NEW YORK –
Wayne Osmond, singer, guitarist and founding member of the family group The Osmonds, known for ’70s teen hits like “One Bad Apple,” “Yo-Yo” and “Down By the Lazy River,” has died. He was 73 years old.
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 have never met a man who had such 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.”
Wayne Osmond was the fourth oldest of nine children raised in a Mormon home in Ogden, Utah, and the second oldest among musical performers. The brothers’ career began in the 1950s when Wayne, Alan, Merrill and Jay sang as a barbershop quartet.
Their popularity grew in the 1960s after being supported by singer Andy Williams, and they peaked as a quintet in the early 1970s, with their younger brother Donny Osmond as their breakout star. “One Bad Apple” and other songs were often compared to the music of The Osmonds’ contemporaries, the Jackson 5, and Donny was positioned as the white counterpart to the Jacksons’ lead singer, Michael Jackson.
The Osmonds’ popularity faded in the mid-1970s, although Donny and Marie Osmond enjoyed successful careers as solo artists and as a brother-sister duo.
In the 1980s, Wayne Osmond regrouped with Alan, Merrill and Jay as a country group and had a handful of hits, including “I Think About Your Lovin.”
But in the mid-1990s he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and lost much of his hearing due to surgery and treatment. A stroke in 2012 left him unable to play the guitar.
“I’ve had a wonderful life. And you know, being able to hear isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, it really isn’t,” she told the Deseret News in 2018. “My favorite thing now is drinking Gardening. I turn off my hearing aids, I’m deaf as a doorknob, I tune out everything, it’s really happy.”
Wayne Osmond married Kathlyn White in 1974. They had five children.
