Black notebook. The music world is losing a big name. Crooner Tony Bennett has died, his agent Sylvia Weiner announced Friday, July 21, in a statement sent to The Associated Press. The American singer and musician, who had more than 70 albums to his name and 20 Grammy Awards, was turning 97 in two weeks. In 2016, doctors diagnosed him with Alzheimer’s disease.

A singer from another era, that of crooners like Frank Sinatra, he made a comeback in the 2010s, then distinguished himself by his duets with Lady Gaga, with whom he recorded two albums in 2014 and 2021.

“He passed away today at the age of 96 in his hometown of New York,” his agent Sylvia Weiner told AFP.

Born August 3, 1926 in Astoria, Queens, New York’s most cosmopolitan neighborhood, Anthony Benedetto, whose real name is, owes part of his unique longevity to his vocal technique.

Trained in bel canto, the one who called himself Joe Bari at the very beginning of his career will have kept his voice intact throughout his life, capable of pushing the decibels into the stadiums, at the age of 80.

Always impeccable costumes, cover, natural elegance, Tony Bennett embodied the song of the post-war period, without falling into old-fashionedness, and without ever, however, leaving its register. Few classics remain of him, unlike Frank Sinatra, another son of Italian immigrants from the New York area, to whom he has been much compared but whose success was far superior.

His biggest hits came early in his career, in the early 1950s, including ‘Because of You’, ‘Rags to Riches’ and ‘Cold Heart’, all number one hits, and weren’t followed by any proper hits.

But Tony Bennett, who adopted the Americanized stage name suggested to him by comedian Bob Hope, has retained a loyal audience, maintained through thousands of concerts and a stage presence recognized by all.

“In theater and live performance, you have to convince the audience that they couldn’t be better off anywhere else,” actor Alec Baldwin explained in the Clint Eastwood-produced documentary The Music Never Ends (2007). “And no one in show business does that better than Bennett. »

Little focused on effects, her voice seemed to go straight to the point, influenced by various musical genres, notably jazz. “As a viewer, [I think] Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business,” Frank Sinatra said. “He excites me when I see him, he moves me. His smile and energy projected the image of a warm, resolutely positive artist.

Despite a loyal audience, Tony Bennett will experience a crossing of the desert during the 1970s and 1980s, a bad patch marked by a cocaine addiction and an overdose, in 1979, from which he will survive. His son Danny will eventually intervene and offer him a second career by introducing him to a younger audience.

In 1994, he thus landed on the music channel MTV for Unplugged, this series of acoustic concerts rather reserved for young artists in vogue.

In 2006, he released the album Duets: An American Classic, a series of duets with great names in popular music, from Stevie Wonder to Bono, who accompanied him on covers.

The success is total, to the point that a second opus Duets II will be released in 2011, with, again, the gratin of the song, which will allow him to hang, for the first time, the peak of record sales in the United States, at 85 years old.

The album contains two duets with respectively Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse, which reveal the two young singers in a refined register that they obviously appreciate.

The collaborations will continue, with in particular an entire album with Lady Gaga, Cheek to Cheek, occasion of a new number one in the United States. “I like to try new things all the time,” the crooner told reporter Charlie Rose on PBS in 1993. For seven decades, he followed Frank Sinatra’s advice: “Never be predictable!” »