page_title: Tony Bennett
section_title: 2006–present: Bennett continues to perform
hierarchical_section_title: Tony Bennett / Life and career / 2006–present: Bennett continues to perform
caption_attribution_description: Dwight McCann [1] CC-by-sa-2.5, Dwight McCann/Chumash Casino Resort/www.DwightMcCann.com Tony Bennett at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, California.
context_page_description: Anthony Dominick Benedetto, known professionally as Tony Bennett, is an American singer of traditional pop standards, big band, show tunes, and jazz. He is also a painter, having created works under his birth name that are on permanent public display in several institutions. He is the founder of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, New York.
  Born and raised in Astoria to an Italian-American family, Bennett began singing at an early age. He fought in the final stages of World War II as a U.S. Army infantryman in the European Theater. Afterward, he developed his singing technique, signed with Columbia Records and had his first number-one popular song with "Because of You" in 1951. Several top hits such as "Rags to Riches" followed in early 1953. He then refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached an artistic peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings, Bennett Sings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". His career and personal life experienced an extended downturn during the height of the rock music era.
context_section_description: In August 2006, Bennett turned eighty years old. The birthday itself was an occasion for publicity, which then extended through the rest of the following year. Duets: An American Classic reached the highest place ever on the albums chart for an album by Bennett and garnered two Grammy Awards; concerts were given, including a high-profile one for New York radio station WLTW-FM; a performance was done with Christina Aguilera and a comedy sketch was made with affectionate Bennett impressionist Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live; a Thanksgiving-time, Rob Marshall-directed television special Tony Bennett: An American Classic on NBC, which would win multiple Emmy Awards; receipt of the Billboard Century Award; and guest-mentoring on American Idol season 6 as well as performing during its finale. He received the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Humanitarian Award. Bennett was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award in 2006, the highest honor that the United States bestows upon jazz musicians.
  In 2008 Bennett made two appearances on "New York State of Mind" with Billy Joel at the final concerts given at Shea Stadium, and in October releasing the album A Swingin' Christmas with The Count Basie Big Band, for which he made a number of promotional appearances at holiday time. In 2009, Bennett performed at the conclusion of the final Macworld Conference & Expo for Apple Inc., singing "The Best Is Yet to Come" and "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" to a standing ovation, and later making his Jazz Fest debut in New Orleans. In February 2010, Bennett was one of over 70 artists singing on "We Are the World 25 for Haiti", a charity single in aid of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. In October he performed "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" at AT&T Park before the third inning of Game 1 of the 2010 World Series and sang "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch. Days later he sang "America the Beautiful" at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C.
  In September 2011, Bennett appeared on The Howard Stern Show and named American military actions in the Middle East as the root cause of the September 11 attacks. Bennett also claimed that former President George W. Bush personally told him at the Kennedy Center in December 2005 that he felt he had made a mistake invading Iraq, to which a Bush spokesperson replied, "This account is flatly wrong." Following bad press resulting from his remarks, Bennett clarified his position, writing: "There is simply no excuse for terrorism and the murder of the nearly 3,000 innocent victims of the 9/11 attacks on our country. My life experiences, ranging from the Battle of the Bulge to marching with Martin Luther King, made me a life-long humanist and pacifist, and reinforced my belief that violence begets violence and that war is the lowest form of human behavior."
  In September 2011, Bennett released Duets II, a follow-up to his first collaboration album, in conjunction with his 85th birthday. He sings duets with seventeen prominent singers of varying techniques, including Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Queen Latifah, and Lady Gaga. Bennett appeared on the season 2 premiere of the television procedural Blue Bloods performing "It Had To Be You" with Carrie Underwood. His duet with Amy Winehouse on "Body and Soul"—reportedly the last recording she made before her death—charted on the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100, making Bennett the oldest living artist to appear there, as well as the artist with the greatest span of appearances. The single did well in Europe, where it reached the top 15 in several countries. The album then debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, making Bennett the oldest living artist to reach that top spot, as well as marking the first time he had reached it himself. A model of Koss headphones, the Tony Bennett Signature Edition (TBSE1), was created for this milestone (Bennett having been one of the early adopters of the Koss product back in the 1960s). In November 2011, Columbia released Tony Bennett – The Complete Col
caption: Bennett in concert in Santa Ynez, California, 2005
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:04:09 14:29:37", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "2986", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "650", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "999"}