Legendary jazz vocalist who lived in silence with Alzheimer's disease for 7 years: Who is Tony Bennett?

Tony Bennett was more than just a legendary jazz vocalist. He was also an enraged soldier who witnessed the indescribable horrors of fighting in World War II and was sharpened against racism. As his career skyrocketed and he became the voice of his generation, he never lost sight of what he truly cared about advocating for equal rights for all people.

Bennett, who died at the age of 96, was drafted into the American Army in 1944 when he was just 18 years old. The following year, he was among those who went to Europe with the 63rd Infantry Division, where he replaced the soldiers who died on the front lines at the Battle of the Bulge (considered one of the biggest battles on the European front since the Normandy landings). In his 1988 autobiography "The Good Life" he wrote in detail about his experiences in those years.

Anthony Dominick Benedetto (August 3, 1926 – July 21, 2023), known professionally as Tony Bennett, was an American jazz and traditional pop singer. He received many accolades, including 20 Grammy Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Bennett was named an NEA Jazz Master and a Kennedy Center Honoree and founded the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, New York. He sold more than 50 million records worldwide and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

His division fought across Germany, and Tony Bennett was among the soldiers who liberated Kaufering Concentration Camp, the largest subcamp of the Dachau complex. Days later, the war in Europe ended with the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, and Bennett was sent to Mannheim as a soldier for the Allied occupation force in post-war Germany.

There, he first picked up the microphone and entertained the soldiers, and he began singing with the 314th Army Special Services Band. At Thanksgiving, he ran into an old friend named Frank Smith, whom he had known in high school and who played in a quartet. They were excited to see each other, so they attended a church service, and Bennett invited Smith to dinner. However, it was not long before they encountered an officer (probably the military police) who scolded them.

According to the Washington Post, the 20-time Grammy winner wrote in his book, "The officer took a razor out of his pocket and immediately cut my corporal rank from my uniform." "He spat on them and threw them to the ground saying, 'Get out of here!' yell."

He was later recruited from the Special Forces and assigned to the Graves Register, where he worked to reburial the bodies of American soldiers killed in the war. After a while, an army officer who realized the situation made Bennett sing again in Europe.

By the 1950s, Bennett had left the military to look for ways to build a career. He was outraged when he witnessed that famous African American musicians such as Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington were not allowed to enter concert halls, restaurants, and hotels through the front door.

"I was never politically inclined, but these things went beyond politics," wrote Bennett in his autobiography, according to NBC. "Nate and Duke were geniuses, these brilliant people who produced some of the most beautiful music the world has ever heard, but they were still treated like second-class citizens. It angered me," he said.

This is what prompted Bennett, a tireless civil rights activist, to accept Harry Belafonte's offer to join the Reverend Martin Luther King's 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

“I had a strange feeling of deja vu when the walk started,” Bennett wrote. “I kept going back to twenty years ago when my friends and I were fighting towards Germany,” he said.

“He felt the same way in Selma: the white state soldiers were really the enemy and they didn't hesitate to show it,” Bennett wrote. "There were threats of violence along the march route from Montgomery to Selma, some of which were broadcast on the nightly news and were instrumental in bringing awareness to the ugliness that still persists in the south of the country," he said.

Although he didn't walk the entire 132 miles, he went to Montgomery to greet King and sing for the marchers with Ella Fitzgerald, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Sammy Davis Jr, Mahalia Jackson, and others.

"I was extremely proud to have been involved in such a historic event," wrote Bennett in his autobiography, "but it was necessary and I was very upset that anyone should suffer because of their skin color."

Bennett continued to support African Americans in the music industry and worked for equality. He also received the World Citizen Award and Humanitarian Aid Award from the United Nations for his struggle for civil rights.