"I Left My Heart in San Francisco" is a traditional pop ballad with music by George Cory and lyrics by Douglass Cross, two amateur writers who composed it in late 1953 in Brooklyn, New York, after moving east and missing San Francisco. The song refers to the city's cable cars and its fog. It was first written for the contralto Claramae Turner, who sang it as an encore from January 1954 and never recorded it commercially. Tennessee Ernie Ford was offered the song and declined it. It reached Tony Bennett through his accompanist Ralph Sharon. Bennett first sang it in December 1961 at the Venetian Room of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and recorded it on 23 January 1962 for Columbia Records. Released in February 1962 as the B-side of "Once Upon a Time", it became a hit after disc jockeys turned the single over, reaching No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 7 on the Easy Listening chart. Bennett's version won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Male Solo Vocal Performance. In 1984 San Francisco adopted the song as one of its two official anthems. Bobby Womack's R&B version reached No. 48 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1969.
