Sonny Bono

SONNY BONO

SALVATORE PHILLIP BONO

He is an American music producer, singer, actor, and politician.

Real name is Salvatore Phillip Bono.

He was born on February 16, 1935 in Detroit (Michigan, USA) to Italian immigrant parents.

He began his musical career in the late 1950s at Specialty Records, where he wrote songs for famous artists. In the early 1960s, Bono collaborated with the famous producer Phil Spector. One of his most famous songs, "Needles and Pins," Bono wrote in 1962 with jazz musician Jack Nietzsche.

Bono and his wife Cher were a commercially successful duo. Sonny wrote and produced a string of hits, including "I Got You Babe" and "The Beat Goes On." Sonny and Cher performed as a duo from 1964 to 1977. Their marriage was dissolved in 1975. Bono continued his career as an actor, starring in several television series and feature films, including Airplane 2, Troll, Hairspray and others.

In attempting to open his own restaurant business, Bono encountered numerous bureaucratic delays. This forced him to enter the political scene. In 1988, he became mayor of Palm Springs, California, a position he held until 1992. As mayor, he founded the now annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. In 1992, Bono made an unsuccessful attempt to run for the U.S. Senate for the Republican Party. However, in 1994 he was elected to the House of Representatives representing the state of California. He supported a bill to extend copyright protection in the United States, which was posthumously named the Sonny Bono Act in his honor.

Sonny Bono was tragically killed on January 5, 1998, in Lake Tahoe, California, USA, while skiing down a mountain, he collided with a tree.