a tribute to Fred Astaire, in 1993. With that, he was embraced by a young generation and found himself on MTV, where he performed an episode of the network's Unplugged series, including duets with Elvis Costello and k.d. lang, released as an album in 1994, by which time he seemed to be as hot as ever. With his ease of manner and warm vocal tone, Bennett has always been a singer's singer, garnering high praise from such peers as Frank Sinatra as well as from critics and fans, and he shows every sign of continuing to please them for many more years. ~ William Ruhlmann