NEW YORK – Maurice Williams, a rhythm-and-blues singer and composer who became one of music’s biggest one-hit acts with his backing group The Zodiacs with the classic ballad “Stay,” has died. He was 86.
According to a statement from the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame, Williams died on August 6. No further details were immediately provided.
Williams had been a composer and musician since childhood and had played in various harmony groups when he began a studio session with the Zodiacs in 1960.
Towards the end, they unexpectedly made history with their recording of “Stay,” which Williams had scribbled down as a teenager a few years earlier.
As his fellow singers chanted “Stay!”, Williams performed most of the song and his plea to an unnamed girl. Halfway through, he stepped back, allowing Shane Gaston to take the lead and deliver one of rock’s most unforgettable falsetto chants – “OH, WON’T YOU STAY, JUST A LITTLE BIT LONGER!”
At just over 1 minute and 30 seconds long, the song was one of the shortest chart-toppers of the rock era, reaching number 1 on the Billboard pop charts in 1960 and being the group’s only major hit.
But it was covered early on by the Hollies and the Four Seasons, among others, and remained a popular oldie, best known for its live performance by Jackson Browne on his 1977 album “Running On Empty.”
“Stay” was also performed by Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and others at the 1979 “No Nukes” concert at Madison Square Garden and appeared in its original version on the soundtrack of the 1987 blockbuster “Dirty Dancing”.
The inspiration for the song comes from Mary Shropshire, her great love as a teenager.
“(Mary) was the one I was trying to get to stay a little longer,” Williams told North Carolina magazine Our State in 2012. “Of course she couldn’t.”
Williams’ career was otherwise a story of disappointments. He wrote another falsetto showpiece, “Little Darlin’,” and recorded it with the Gladiolas in 1957. But the song became a hit for a white group, the Diamonds, instead. In 1965, Williams and the Zodiacs recorded a promising ballad, “May I.” But their label, Vee-Jay, went bankrupt just as the song was released, and “May I” later became a hit for another white group, Bill Deal & the Rhondels.
Like many stars of the early rock era, Williams became a fixture on oldies tours and tribute appearances, and also recorded the albums “Let This Night Last” and “Back to Basics.” He settled in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the mid-1960s and was elected to the state’s Hall of Fame in 2010. He is survived by his wife, Emily.
Born in Lancaster, South Carolina, Williams sang with family members in church throughout his childhood. As a teenager, he formed a gospel group, the Junior Harmonizers, which later became the Royal Charms as they evolved toward secular music, and then the Zodiacs, in honor of a Ford car they drove. By now a prolific writer, it took him little time to complete what would become his hit.
“It took me about thirty minutes to write ‘Stay’ and then I threw it away,” he later told www.classicsbands.com. “We were looking for songs to record as Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs. I was at my girlfriend’s house playing the tape of the songs I had written when her little sister said, ‘Please do the song with the high voice.’ I knew she meant ‘Stay.’ She was about 12 years old and I said to myself, ‘She’s the age when you buy records,’ and the rest is history. I thank God for her.”
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