"I left my heart in San Francisco High on a hill, it calls to me To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars..."
Tony Bennett told me he'd scarcely seen a cable car before he recorded what became his signature song.
The sheet music had been in the shirt-drawer of Ralph Sharon, Tony's longtime accompanist
when they were in Hot Springs, Ark., on a nightclub tour in 1961.
Tony and Ralph noodled around at the piano after a show and tried a few bars of the song.
What Tony put across so powerfully from the first notes was the magic pull of San Francisco, the Golden City.
The Hot Springs bartender told them: "If you guys record that song, I'll buy the first copy."
Millions of copies had been sold by the time Tony Bennett left us yesterday, at the age of 96.
I had the blessing to do a book with Tony Bennett, as he turned 90 years old (in 2016).
I'd sit beside him in his New York art studio — he was also an accomplished painter