Steve Lawrence, a US singer who enjoyed many hits as a solo act and with his wife Eydie Gorme, has died.
The 88-year-old, whose singles included Go Away Little Girl, died from complications due to Alzheimer’s disease, said Susan DuBow, a spokesperson for the family.
Lawrence and Gorme — or Steve & Eydie — were known for their frequent appearances on talk shows, in nightclubs and on the stages of Las Vegas.
The duo took inspiration from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and other songwriters.
Soon after Elvis Presley and other rock music pioneers began to dominate radio and records, Lawrence and his wife were approached about changing their style.
“We had a chance to get in on the ground floor of rock ‘n’ roll,” he recalled in a 1989 interview. “It was 1957 and everything was changing, but I wanted to be Sinatra, not Rick Nelson.
“Our audience knows we’re not going to load up on heavy metal or set fire to the drummer — although on some nights we’ve talked about it,” he joked.
Although Lawrence and Gorme were best known as a team, both had huge solo hits just months apart in the early 1960s.
Lawrence scored first in 1962 with the romantic ballad, Go Away Little Girl, written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King.
Gorme matched his success the following year with Blame It on the Bossa Nova, a bouncy tune about a dance craze of the time that was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
By the 1970s, Lawrence and his wife were a top draw in casinos and nightclubs across the country. They also appeared regularly on television, making specials and guesting on various shows.
In the 1980s, when Vegas cut down on headline acts and nightclubs became scarcer, the pair switched to auditoriums and drew large audiences.
“People come with a general idea of what they’re going to get with us,” Lawrence said in 1989. “It’s like a product. They buy a certain cereal and they know what to expect from that package.”
Lawrence launched his professional singing career at the age of 15. After two failed auditions for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts TV show, he was accepted on the third try, going on to win the competition and the prize of appearing on Godfrey’s popular daytime radio show for a week.
King Records, impressed by the teenager’s strong, two-octave voice, signed him to a contract. His first record, Poinciana, sold more than 100,000 copies, and his high school allowed him to skip classes to promote it with out-of-town singing dates.
After several guest appearances on Steve Allen’s television show, Lawrence was hired as a regular. When the programme became NBC’s Tonight in 1954, he went with it, singing and exchanging quips with Allen.
The series set the pattern for the long-running The Tonight Show.
“I think Steve Allen was the biggest thing that happened to me,” said Lawrence, who stayed with the show’s host for five years, honing his comedic skills and attracting a wide audience with his singing.
“Every night I was called upon to do something different. In its own way it was better than vaudeville.”
Early in the series’ run, a young singer named Eydie Gorme joined the cast. After singing together for four years, she and Lawrence were married in 1957.
Until Gorme’s death, in 2013, they remained popular, whether working together in concert or making separate TV appearances.
His reasoning: “If we did television together all the time, why should anyone go see us in a club?”
He also appeared in such shows as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Gilmore Girls, Diagnosis Murder and The Nanny.
He and Gorme had two sons, David, a composer, and Michael. Long troubled with heart problems, Michael died of heart failure in 1986 at the age of 23.
“My dad was an inspiration to so many people,” his son David said in a statement. “But, to me, he was just this charming, handsome, hysterically funny guy who sang a lot. Sometimes alone and sometimes with his insanely talented wife. I am so lucky to have had him as a father and so proud to be his son.”
