Born Abba Avrom Tracovutsky in Kamenetz-Podolsky, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), he emigrated to the United States with his parents, listed as Mordeche and Fannie Trasowitzkey, and sisters, in October 1906, as steerage passengers on the S/S Blücher, from Hamburg to New York. His brother was born in 1907. After their release from the Ellis Island Immigrant station, they settled in Philadelphia. Naturalized in 1913, Tracy’s parents became known as Morris and Fannie Tracy.

In 1917 Tracy graduated from Central High School. He began studying architecture at the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out to become a professional singer. He began singing part-time in the Yiddish theatre, minstrel shows and vaudeville while working as a furniture salesman.

After moving to New York City in 1924, he appeared regularly in vaudeville, joined the Blossom Time touring company and appeared in various New York amateur revues, where he was seen by William S. Paley who offered him a 15-minute CBS radio program.

To avoid embarrassing his family if his show failed and to prevent being blackballed from future vaudeville bookings for having appeared on radio, Tracy decided to make his identity a mystery and borrowed a billing from the title of Frederick Lonsdale’s musical The Street Singer (1924). Listeners demanded to know his identity, but it was not revealed until five months after his 1931 debut on CBS. The following year he was off to Hollywood to appear in The Big Broadcast (1932) with other radio stars, including Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, and the Boswell Sisters. In 1933 he performed at FDR’s first inauguration.

Arthur Tracy’s 1937 recording of “Pennies from Heaven” was chosen from hundreds of versions for the 1981 movie of that name, with Vernel Bagneris lip-synching to Tracy’s voice. The film brought Tracy out of retirement, and at age 82 he returned as a cabaret singer at The Cookery in Greenwich Village in 1982. This brought a favorable review in The New York Times from John Wilson, who wrote that his vocalizing had “a delightful patina of period charm”, adding that Tracy was “a spellbinder, setting a mood and scene, disarming the doubters by admitting that ‘I always put all the schmalz I had into my songs.'”

In 1978, Arthur Tracy was crowned King of the Beaux Arts Ball. He presided with Queen Hope Hampton, the one-time silent screen star.