Tony Bennett, Jazzy Crooner of the American Songbook, Dies at 96

He recorded albums honoring musicians such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday. On the 2006 album « Duets: An American Classic, » he performed « If I Ruled the World » with Ms. Dion, « Smile » with Barbra Streisand and « For Once in My Life » with Stevie Wonder, and revisited his first Columbia single, « Boulevard of Broken Dreams » with Sting. Five years later, on « Duets II, » Aretha Franklin, Queen Latifah, Willie Nelson and Mrs. Winehouse were his collaborators.

As the century turned, he toured again, giving 200 shows a year and making numerous recordings.

In 2007, Mr. Bennett married a third time in the late 1980s to his longtime partner, Susan Crowe, a teacher four decades his junior. Together they started a foundation to support arts education in schools and funded the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a public high school in Queens.

Mr. Bennett lived in the same Manhattan apartment where he died, except for a few years in Los Angeles and London. He is survived by his wife; his sons, Danny and Day; his daughters, Johanna and Antonia Bennett; and 9 grandchildren.

As David Ivanier suggested in his illuminating 2011 biography, « All Things You Are: The Life of Tony Bennett, » Mr. If there is one magical quality to Bennett’s life, it is the 1974 story of Mr. Connected by a story told by Bennett.

« I love the fun things that only happen to me right now in life, » she said. “One time, I was at the Hollywood Bowl singing Kurt Weill’s ‘Lost in the Stars’ with Bassey’s band and Buddy Rich on drums, and a shooting star fell in the sky over my head, and everyone was talking about it, and the next morning the phone rang and I called from New York. He said, ‘Hey, Tony, how did you do it, man?’ and disconnected.