Jack Jones, the silky Grammy-winning crooner who had hits with “Lollipops and Roses,” “Wives and Lovers” and “The Inconceivable Dream” earlier than inviting TV viewers to set a course for journey on The Love Boat, has died. He was 86.
Jones died Wednesday night time at Eisenhower Medical in Rancho Mirage, California, after a two-year battle with leukemia, his stepdaughter Nicole Whitty advised The Hollywood Reporter.
Jones was born right into a showbiz household. His mom, Irene Hervey, was an Emmy-nominated actress who spent greater than 50 years in movie and on tv. His father, tenor Allan Jones, portrayed the romantic male lead in Present Boat (1936) and within the Marx Brothers’ A Night time on the Opera (1935) and A Day on the Races (1937), and he managed a success tune of his personal with “The Donkey Serenade.”
For eight seasons and greater than 200 episodes of ABC’s The Love Boat beginning in 1977, Jones extolled the virtues of romance on the excessive seas — “Love, thrilling and new. Come aboard. We’re anticipating you” — together with his theme tune for the Aaron Spelling-produced sequence. (Dionne Warwick took over in season 9.)
That includes phrases and music by Charles Fox and Paul Williams, the tune added a brand new layer to Jones’ decades-long profession.
“Due to The Love Boat theme, the whole lot was nice on ships after that,” Jones advised Las Vegas Journal in 2016. “I did six weeks a 12 months. They gave me the most effective suite on the ship, and it was the S.S. Norway. We simply had a good time.”
Jones launched “The Love Boat Theme” as a single in 1979, with a canopy of Barry Manilow’s “Able to Take a Likelihood Once more” on the B-side, and the tune grew to become a live performance staple. However that didn’t imply he wasn’t above poking enjoyable at it.
In Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), he could be seen performing the theme tune in a cameo as a tuxedo-clad lounge singer. And when Sandra Bullock will get prepared for digital intercourse with Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man (1993), she units the temper by taking part in his tune.
Identified for his breezy, girls’ man persona onstage, Jones was married six instances, most notably to actress Jill St. John for barely greater than a 12 months within the late Sixties. He additionally was romantically linked to actress Susan George.
In 1959, Jones landed his first recording contract with Capitol Data, which launched his debut album, This Love of Mine. On that was his spritely rendition of the Steve Allen composition “This May Be the Begin of One thing Huge.”
Capitol, which was making an attempt to show Jones right into a rockabilly singer, dropped him, however Kapp Data picked him up, and he struck gold proper out of the gate with “Lollipops and Roses,” recorded whereas he was on two weeks’ depart from the U.S. Air Drive Reserve.
A romantic ballad written by Tony Velona, it proved to be excellent for Jones’ velvety tones. The one reached No. 12 on Billboard’s Grownup Up to date chart, earned him a Grammy in 1962 for finest male solo vocal efficiency and made him an inheritor obvious to Frank Sinatra.
After he discovered success a 12 months later with “Name Me Irresponsible,” which Sinatra had recorded, Jones collected one other Grammy in 1964 for “Wives and Lovers.” The bouncy Burt Bacharach-Hal David composition rose to No. 14 on Billboard’s Sizzling 100 and was nominated for Document of the Yr however misplaced to Henry Mancini’s “Days of Wine and Roses.”
Kapp “put the tune on the B-side of the only,” Jones advised the Los Angeles Instances in 1993, “however disc jockeys turned it over and performed it anyway.”
Through the years, “Wives and Lovers” grew to become one other certainly one of his requirements. However with lyrics that mainly instructed ladies to kowtow to their husbands to maintain them devoted — “Don’t suppose as a result of there’s a hoop in your finger, you needn’t attempt anymore” — it didn’t age nicely. By the ’90s, there was a rising outcry to ban the tune. Jones addressed the backlash by altering the phrases to poke enjoyable at males. However he by no means deserted the tune.
“Because it’s a politically incorrect tune, I begin it out with a disclaimer,” he mentioned. “I hear that girls nonetheless name up radio stations, indignant that such a sexist tune is being performed. It’s now a part of historical past, it gained a Grammy, and I meant no hurt after I did it. It made my profession, and I’m grateful for that.”
From left: Singer Allan Jones, actress Irene Hervey, Jack Jones and actress Jill St. John circa 1968.
Courtesy Everett Assortment
John Allan Jones was born in Los Angeles on Jan. 14, 1938. He mentioned he arrived on the identical day that his dad recorded “Donkey Serenade” for RCA Victor. (His father had carried out the tune on horseback for Jeanette MacDonald within the 1937 MGM musical The Firefly.)
Jones was nonetheless in his teenagers when he began recording demos looking for a singing profession. By 1958, he was sharing the stage together with his dad on the Thunderbird Lodge and On line casino in Las Vegas.
“I don’t know if anybody confirmed you my video bio, however originally of it there’s a shot of a newspaper in Las Vegas, and there was my father, and I used to be beneath him for smaller billing,” Jones mentioned. “I received that clip from a buddy of mine, a drummer, who was serving to a man refurbish a home. They have been digging beneath the floorboards and located this newspaper, and that was the newspaper from when my dad and I have been taking part in the Thunderbird.”
Taking it full circle, they carried out one final time collectively in 1980 after they appeared as father and son on an episode of The Love Boat. As Jones remembered it, the storyline was primarily based on a real story.
“It supposedly occurred to Robert Alda and Alan Alda,” he mentioned. “They have been imagined to be doing one thing collectively, working collectively, and Alan pulled out to do one thing that was a giant break for him or one thing like that. And there was a parting of the methods, most likely rather less dramatically than it was on the present we did. And the concept was that the wives tricked us into being on the ship collectively so we may speak.”
On the Billboard Grownup Up to date chart, Jones scored 9 high 10 singles, together with three No. 1s — “The Race Is On” in 1965, “The Inconceivable Dream” in 1966 and “Girl” in 1967.
Jones obtained one other Grammy nom for “The Inconceivable Dream,” the signature tune from Broadway’s Man of La Mancha, and one other in 1998 for the album Jack Jones Paints a Tribute to Tony Bennett.
When filmmakers needed to create that easy-listening ’60s vibe, Jones was certainly one of their go-to guys. He could be heard on the soundtracks for Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Goodfellas (1990), Reckless (1995), Duplex (2003), Bobby (2006) and American Hustle (2013), on which he had a cameo. “Lollipops and Roses” accompanied the tip credit on a 2008 episode of Mad Males.
Along with his stepdaughter Nicole, survivors embody his spouse, Eleonara, whom he married in 2009; his daughters, Crystal and Nicole; one other stepdaughter, Colette; grandchildren Grace, Mercer and Agnes; and his canine, Ivy.
A Las Vegas headliner for seven a long time, he launched greater than 50 albums throughout his profession and continued to carry out into his 80s.
“I desire a tune to make the viewers snigger or make it cry, make a really poignant assertion,” Jones mentioned. “Like John Sebastian’s ‘I Had a Dream.’ The lyric begins, ‘I had a dream, I dreamed we have been all, all proper.’ That’s such an exquisite thought.”
