Benny’s Tenor Kenny Baker Dies

Kenny Baker, the lyric tenor who was Dennis Day’s predecessor on Jack Benny’s long-running radio show and a stage and film presence in his own right, is dead at 72, it was learned today.

He died Aug. 10, but his death of an apparent heart attack had gone unreported. A veteran of 13 movies, concerts and Broadway musicals, he had retired in the mid-1950s to spend more time with his family in Solvang, where he died.

Among his better known films were “The Harvey Girls,” “The Marx Brothers at the Circus” and “The Mikado.” “A Wandering Minstrel” from that Gilbert and Sullivan operetta became his signature song.