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he passed away in July.
“His last words to me (were), ‘Thank you,’” Danny Bennett told “Today” show co-anchor Hoda Kotb on Aug. 3.
“Can’t say it better than that.”
Danny — who is the son of the “Rags to Riches” singer and his ex-wife Patricia Beech — sat down with Tony’s widow, Susan Benedetto, and reflected on Tony’s decision to keep singing despite his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
“But Tony’s like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You know, I wanna keep singing,’” Benedetto, recalled.
Danny added, “We’d take him to the doctor and he’d go, ‘What am I– why am I here?’
“We would leave,” added Benedetto. “And Tony’s like, ‘Susan. I’m really okay. We don’t have to come back.’”
Benedetto shared that her late husband sang until the very end, and revealed the final song he performed for her was his very first hit, “Because of You.”
“The music never left him,” said Benedetto.
“That he loved me … he would wake up every day and still say that,” she said. “He woke up happy every day.”
The “New York State of Mind” singer died on July 21. He was 96.
“Tony left us today but he was still singing the other day at his piano and his last song was, ‘Because of You,’ his first #1 hit,” an Instagram post on his account announced.
“Tony, because of you we have your songs in our heart forever. ❤”
The “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” singer — who always said he wanted to be remembered as “a nice person” — was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016.
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“There’s a lot about him that I miss,” his Susan told AARP Magazine in 2021 while sharing the health news for the first time publicly.
“Because he’s not the old Tony anymore … but when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”
His late-in-life collaborator, Lady Gaga, paid tribute to Tony about 10 days after his death, writing that she would miss her friend “forever.”
“With Tony, I got to live my life in a time warp. Tony & I had this magical power. We transported ourselves to another era, modernized the music together, & gave it all new life as a singing duo. But it wasnt an act. Our relationship was very real,” she shared.
“Sure he taught me about music, about showbiz life, but he also showed me how to keep my spirits high and my head screwed on straight. ‘Straight ahead,’ he’d say.”
Gaga, 37, shared that she’d been grieving Tony “for a long time” as he had begun to decline shortly after his diagnosis.
“We had a very long and powerful goodbye,” she wrote. “Though there were 5 decades between us, he was my friend. My real true friend. Our age difference didn’t matter– in fact, it gave us each something neither of us had with most people.
“We were from two different stages in life entirely–inspired.”
