Sonny King (singer)
American actor and singer (1922-2006)
Sonny King (April 1, 1922 – February 3, 2006) was an American lounge singer of Italian descent.
He was born as Luigi Antonio Schiavone on April 1, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the sidekick of Jimmy Durante for 28 years until Durante's death in 1980. They appeared together on The Ed Sullivan Show five times in the 1960s. King shared a New York apartment with Dean Martin when the two were struggling entertainers, and is credited with introducing Martin to a young comedian Jerry Lewis.
Although not an official Rat Pack member, he was close friends with many Rat Pack entertainers and appeared in movies such as Robin and the Seven Hoods and Sergeants 3. He recorded an album "For Losers Only" and shared the stage with jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Joe Williams and many more. King moved to Las Vegas in the early 1950s and was a fixture on the strip and local clubs until his death on February 3, 2006, from cancer. He was 83 years old.
King was brought up in vaudeville and trained in operatic vocals and comedy.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sonny King (singer)” as american actor and singer (1922-2006). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7562058. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1922, 2006 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sonny King (singer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.