I Left My Heart In San Francisco

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I've always loved I Left My Heart In San Francisco! And, having lived for many decades in the San Francisco area, the song has a special meaning for me, and I always intended to do a cover of it at some point.

I Left My Heart In San Francisco is also the signature song of legendary singer Tony Bennett. With his passing yesterday (July 21, 2023), I am doing this special cover as a tribute to him, and to all the hearts he has touched over the decades. As a master singer and heartfelt song intrepreter, he has inspired me in so many ways! I am singing to a karaoke arrangement based on Tony Bennett's 1962 version. Not knowing how popular the song would become, he released it as the B-side to Once Upon a Time (a song I just did a cover of a week ago).

I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO

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Tony Bennett and I Left My Heart In San Francisco. Tony Bennett was asked many times throughout his long career whether he ever got tired of singing I Left My Heart In San Francisco. He said he always gives the same answer: "Do you ever get tired of making love?" I guess that means if you caught him on a day where he had already sung the song several times, he might say "not again!" But otherwise, he was always greatly appreciative for the song that made him famous, and kept it fresh (like all his songs) by never singing it exactly the same way. As he put it: "I tell you, to this day, it's still my favorite song. Some singers, when associated with a song, get tired of singing it. But when I sing 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco', each time I sing my heart out."

Ralph Sharon's contributions. The piano riffs in I Left My Heart In San Francisco are just as much an unforgettable part of the song as Tony Bennett's singing. They were written (and played) by Tony Bennett's longtime pianist and musical director, Ralph Sharon. Sharon also gets credit for finding the song in the first place for Tony Bennett to sing. Much more about the origins of the song here.

Change to the lyrics. I changed one word in the lyrics. The last line of the song was:
Your golden sun will shine for me.
I have never ever been able to persuade the sun to shine for me! But it has shone on me many times. So it felt more natural for me to sing:
Your golden sun will shine on me.

I will add this, though: Tony Bennett had his own way of having that line make sense for him, while keeping the word, "for". He always understood the line to be a metaphor. Tony: "'When I come home to you, San Francisco, your golden sun will shine for me.' Because it's not just about the city. It's about every optimistic person on the planet. We all love to be optimistic. We are instinctively optimistic. And that song says it. Everybody has a dream and a hope that something's going to work for them. And then when it happens, it's a great joy."