Sonny Bono, whose fame as half of the singing duo Sonny and Cher led to a second career in politics, died in a skiing accident near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, authorities reported yesterday.
Bono, a Republican member of the US House of Representatives from California since 1995, was 62.
His press secretary, Mr Frank Cullen Jr., was quoted by television networks as saying Bono apparently skied off the main trail and ran into a tree.
Born Salvatore Bono to an impoverished family of Sicilian immigrants in Detroit on February 16th, 1935, he began his career as a singer and song-writer in the 1960s.
He borrowed $175 in 1964 to record Baby Don't Go with his girlfriend Cherilyn LaPiere Sarkisian. They called themselves Sonny and Cher and became husband and wife.
They went on to a series of big hits, many of which he wrote and the most famous being I Got You Babe and The Beat Goes On.
As drugs became more prevalent in the music business, Sonny and Cher preached abstinence, a stand Bono later said might have hurt his popularity as a singer.
But as their recording career declined, Sonny and Cher became stars of their own top rated television show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, from 1971 to 1974. Sonny entered politics in 1988.
Cher was yesterday flying from Britain to Los Angeles after hearing of Sonny's death. She cancelled her appearance to open the Harrods January sale today, where she was to have been the star celebrity at the Knightsbridge store.
Instead she was catching the first available flight to California to be with the couple's daughter, Chastity (29).