Trivia / Tony Bennett

• Career Resurrection: A remarkable example. By 1979 both his career and personal life were in the dumps, and he nearly died from a cocaine overdose. Afterwards, his son Danny took over as his manager and they worked out an unusual strategy. Rather than take the safe route of staying on the Vegas circuit, or the desperate route of trying to change with the times, Bennett would stick to the Great American Songbook, backed by a small Jazz combo, but he'd go out on the road, and take a lot of bookings at colleges, with the feeling that younger audiences who weren't familiar with him would respond well to his simplicity and sincerity, and give him Cool Old Guy status. And it worked perfectly, as he built a following, which culminated in an unlikely, but hugely well-received, MTV Unplugged appearance, followed by his popular Duets albums. Then in his final decade he managed yet another resurrection with, again, an unlikely, but hugely well-received, project, his collaboration with Lady Gaga.
• Chart Displacement: He had three #1 Billboard hits, but none of them were his universally recognized Signature Song "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", which only peaked at #19 (which was still impressive for a traditional pop ballad in 1962). Perhaps more surprisingly, it also didn't reach #1 on the Adult Contemporary^note called Easy Listening at the time chart, only reaching a more modest #7 peak.
• Referenced by...: In Turning Red, Mr. Gao mentions liking Tony Bennett implying that if he had his way the red moon ritual would be performed while singing a song by him since it only requires singing from the heart.