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At 95, Tony Bennett, with help from Lady Gaga and Cole Porter, earns 5 Grammy nominations

An elderly male singer and a blonde female singer acknowledge audience applause from stage.
Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga performing at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on Aug. 5, 2021.
(Kevin Mazur/Getty Images )
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On Sept. 30, when Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga released “Love for Sale,” their album of Cole Porter standards, Bennett broke the Guinness World Record for the oldest person to release an album of new material. He was 95 years and 57 days old.

Today, Bennett made history again, when he was nominated alongside Gaga for five Grammy Awards, including album of the year for “Love for Sale” and record of the year for “I Get a Kick Out of You.” With those nominations, Bennett became the oldest artist ever nominated in a “general field” category, and the second oldest nominee overall in Grammy history.

The oldest Grammy nominee and winner is Pinetop Perkins, the Mississippi-born blues pianist and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner. In 2011, at the age of 97, his album “Joined at the Hip” won the Grammy for traditional blues album.

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In addition to album and record of the year, Bennett and Gaga are nominated for pop duo/group performance, traditional pop vocal album and music video.

The duo’s first collaborative album, a 2014 collection of jazz standards titled “Cheek to Cheek,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, making Bennett the oldest artist ever to top the chart with newly recorded material. “Cheek to Cheek” won the Grammy for traditional pop vocal album in 2015.

Bennett won his first Grammy in 1963, for his now-signature ballad, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” The song won the honors for both record of the year and male vocal performance that year.

Bennett has won a total of 20 Grammy awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. He last won in 2018, for “Tony Bennett Celebrates 90,” which was awarded traditional pop vocal album. He has won the category 13 times.

Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016. In October, he was profiled in a segment for “60 Minutes,” which featured scenes from his final run of shows at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in August.

Although Bennett sang over a dozen songs, he did not recall the performance in his interview with Anderson Cooper, and answered questions with assistance from his wife, philanthropist Susan Crow.

“I think he really pushed through something,” Gaga told Cooper on “60 Minutes.” “He gave the world the gift of knowing that things can change, and you can still be magnificent.”

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Filmed at their two Radio City Music Hall shows, the concert special “One Last Time: An Evening With Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga” will air on Nov. 28 at 8 p.m. (Pacific) on CBS.

The 64th Grammy Awards will take place on Jan. 31, at L.A.’s Staples Center.

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