And The Beat Goes On

My first exposure to Sonny and Cher that I can recall is those goofy variety series they hosted back in the 1970s. As a little kid, I didn't really know who the heck they were other than TV stars, which is sort of ironic given that they made a name for themselves--for a little while, anyway--as one of the bigger pop acts of the 1960s when Brill Building inflected pop artistry was the order of the day in the teenybopper arm of the record business. That is, until acid-influenced rock bands started putting out LPs with single tracks that burned entire album sides. (For those of you who may not know what "LP"s and "albums" are, feel free to Google those terms). It's all the more intriguing given that Cher is a huge star today as a solo act (and has been for quite some time, for that matter), and Sonny is largely forgotten save for that segment of the public whose ear remains glued to classic rock channels, where Sonny and Cher's old hits still reign supreme. That Sonny was in reality Svengali to Cher's Trilby is a fact you would never pick up on if all you had to go by was their carefully crafted show-biz persona.

It all started one day in the fall of 1962 when 27 year-old Salvatore Bono met 16 year-old Cherilyn Sarkisian in a little coffee shop in Los Angeles. The two hit it off immediately, and given the subsequent career implications for both parties, the meeting was pretty inauspicious. Sonny at that time was working for Phil Spector (boy, what happened to THAT guy?) and before long, he had Cher under Spector's employ as a backup vocalist on recording sessions. If you listen closely, you can hear Cher (with or without Sonny) in the background of some of Spector's iconic hit singles from this period. Supposedly after watching a performance by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Spector thought it would be funny to put Sonny and Cher together as a takeoff on Dylan and Baez. Sonny and Cher would later claim to have been married sometime in '63, with a wedding ceremony taking place in Tijuana in the fall of '64 .

For some reason, it was initially decided to call the act "Caesar and Cleo" with Sonny writing the material, of course. Though they did manage to record a few early singles, that incarnation of the duo more or less went nowhere. By the time they recorded and released "Baby Don't Go" in 1964, they were properly billed as Sonny and Cher. This tune proved to be their first top ten hit, and they were off and running. All of a sudden, Sonny and Cher were everywhere; you could hardly turn on a TV or radio without seeing them or hearing them. They immediately became a huge concert draw all over the world. Their pop explosion was all the more impressive in light of other new acts like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones who were also emerging around this time.

As the sixties unfolded, so did the string of Sonny and Cher hits. "I Got You, Babe", "The Beat Goes On", "Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)", "Little Man"; all were staples of 60s top-40 pop radio. It was certainly a heady time; the couple now looked about as hot as any of the big British invasion bands that were storming the American market, even going toe-to-toe with a veteran heavyweight like Elvis. But as fate would have it, the facade slowly started to crack. Good Times, a film project organized by Sonny in a calculated attempt to turn Sonny and Cher into movie stars, was directed by a then-unknown filmmaker named William Friedkin. This movie was a resounding bomb upon its release in 1967, an eerie precursor to the disaster that was Head, The Monkees' foray into feature films the following year. Unfortunately for the superstar pop couple, the hit singles had pretty much dried up, too, by the end of the decade.

But Sonny was far from finished. Sonny and Cher still had a certain appeal as live performers, so with that in mind, Sonny transplanted the act to the nightclub scene of Las Vegas where the team would gradually reinvent itself. Evolving from swinging sixties pop duo to full-fledged comedy team with the music to some extent relegated to the background, the new incarnation of the act was a little slow to catch on at first. Cher was now the wise-cracking "straight man" in their alternate persona; Sonny, the hapless punching bag as the butt of all the jokes. Funny thing was, behind the scenes it was actually Sonny who was writing a lot of those jokes, not to mention supervising all of the music arrangements as usual. In fact, Sonny was firmly in command of just about every aspect of  their lives, which now included infant daughter Chastity, born in 1969.

Eventually, this revamped version of Sonny and Cher would attract the attention of television talent scouts. This led to the first Sonny and Cher TV special in 1971, The Nitty Gritty Hour. The success of that broadcast led to the opportunity to host their own variety series, and thus, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour was born. The viewing public couldn't seem to get enough of the act now, their early forays into the folk-pop music scene for the most part a distant memory. As major network television stars, Sonny and Cher enjoyed consistently high ratings in addition to favor among critics.They even revived their stagnant recording career, releasing a new record in 1972 featuring two more top ten singles, "All I Ever Need Is You" and "A Cowboy's Work Is Never Done".  

Unfortunately, the duo's conspicuous return to the spotlight would come at a price. Their marriage, which according to later accounts by Cher herself was far from ideal to begin with, would ultimately collapse under the strain. After four successful seasons, the "Comedy Hour" was subsequently cancelled following the public and rather bitter divorce of Sonny and Cher. Although the two would reconcile their personal friendship, even going so far as to attempt a TV comeback in prime time a couple of years later, the wild ride that was Sonny and Cher had essentially ground to a halt by the end of the decade. The (new) Sonny and Cher show was cancelled due to low ratings in 1977.

The famous ex-couple hardly remained idle in the years since their split, however. Sonny continued his acting career, in addition to other business interests, and later entered the world of politics. In 1988, he was elected mayor of Palm Springs, California; in 1994, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. For her part, Cher has continued her music career as a successful solo act, as well as making the transition to movie stardom in the 1980s. She won the 1987 Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Moonstruck. Sonny and Cher would make two on-stage reunions: The Mike Douglas Show in 1979 and Late Night with David Letterman in 1987.

On January 5, 1998, Sonny Bono was killed in a freak skiing accident in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. He was 62.