In history's haze the real Sonny and Cher have become obscured by the Sonny and Cher of 70s TV fame. With the tuxedos, the evening gowns, loungy cover tunes, they were TVs smartest and most popular young married couple. Sonny and Cher's pre-series is murkily recalled as some mildly trippy, Day-Glo, "The Beat Goes On" kinda thing. In reality the Sonny and Cher who first captured the world's hearts were a genuine cultural phenomenon whose sheer magnitude can be hard to fathom. Sonny and Cher were groovy beyond belief. Four years before their hippie trappings were co -opted and sanitized by Madison Ave. and the Partridge Family, Sonny and Cher were the stuff of rebellion: real teen rebellion against uptight teachers, twisting' grandmas, hopelessly Donna Reed parents, the entire gamut of squares. Theirs was a quantum leap in the history of teen eyes, overnight transforming a hitherto dark, greasy, James Dean dangerous rebellion into a longhaired, bell-bottom, bobcat vest luv fest rebellion, with its own musical accompaniment. Sonny and Cher were postwar-America's first rebels without switchblades. There near cuddly outrageousness was irresistible. Kids wanted to look like Sonny and Cher; young adults coveted their groovalicious, teen-millionaire lifestyle. Impossibly famous they could bound into fancy hotels in full hippie gear and are served. In an era of smashed traditions and questioned authority, Sonny and Cher showed their anti-establishment audience how two people could be married even married and singing silly love songs to one another and still be the epitome of cool.
Sonny got his start in the music business as a teenager hustling songs to recording artists. In the 1950s he landed a job as an A&R man at Specialty Records, Little Richards label and became an assistant to legendary producer Phil Spector in the early 1960s. Sonny sang background vocals and played tambourine on a number of Spector's classic chartbusters but he also acted as Spectors flunky which meant peddling his singles to radio stations and keeping him company at diner meals at 2a.m. During his tenure with the eccentric genius, Sonny met teenage runaway Cher whom he invited to move in with him. They soon married and tried their luck as recording act called Caesar and Cleo. But they had little success until they renamed their act Sonny and Cher. Only a few months after Sonny was fired by Spector in 1965 for having too many suggestions about the artistic process the short Italian American singer and his lanky half Cherokee wife hit the big time with the smash single "I Got You Babe." This anthem about love conquering both poverty and the difficulty of being a guy with long hair turned the pop duo into millionaires. Other hit songs quickly followed as is the accusation of his and hers Mustangs. In 1967 the duo starred in the kooky motion picture "Good Times" the film-directing debut for wunderkind William Friedkin. By 1968, however Sonny andCher's careers were in decline. Sonny did manage to produce a film, which would be a dramatic vehicle for Cher based on her life. Entitled "Chasity" the flick was a critical and commercial flop, but is did provide the name for the Bono's daughter. With the killer combination of insult humor and hit pop tunes, their oldies and other artists songs, Sonny sold the act to CBS as a summer-replacement variety series in 1971. Named "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour," the show drew a large audience, until the couple divorced. That was the end for the Sonny and Cher acts. Cher is still producing songs and has accomplished many movies and awards. Sonny moved on to open a chain of restraunts and manage to go to Capitol Hill as a Republican congressman in 1995. Sonny later died in a skiing accident on January 5, 1998.