Tony Bennett Gives Final Bow at New York’s Radio City Music Hall


Bennett, who is battling Alzheimer's disease, also just released a soulful duet of "I get a kick out of you" with Lady Gaga.

By John Deike, Managing Editor, La Nostra Voce

Tony Bennett is famous for leaving his heart on the West Coast, but in reality the Italian American crooner is forever tied to Astoria, the western Queens neighborhood where he grew up.

“The finest place to live,” said Bennett in 2009, as he showed a New York Times reporter his favorite haunts. “I’ve been all over the world  — Paris and Florence and Capri  — and yet I come back here and I like this better than any place I’ve ever lived.”

Twelve years later and still a resident of NYC, Bennett, 95, joined by Lady Gaga, gave his final performance to a tearful audience at Radio City Music Hall in early August.

Watch the newly released video of the icon and pop star singing “I get a kick out of you” on YouTube.

This fall, Bennett and Lady Gaga (aka Stefani Germanotta) will release a new album, “Love for Sale,” a follow-up to their 2014 duet, “Cheek to Cheek.”

A new album and video should be cause for celebration, but the latest addition to Bennett’s catalog is bittersweet since it became public earlier this year that time had finally caught up with him in the form of Alzheimer’s disease.

70 years of memories

Beginning with the No. 1 hit “Because of You” in 1951, Bennett crooned through a decade of chart-topping singles, which led to the international best seller “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” in 1962.

Threatened with sinking into casino-act irrelevance over the next two decades, and at one point struggling with drug and alcohol problems, he sharpened his artistic focus, concentrating on American Songbook standards.

And aided by his son Danny, who became his manager in 1979, Bennett climbed back into pop culture stardom through the ’80s and reached a new demographic-defying pinnacle with a 1994 “MTV Unplugged” recording, according to a Times biography.

Bennett became a permanent fixture in the limelight, and has left a legacy that won’t be duplicated.

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