Tony Bennett was the last of the great crooners

Tony Bennett was the last of the crooners. The great jazz singer has died, aged 96, after several years of struggling with Alzheimers. He sang with Frank Sinatra, who called him “the best in the business” and he was still singing into his mid-nineties, duetting with Lady Gaga who called him “one of my favourite people on the planet.” From the heady days of swing to the banging clatter of electropop, Bennett saw it all, and just kept on doing what he was doing as if nothing could ever touch him but the songs themselves.

A jazz man to his core who never deigned to move with the times, Bennett had a beautiful tone and impeccable timing, devoted to a “bel canto” practise that kept his voice supple across the decades, seemingly holding him outside of time and fashion. As all the original crooners fell away and rock and pop got louder, sexier, stranger and more sonically challenging, it was left to Bennett to keep the torch burning for this gloriously sophisticated, understatedly emotional style of music that was as essential to the sound of the 21st century as rock’n’roll. 

“Bel canto means beautiful voice, a beautiful sound,” he once told me. “So you try and think of beauty when you sing. It’s very wholesome, you think in terms of feeling and pouring your soul into the music.’ Tony Bennet sang from his soul for over 70 years. He was one of the all-time greats, no question.

I was privileged to spend a bit of time with Bennett, interviewing him on a couple of very memorable occasions. He was a complete gentleman, stylishly turned out (suit and tie, always) with perfect manners and a sweet, considerate disposition. A talented artist (some of whose oil paintings hang in leading museums, including the Smithsonian), he would sit and sketch patiently during down time, absorbed in his own quiet world. “I sing and I paint every day,” he once told me. “It’s a matter of keep learning, keep growing, keep studying.”

I was there when he sang with Amy Winehouse in Abbey Road, her last recording session in March 2011, before she died in June, just three months later. She was nervous and almost tearful in the studio, utterly in awe of this musical legend, whilst he was charming and gentle, drawing her out slowly, holding the central melody lines and encouraging her to sing around him. “It’s just like we’re talking to each other. You’re feeling it real good. I like it,” he told her, teasing a performance out until they were weaving melodies and harmonies that intertwined like smoke. It was one of the greatest things I have ever seen.