From Lady Gaga to Amy Winehouse and Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett Was the King of Duets

Who didn’t Tony Bennett duet with?

The legendary singer was famously known for his Grammy-winning, platinum-selling Duet albums that featured everyone from Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse to Aretha Franklin and Barbra Streisand.

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Here, we celebrate the collaborative efforts of Bennett, who died Friday at age 96.

Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga ditched the upbeat, electronic dance sound that made her popular to work with Bennett on jazz music, a genre she had been singing since she was a teenager. The New Yorkers first collaborated on “The Lady Is a Tramp” from Bennett’s 2011 release Duets II. The pairing was so perfect they went on to record 2014’s Cheek to Cheek, with Bennett and Gaga hoping to turn more kids to jazz music. “[Gaga] has a vast group of young people who love her, and they’ve never heard popular jazz music, classical American music … and my ambition was to do this album so they would get acquainted with that music,” Bennett told The Associated Press.

Gaga said jazz was truer to her nature than pop music. “So much of what I’ve done has been heavily Auto-Tuned or made very electronic to fit on the radio, but this is so much easier because I’m a rebel and this is really rebellious for me to say goodbye to pop for a moment and just sing some pure jazz.” Gaga and Bennett recorded a second album, 2021’s Love for Sale, which became Bennett’s final album. The project was a whopping success, earning five Grammy nominations including bids for album and record of the year.

Amy Winehouse

Months before she died, Winehouse recorded her final song: the 1930 jazz standard “Body & Soul” with Bennett. They filmed the recording; an intimate, beautiful clip of the talented performers singing tightly with passion. The song appeared on Duets II and Winehouse’s posthumous album Lioness: Hidden Treasures, and the collaboration won best pop duo/group performance at the 2012 Grammys, where Winehouse’s parents accepted the honor onstage alongside Bennett during the show’s pre-telecast. “We shouldn’t be here. Our darling daughter should be here,” Winehouse’s father, Mitch, said after he and the singer’s mother, Janis, embraced Bennett.

The A-List: Part 1

To celebrate his 80th birthday, Bennett invited A-list performers to the studio to record with him. Backed by a live band, Bennett traded vocals with Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Bono, Celine Dion, George Michael, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Sting, Elvis Costello and Diana Krall for 2006’s Duets: An American Classic.

The album was an immediate success, debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard charts and achieving gold status in a month. It won the best traditional pop vocal album Grammy while Bennett’s recording with Wonder, “For Once In My Life,” won best pop collaboration with vocals. But the album didn’t only include classic singers, Bennett also sang with John Legend, Michael Bublé, The Chicks, Tim McGraw, Juanes and k.d. lang.

The A-List: Part 2

If you thought Bennett brought together the best musicians in the word for his 80th birthday — just look at how he celebrated his 85th. The icon released Duets II in 2011 and he followed up his starry 2006 effort with songs featuring Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Natalie Cole, Mariah Carey, Andrea Bocelli, Queen Latifah, Norah Jones, Sheryl Crow, Faith Hill, John Mayer, Josh Groban, Alejandro Sanz, Winehouse and Gaga. Duets II won Bennett two Grammys.

Love for Latin

Singing in English, Spanish and Portuguese, Bennett’s Viva Duets featured collaborations with Latin artists including Gloria Estefan, Juan Luis Guerra, Marc Anthony, Christina Aguilera and Romeo Santos. Bennett even traveled to Vicente Fernández’s ranch in Mexico to record “Return to Me (Regresa a Mí)” with the iconic singer. Viva Duets, released in 2012, also included songs with Thalía, Chayanne, Dani Martín, Franco De Vita, Vicentico and Ricardo Arjona. Bennett said he wanted to record with Latin artists because they sing from the heart. “That doesn’t go away. That makes the record never sound old-fashioned. There’s some gimmick that’s popular for 10 weeks and then forgotten. … [but here] there was so much feeling in their performances that it will always sound good,” he told The Associated Press. “Twenty years from now the same record will sound good because it has the feeling. They all sing with so much feeling and the public responds with so much feeling.”

New York, New York

To commemorate the closing of Shea Stadium in New York in 2008, Bennett joined Billy Joel to sing “New York State of Mind,” which they also recorded for Bennett’s 2001 album Playin’ with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues. The New Yorkers also performed the classic track at the 2002 Grammys, where the duet was nominated for best pop collaboration with vocals (they lost to Christina Aguilera, Lil Kim, Mya and Pink’s “Lady Marmalade”).

Playin’ with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues also included duets with Ray Charles, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Sheryl Crow, Diana Krall, k.d. lang and Kay Starr.

More Collabs

Bennett’s career collaborative efforts also include 1961’s Tony Sings for Two with pianist Ralph Sharon; two albums with pianist Bill Evans — 1975’s The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album and 1977’s Together Again; 2002’s A Wonderful World with k.d. lang; and 2015’s The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern with pianist Bill Charlap.

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