Betty Bonney, 100, Dies; Her Song for a Yankee Star Was a Big-Band Hit

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, 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.

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.” We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

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