Arthur Tracy; Radio Balladeer Known as ‘Street Singer’

Arthur Tracy, radio’s beloved balladeer whose songs of love and life helped Americans celebrate the prosperity of the 1920s and brought them solace through the deprivations of the Great Depression, has died.

The self-proclaimed “Street Singer” was 98 when he died in a New York City hospital Sunday. He had lived for many years in Manhattan.

His death ends the era of radio crooners that included Russ Columbo, Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby, a more innocent time in U.S. history when the only entertainment many families could afford was that brought into their living rooms by crystal sets and later by primitive vacuum tubes.

Unlike with many other early performers, success came relatively quickly to the man who would immortalize such songs as “Marta, Rambling Rose of the Wildwood,” “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” “Red Sails in the Sunset,” “Danny Boy” and dozens more.

Tracy was raised in Philadelphia, born to a family that had emigrated from Moldavia at the turn of the century.

He dropped out of architecture school to study voice at the Curtis Institute of Music and began singing for weddings and at vaudeville houses in Atlantic City, N.J.

He joined a touring company of “Blossom Time” and competed in amateur nights around New York, where he was heard by CBS President William Paley. Paley gave him a six-week tryout as the “Street Singer,” a name Tracy chose from a musical. He was not allowed to use his own name until thousands of letters began arriving at CBS demanding to know the identity of this latest crooner who could sing in a dozen languages.

The announcer would intone, “Down the corner and around your way comes the Street Singer to sing to you his romantic ballads of yesterday and yore. . . ,” and Tracy would begin to vocalize.

Another of his early radio jobs was on Chesterfield’s “Music That Satisfies” with Ruth Etting and the Boswell Sisters.

In 1931 Paley had given Tracy a long-term contract, and Hollywood asked him to appear the next year in “The Big Broadcast,” a movie musical that featured such radio celebrities as Crosby and Kate Smith.

Tracy became famous not only in the United States but also in England, where “Marta” sold 2 million records. Crowds there were so enthusiastic that he remained for several years and appeared in several British films, among them “Limelight,” “The Street Singer” and “Command Performance.” Many of his fans later came to feel that his prolonged stay in Europe contributed to a lack of interest in him when he returned to the United States just before the outbreak of World War II.

At war’s end, Tracy was spending more time concentrating on his extensive real estate holdings than he was on his career, and although he appeared occasionally at resorts in the Catskills and other clubs, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that he returned to public favor. His 1937 recording of “Pennies From Heaven” was heard on the soundtrack of the 1981 Steve Martin film of the same name, and many older moviegoers remembered the voice.

Tracy returned to the stage in Greenwich Village, where a New York Times reviewer found that his voice contained “a delightful patina of period charm.”

In the mid-1980s, he toured with the national company of the Andrew Bergman play “Social Security” and had a small role in the 1988 movie “Crossing Delancey.”

Although he was divorced from his wife, Blossom, the two had remained close, a family source said. His survivors include a brother, Bert.