Betty Bonney, singer who had a hit with ‘Joltin' Joe DiMaggio,' dies at 100

Boston Globe

23-02-2025

She had been a radio and dance-band performer while growing up in Norfolk, and had almost a decade of professional experience by the time she — at age 16, in May 1941 — replaced the then-little-known 19-year-old Doris Day as the 'girl singer' for bandleader Les Brown.
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The group, which had slowly been building a following with sprightly novelty instrumental tunes such as 'Bizet Has His Day,' was on the cusp of national recognition, and 'Joltin' Joe DiMaggio' helped make the difference.
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For much of the summer of 1941, Brown's band was broadcasting from the Log Cabin Roadhouse in Armonk, N.Y., and would routinely update the dance crowd and listening audience on DiMaggio's remarkable hitting streak that lasted from May to July.
As Brown later told Newsday, a local disc jockey named Alan Courtney had the idea for lyrics built around the Yankee slugger's spectacular hitting streak, and Brown's musical arranger Ben Homer (his real name) wrote the melody.
After a brassy, bouncy riff, Ms. Bonney starts the song by asking, 'Hello, Joe, whaddaya know?'
DiMaggio, voiced by clarinetist Abe Most, responds, 'We need a hit, so here I go.'
As the song progresses to tell the story of DiMaggio's long run as the 'Yankee Clipper,' band members chime in with various background choruses of 'Joe, Joe DiMaggio, we want you on our side' and musical puns such as 'We dream of Joey with the light brown bat.'
According to Brown, DiMaggio was unamused and wanted to sue Courtney, but when the player discovered the lyricist 'didn't have a cent,' he calmed down and even took a publicity shot with the band. (Decades later, DiMaggio was said to be annoyed by his cameo in Simon and Garfunkel's 1968 No. 1 hit 'Mrs. Robinson,' until songwriter Paul Simon explained the line 'Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?' was meant to present him in a flattering and heroic light.)
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After 'Joltin' Joe DiMaggio,' the brunette Ms. Bonney became a star attraction — with news accounts and reviews noting her sex appeal as much her voice. With Brown, she continued making novelty tunes such as 'All That Meat and No Potatoes' in addition to recording patriotic fare including 'He's 1-A in the Army (and He's A-1 In My Heart)' and the occasional romantic ballad.
Later, she had stints with popular bands led by Jan Savitt, Jerry Wald, and Frankie Carle and made solo recordings under her full name — Betty Jane Bonney — for RCA Victor. Those wistful 1945 cuts, including 'How Little We Know,' 'They Can't Take That Away From Me,' 'Ho Hum (Wish I Were Someone in Love),' and 'While You're Away,' sold beyond expectation at a test run in New York and were praised by critics, but she said her management team was unable to capitalize on that success and secure her wider radio airplay.
After taking voice lessons for a musical theater career, she appeared in the 1949 national touring production of the Broadway musical comedy 'High Button Shoes.' She also continued singing engagements at prominent clubs in New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. Bandleader Sammy Kaye, whose syrupy ballads such as 'Harbor Lights' were favorites of cheek-to-cheek dancers, hired her in 1950 and renamed her Judy Johnson.
'Sammy had a thing about changing singers' names for good luck,' Ms. Bonney told Newsday.
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Still billed as Judy Johnson, she partnered with Bill Hayes for song and light dance duets on Sid Caesar's influential early 1950s comedy-variety program 'Your Show of Shows.' Other TV appearances followed before her marriage, in the mid-1950s, to arranger and orchestra leader Mort Lindsey, who later spent decades as musical director for 'The Merv Griffin Show.'
Betty Jane Bonney, whose father was a railroad purchasing clerk, was born on March 8, 1924. She was recognized early on for her singing ability in her school chorus, became a regular performer on a youth-oriented Norfolk radio program called 'Aunt Jane's Safety Club' and had her own 15-minute Tidewater-area radio show by the time she was 11.
Accompanied by her mother, she went on the road at 13 with a college band out of Auburn, Ala., which toured as part of crooner Gene Austin's musical revue. A succession of other band jobs followed, and she said she scraped every cent from her $30-a-week salary singing with a Cincinnati group to try out for the fast-rising Brown when he was passing through Chicago.
Ms. Bonney became the full-time replacement for Day, who had left Brown's group when she got married. Because of the rigors of touring, that was the common practice among female singers, who were described at the time as 'thrushes,' 'canaries,' and 'orioles.' After her divorce, Day returned to the band in 1943, had breakthrough hits with 'Sentimental Journey' and 'My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time,' and eventually became a movie-musical star.
Having wed an Army lieutenant, Douglas Broyles Jr., in June 1942, Ms. Bonney left the Brown band but resumed singing when her husband was deployed to North Africa and Italy. They later divorced.
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After the war, RCA pushed to make Ms. Bonney a solo star, a plan that reportedly angered the recording company's top singer, Dinah Shore, over what she considered exorbitant plans for radio and advertising publicity for Ms. Bonney. Ms. Bonney made the cover of Billboard that September, with an accompanying article that declared 'Betty Jane's on her way up fast,' but her RCA career did not last.
Ms. Bonney's career largely slid into the background after her later marriage to Lindsey, but she continued doing theater work and served as the stand-in rehearsal singer for the orchestra her husband led during Judy Garland's 1961 comeback concert at New York's Carnegie Hall.
Lindsey died in 2012. Survivors include a daughter from her first marriage, Bonney; two sons from her marriage to Lindsey, Trevor and Steve; and three stepchildren. A complete list of survivors could not immediately be confirmed.
As late as the 1990s, Ms. Bonney appeared at events held at Griffin-owned resort properties and sang big-band standards, serving as one of the final links to that era. Her version of 'Joltin' Joe DiMaggio' was prominently featured in Ken Burns's 1994 TV documentary 'Baseball.'