Wayne Osmond, a singer, guitarist and founding member of the million-selling Osmonds family of actors, who were known for such 1970s teen hits as. A bad apple, Yo-yo AND Down by the lazy riveris dead He was 73.
Brother Merrill Osmond posted on his Facebook page that Wayne died this week in a Salt Lake City hospital after suffering a “massive stroke.”
“I never knew a man who had more humility. A man without any guile,” Merrill wrote. “An individual who was quick to forgive and had the ability to show unconditional love to everyone he met.”
Good luck with the band of brothers
Wayne Osmond was the fourth oldest of nine children raised in a Mormon family in Ogden, Utah, and the second oldest among musical performers.
The siblings’ careers began in the 1950s when Wayne, Alan, Merrill and Jay sang as the Barber Quartet.
Their popularity grew in the 1960s after being backed by singer Andy Williams, and they reached their peak as a quintet in the early 1970s, with younger brother Donny Osmond the first star.
A bad apple and other songs were often compared to the music of the Osmonds’ contemporaries such as the Jackson 5, and Donny was positioned as the white counterpart to the Jacksons’ lead singer, Michael Jackson.
The Osmonds’ popularity waned by the mid-1970s, although Donny and Marie Osmond both enjoyed successful careers as solo performers and as a sibling duo.
In the 1980s, Wayne regrouped with Alan, Merrill and Jay as a country act and had a number of hits including I think of your love.’
The singer was hit with health problems in the 1990s
But in the mid-1990s, Wayne was diagnosed with a brain tumor and lost most of his hearing from surgery and treatment. A stroke in 2012 left him unable to play the guitar.
“I’ve had a great life. And you know, being able to hear isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, it really isn’t,” he told the Deseret News in 2018.
“My favorite thing now is tending to my yard. I turn off my hearing aids, I’m as deaf as a doorknob, I fix everything, it’s really joyful.”
Wayne Osmond married Kathlyn White in 1974. They had five children.
