Betty Bonney, 100, Dies; Her Paean to Joe DiMaggio Was a Big-Band Hit

Last updated: March 7, 2025 4:58 am

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Music | Betty Bonney, 100, Dies; Her Paean to Joe DiMaggio Was a Big-Band Hit

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Singing with the Les Brown band, she celebrated the Yankee star’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941. She also performed on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows.”

The singer Betty Bonney on the TV show “Judge for Yourself” in 1954, after she had begun performing under the name Judy Johnson. The bandleader Sammy Kaye changed her name when she joined his band in 1950 because, she said, “Sammy had a thing about changing singers’ names for good luck.” Credit… NBCUniversal, via Getty Images Published March 6, 2025 Updated March 7, 2025, 1:18 a.m. ET

Betty Bonney was already a veteran big-band vocalist at 17 when she joined Les Brown and His Orchestra in 1941 — in time to sing the praises of the New York Yankees star Joe DiMaggio as he was racking up his major-league-record 56-game hitting streak.

While performing that summer at a club in Armonk, N.Y., in Westchester County, the band “got caught up in the streak,” Mr. Brown told Newsday in 1990, and “would announce it from the bandstand every night if Joe had gotten another hit, or if he was coming to bat late in the game still without a hit.”

As DiMaggio piled up hits — from mid-May to mid-July — a New York City disc jockey, Alan Courtney, and the band’s arranger, Ben Homer, wrote a jaunty tune, “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio,” which Ms. Bonney sang in her smooth, elegant style at the Armonk club while band members goofed around with baseball gloves, bats and caps, Mr. Brown said.

The song was also heard regularly on the band’s radio show and released in September as a 78 r.p.m. record; according to Billboard magazine, it was the 93rd-best-selling single of 1941.

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The Les Brown band’s 78 r.p.m. recording of “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio” was released in September 1941, two months after DiMaggio’s record-setting 56-game hitting streak ended. Credit… Diamond Images/Getty Images The song starts off with Ms. Bonney asking, “Hello, Joe, whaddaya know?” to which the clarinetist Ben Most, playing the part of DiMaggio, replies, “We need a hit, so here I go.”

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