Who is the oldest musician ever to perform on stage?
Whether it’s British invaders Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and The Who, or Bob Dylan and his never-ending tour, there’s now a whole host of 1960s music legends continuing to perform sell-out shows well into their ninth decade. With life expectancy increasing and rock music’s second generation only getting older, the phenomenon of live performances from octogenarians will become more and more commonplace.
Previously, the likes of Chuck Berry and Little Richard were miracles of nature out on their own. Berry, in particular, took things to a remarkable extreme, duckwalking across the stage for the last time just shy of his 88th birthday in October 2014.
Since then, however, several artists have taken things to a whole new level. Not least country singer Willie Nelson, who’s currently in the middle of an ongoing tour at the ripe old age of 91. It must be added that Nelson was recently suffering from health issues that forced him to cancel shows in late June and early July. But he’s back on the wagon and was welcomed back on stage in style at his performance in Camden, New Jersey, on American Independence Day.
Nelson could just be the oldest big-name performer on tour anywhere in the world at the present time, but others who preceded him made an even greater mockery of their age. Nelson is a young pretender to the crown of oldest ever live performer, compared to the actual record-holders.
So, who’s the oldest of all time?
Firstly, there’s Tony Bennett, the legendary crooner who started out as a fresh-faced 22-year-old opening for Broadway performer Pearl Bailey in Greenwich Village jazz clubs all the way back in 1949. Over 72 years later, he performed for the final time at Radio City Music Hall, dueting with Lady Gaga in a television special entitled One Last Time. He ended the performance with his very first hit single from 1951, ‘Because of You’.
Bennett was 95 at the time of his last show. He died a year and a half later at the age of 96, having been the last one standing among the great crooners of jazz’s golden age as a form of popular music.
Even he was a veritable whippersnapper alongside the actual record holder for the oldest person performing on stage, though. French classical pianist Colette Maze continued recording music until her death in 2023, aged 109. She was still performing live concerts until at least the age of 107, and her final album, entitled 109 Years of Piano, included virtuoso performances of pieces by Debussy, Schumann and Gershwin, among others.
Her phenomenal age record for a performing musician could be down to her late start as a recording artist. She released her first LP in 2004 when she was already in her 90s. All the same, she’d been playing since the age of five and just needed a push from her daughter to share her talent with a wider audience.
As a teenager, she trained at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, where one of her teachers was the celebrated pianist Alfred Cortot. She could have gone on to be a professional concert performer at a younger age, but her parents discouraged her.
It seems like Maze was always destined for prominence as a piano player. She was living proof that it’s possible to achieve your dream later in life, no matter how late. And that it really is better late than never.
