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.
Whereas performing that summer time at a membership in Armonk, N.Y., in Westchester County, the band “received caught up within the streak,” Mr. Brown advised Newsday in 1990, and “would announce it from the bandstand each evening if Joe had gotten one other hit, or if he was coming to bat late within the recreation nonetheless with no hit.”
As DiMaggio piled up hits — from mid-Could to mid-July — a New York Metropolis disc jockey, Alan Courtney, and the band’s arranger, Ben Homer, wrote a jaunty tune, “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio,” which Ms. Bonney sang in her clean, elegant fashion on the Armonk membership whereas band members goofed round with baseball gloves, bats and caps, Mr. Brown stated.
The tune was additionally heard often on the band’s radio present and launched in September as a 78 r.p.m. report; in response to Billboard journal, it was the 93rd-best-selling single of 1941.
The tune begins off with Ms. Bonney asking, “Hi there, Joe, whaddaya know?” to which the clarinetist Ben Most, enjoying the a part of DiMaggio, replies, “We want a success, so right here I’m going.”
She later sings:
He began baseball’s well-known streak
That’s received us all aglow
He’s only a man and never a freak
Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.
Win Goulden, a columnist for The Central New Jersey Residence Information of New Brunswick, praised not solely the tune but additionally Ms. Bonney efficiency of it. “You must actually see Miss Bonney do the quantity in individual to understand it,” he wrote, “for those who get what we’re driving at.”
“It’s not simply her voice that places over a tune,” he added.
DiMaggio threatened to sue Mr. Courtney “for utilizing his identify,” Mr. Brown advised Newsday, however relented when he discovered that Mr. Courtney “didn’t have a cent.”
Ms. Bonney died on Jan. 29 in Calabasas, Calif. She was 100. Her son Trevor Lindsey confirmed the loss of life, in an assisted dwelling facility.
Betty Jane Bonney was born on March 8, 1924, in Bridgeport, Conn., and grew up primarily in Norfolk, Va. Her father, Albert, was a railroad buying clerk. Her mom, Doris (Anderson) Bonney, supported Betty’s musical profession from an early age: She accompanied her to native radio gigs, beginning when she was 6, and joined her on the street as an adolescent with the Auburn Cavaliers, a band based mostly within the South.
In 1941, when she was nonetheless an adolescent, Betty sang with the bands of Charlie Spivak and Jimmy James earlier than becoming a member of Mr. Brown’s, the place she changed Doris Day. (Ms. Day would return in 1943.)
“Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio”was featured in an episode of Ken Burns’s documentary collection “Baseball” in 1994. It turned one of many enduring songs about baseball gamers, together with “Talkin’ Baseball (Willie, Mickey and the Duke),” by Terry Cashman; “Say Hey (The Willie Mays Tune),” by the Treniers; and “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?” by Rely Basie and His Orchestra.
Ms. Bonney recorded different songs with the Brown band, together with “Lament to Love,” Fat Waller’s “All That Meat and No Potatoes” and “He’s 1-A within the Military (and He’s A-1 in My Coronary heart).”
She left Les Brown quickly after marrying Douglas Broyles Jr., an Military officer, in June 1942. However after Mr. Broyles went abroad to serve in World Conflict II, she resumed her singing profession with the bands of Jan Savitt, Jerry Wald and Frankie Carle. Then, as a solo act, she recorded a number of songs for RCA, together with “Ho Hum (Want I Had been Somebody in Love),” which put her on the quilt of Billboard in 1945.
“She’s had all of the breaks any thrush might ask for,” the journal wrote, “crowded into the 13 years she’s been chirping in showbiz.”
In 1949, Ms. Bonney toured in a nationwide manufacturing of the hit Broadway musical comedy “Excessive Button Sneakers.” The subsequent 12 months, the bandleader Sammy Kaye employed her and gave her a brand new identify: Judy Johnson, which she would use for the remainder of her profession.
“Sammy had a factor about altering singers’ names for good luck,” she advised Newsday.
Her time as a vocalist with Mr. Kaye was transient. Below her new identify, she sang on Sid Caesar’s landmark tv sketch-comedy collection, “Your Present of Reveals,” from 1950 to 1953 and was the star of a nightclub act, “Judy Johnson and Her Dates,” in 1953.
“Only a few folks knew her as Betty,” her son Trevor stated in an interview. “She didn’t appropriate them as a result of she was simply as comfy as Judy.” Privately, she was generally known as Judy Lindsey.
In 1954, Ms. Bonney divorced Mr. Broyles and married Mort Lindsey, who went on to be the bandleader on Merv Griffin’s tv discuss present. She made occasional radio, TV, membership and stage appearances, together with changing Helen Gallagher as Miss Adelaide within the revival of “Guys and Dolls” at New York Metropolis Middle in 1955.
She additionally labored on “The Judy Garland Present” — the place Mr. Lindsey led the band — as Ms. Garland’s stand-in throughout studio rehearsals in 1963 and 1964.
Within the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s, Ms. Bonney sang sometimes with Mr. Griffin and his band (carried out by Mr. Lindsey) in numerous venues, together with Mr. Griffin’s Resorts On line casino Resort in Atlantic Metropolis, N.J., and the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Along with her son Trevor, from her marriage to Mr. Lindsey, she is survived by one other son, Steve, additionally from that marriage; a daughter, Bonney Dunn, from her marriage to Mr. Broyles; three stepchildren; seven grandchildren; and a lot of great-grandchildren. Mort Lindsey died in 2012.
Trevor Lindsey stated that his mom’s father pushed her into singing for cash when she was 5 as a result of he was barely incomes a dwelling.
“Mother would recount tales of him bringing her to a bar in the midst of the day and saying, ‘Do your little act,’” he stated, “and folks would throw cash at her.”
He added, “She by no means forgave him for that.”
