Wayne Osmond, singer and guitarist for The Osmonds, dies at 73

Wayne Osmond, singer and guitarist for The Osmonds, dies at 73


NEW YORK — Wayne Osmond, a singer, guitarist and founding member of the million-selling household act The Osmonds, who had been recognized for such Nineteen Seventies teen hits as “One Bad Apple,” “Yo-Yo” and “Down By the Lazy River,” has died. He was 73.

Sibling Merrill Osmond posted on his Facebook web page that Wayne died this week at a Salt Lake City hospital after struggling a “huge stroke.”

“I’ve by no means recognized a person that had extra humility. A person with completely no guile,” Merrill wrote. “An person that was fast to forgive and had the flexibility to point out unconditional like to everybody he ever met.”

Pop star and brother Donny Osmond paid tribute to his older sibling on Instagram. “My expensive brother Wayne handed away peacefully final night time from a stroke,” he wrote. “I’m so grateful that I had the chance to go to him within the hospital earlier than he handed.”

“Wayne introduced a lot mild, laughter, and like to everybody who knew him, particularly me,” Donny Osmond continued. “He was the final word optimist and was liked by everybody.”

Wayne Osmond was the fourth oldest of 9 kids raised in a Mormon family in Ogden, Utah, and the second oldest among the many musical performers. The siblings’ profession started within the Fifties when Wayne, Alan, Merrill and Jay sang as a barbershop quartet.

Their reputation grew within the Sixties after being supported by singer Andy Williams, they usually peaked as a quintet within the early Nineteen Seventies, with youthful brother Donny Osmond the breakout star. “One Bad Apple” and different songs had been usually in comparison with the music of The Osmonds’ contemporaries, the Jackson 5, and Donny was positioned because the white counterpart to the Jacksons’ lead singer, Michael Jackson.

The Osmonds in 1975. From left, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, Jimmy, Donny, Marie and Alan.Michael Putland / Getty Images

The Osmonds’ reputation pale by the mid-Nineteen Seventies, though Donny and Marie Osmond each loved profitable careers as solo performers and as a brother-sister duo.

In the Eighties, Wayne Osmond regrouped with Alan, Merrill and Jay as a rustic act and had a handful of hits, together with “I Think About Your Lovin.’”

But within the mid-Nineties he was identified with a mind tumor and misplaced a lot of his listening to from the surgical procedure and remedy. A stroke in 2012 left him unable to play guitar.

Wayne Osmond performs at the Orleans Hotel & Casino August 14, 2007 in Las Vegas.
Wayne Osmond performs in 2007.Ethan Miller / Getty Images

“I’ve had a beautiful life. And you already know, with the ability to hear shouldn’t be all that it’s cracked as much as be, it actually isn’t,” he advised the Deseret News in 2018. “My favourite factor now could be to deal with my yard. I flip my listening to aids off, deaf as a doorknob, tune every thing out, it’s actually joyful.”

Wayne Osmond married Kathlyn White in 1974. They had 5 kids.