Singer who started his career with The Drifters in the late 1950s was best known for hit Stand By Me

Ben E King, the R&B and soul singer best known for Stand By Me, whose honeyed vocal tones helped first popularise the genres with mass pop audiences, has died aged 76.



How we made Stand By Me Read more

King, who first found celebrity in his early 20s with the Drifters, died on Thursday, his publicist, Phil Brown, told the Associated Press, saying only that the death was from natural causes.

While he enjoyed long if sometimes intermittent success, with other big hits including There Goes My Baby and Spanish Harlem, King remains most closely associated with Stand By Me, a simple and plaintive number the singer co-wrote with the famed production and songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

It made No 4 in the US charts on its release in 1961, and No 1 in the UK in 1987 when it was featured on the Rob Reiner coming-of-age film of the same name, starring River Phoenix, as well as a Levi’s jeans commercial. Overall, the song has charted nine times in the US Billboard 100, seven of them covers by artists including John Lennon.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ben E. King sings his hit single Stand By Me with Paul McCartney, James Brown and Hanson in New York in 2000

Born Benjamin Earl Nelson in North Carolina in 1938 – he did not adopt the name King until the start of his solo career – he first sang with a church choir, then joining a doo-wop group after the family moved to Harlem, New York, when he was a boy.

King’s bands performed in talent contests at the famous Apollo theatre in Harlem, and when he was 20 the manager of the then-already established Drifters fired the existing group and brought in King and his fellow band members to replace them.

The new incarnation of the Drifters recorded another King co-composition with Leiber and Stoller, There Goes My Baby, which had a lush, string-drenched sound and King taking his first lead vocal. It reached No 2 in the US charts.

King, still billed as Benjamin Nelson, sung lead on a quick succession of other Drifters hits, including Save the Last Dance for Me and I Count the Tears. But he quit the group after a disagreement about royalties, rebranding himself Ben E. King. A first hit, Spanish Harlem, soon followed, written by Leiber and Phil Spector.

Despite subsequent hits, King’s celebrity waned as the 60s ended, and he spent a time on the nostalgia gig circuit, interrupted by a 1975 surprise disco-tinged hit, Supernatural Thing, Part I, and the resurrection of Stand By Me.

In a 2013 interview with the Guardian, King expressed affection for the song that defined his career, explaining he had originally planned to record it with the Drifters. He said: “It was 1960, but in my vocal I think you can hear something of my earlier times when I’d sing in subway halls for the echo, and perform doo-wop on street corners. But I had a lot of influences, too – singers like Sam Cooke, Brook Benton and Roy Hamilton.

“The song’s success lay in the way Leiber and Stoller took chances, though, borrowing from symphonic scores, and we had a brilliant string arranger in Stan Applebaum.” King added: “I still perform it in all my shows. I’ll do it as long as I’m breathing. I’m so proud it has stood the test of time.”