he song of the day for Monday, June 4, 2018 is “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

About This Song

“I Left My Heart Francisco” was written in 1953 by George Cory and Douglass Cross. We’ve told the story of Ralph Sharon pulling this song out of a drawer as they were preparing to travel to the West Coast–they thought it would be a nice song for the “locals” and so it was sung for the first time in 1961 in the Venetian Room at The Fairmont Hotel on and the rest, as they say, is history. Bennett has been singing it every day since.

About This Version

Other than live performances at concerts, Tony Bennett had not recorded “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” since 1961. That changed in 2006 when Bennett and producer Phil Ramone decided to record a new version for the album Duets: An American Classic. Bennett chose pianist Bill Charlap and the result was this lovely recording. So, in honor the ceremony in San Francisco naming a portion of Mason Street as Tony Bennett Way, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

“I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” as well as Duets: An American Classic, is available from iTunes.

NPR did a great story about recording this song: