Inside Tony Bennett's ties to San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO - Singer Tony Bennett, who passed at the age of 96 Friday, was an icon around the world, but the entertainer had a special connection to the Bay Area.
"Tony Bennett first sang 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco' on this stage...December 1961, and then later recorded the song in New York," said music critic Joel Selvin.
KPIX met with music critic Joel Selvin at the Venetian Room at the Fairmont hotel to get an inside look at Bennett's signature song.
"Originally, it was the B side of a single, and it ended up not just being the biggest hit of Tony Bennett's career, but it resurrected him as a pop vocalist and elevated him out of that whole crowd of all the other pop singers," Selvin said.
Throughout his career, Tony Bennett garnered 20 Grammy Awards, collaborating with popular artists decades his junior.
"You can't think of anyone that's more New York than Tony Bennett...San Francisco just happened to him. It was the culmination of his character, that song, and the city itself," explained Selvin.
In 2016, during his 90th birthday celebration, the City unveiled a statue of him in front of the Fairmont Hotel, right where everything started back in 1961.
"Pretty much this remote edge of the country. There wasn't jet travel...it was this Shangri-la on the west coast, and that song, somehow, captured something in the public imagination that forever sealed the deal...Tony Bennett, I left my heart in San Francisco," added Selvin.