The Year of Tony Bennett

Johnny was born in Savannah, Georgia, to a prominent Georgia family that included Revolutionary War heroes and a Confederate general. His parents noticed that he loved music at an early age and took him to see minstrel shows and vaudeville troupes. But growing up in Savannah in the early twentieth century, Johnny heard the music that nourished jazz and the blues in the cries of street vendors and fishermen, singing in southern dialect. He was enthralled.

At the age of nineteen, he moved to New York. He did odd jobs by day and wrote and played music at night.

Tony Bennett