NEW ORLEANS, LA (AP).- Grammy-winning jazz crooner Tony Bennett will be part of this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival — but not with his voice.

A portrait Bennett painted of his late friend and fellow jazzman Louis Prima is being produced as this year's official Jazz Fest poster.

The festival's official poster dates to 1975, when the first one was produced as a fifth anniversary fundraiser for the nonprofit New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation.

Many of the early festival posters were abstracts. But more than a decade, most have been portrait-like renderings of such performers as Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Jerry Lee Lewis, Harry Connick Jr., Pete Fountain and Wynton Marsalis.

The poster is sold during Jazz Fest, which runs April 23-25 and April 29-May 2.



Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.