Member-only story
I Left My Heart In San Francisco — Tony Bennett
With this week’s news that Tony Bennett is retiring from live performances, it seemed appropriate to write about his signature song.
Tony Bennett is the last remaining great singer of another era — Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole are all long gone to that great recording studio in the sky. But Tony has kept on going, keeping the flame burning for some of the greatest songs ever written.
In recent years, he’s shone in his duets with Lady Gaga…perhaps one of music’s unlikeliest pairings but they both bring out the best in one another. Their performances of “The Lady Is A Tramp” and “Anything Goes” are among my very favourite renditions of two of my very favourite songs.
While those songs were both written by some of the greatest songwriters who ever lived (Richard Rodgers with lyrics by the incomparable Lorenz Hart, and Cole Porter respectively), the writers of “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” are not nearly as well known.
George Cory and Douglass Cross were San Francisco expats in New York during the early 1950s when they wrote the song that would become “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”. The song was about about them missing life on the West Coast and it picked up a little bit of traction without ever making it to the big time.