Tony Bennett – I Left My Heart In San Francisco

Tony Bennett “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” on The Ed Sullivan Show, November 22, 1964.

“I Left My Heart in San Francisco” is a popular song, written in the fall of 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. This song was written by two then-unknown songwriters, George C. Cory, Jr. and Douglass Cross. Cory wrote the music and Cross wrote the lyrics. They pitched the song to Bennett’s pianist and musical director, Ralph Sharon, who was looking for new material for Bennett to sing at the Fairmont Hotel. “We dug down to the bottom of our trunk and gave it to him,” said Cross.

Bennett performed it for the first time in 1962 at the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco, and it quickly became his signature song.

In 1962, the song was released as a single by Bennett on Columbia Records as the b-side to “Once Upon a Time”, peaked at #19 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and was also included on the album I Left My Heart in San Francisco. It also reached number seven on the Easy Listening chart. The song is one of the official anthems for the city of San Francisco. In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or artistically significant”.

In 2001, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was ranked 23rd on an RIAA/NEA list of the most historically significant Songs of the 20th Century.

The son of a grocer and Italian-born immigrant, Tony Bennett was born as Anthony Dominick Benedetto on August 3, 1926, in the Astoria section of Queens. His boyhood idols included Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole. Bennett reportedly sang to customers while waiting tables as a teenager. In a 1965 Life magazine interview, Frank Sinatra said of Bennett: “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when Iwatch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”

According to Tony Bennett’s autobiography Just Getting Started, the song was originally given to the singer’s pianist Ralph Sharon in 1954 but the music manuscript got mislaid, only to be rediscovered in 1961 at the bottom of a shirt drawer.

Fittingly, this is the last song Tony Bennett sang in concert. He used it to close out his show with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall on August 5, 2021, which he later said would be his last performance. Bennett, 95 years old at the time, revealed in 2016 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Tony Bennett died July 21, 2023, in New York City.

“I Left My Heart in San Francisco” – Single by Tony Bennett from the album I Left My Heart in San Francisco
A-side “Once Upon a Time”
Released February 2, 1962
Recorded January 23, 1962
Composer George Cory
Lyricist Douglass Cross