NEW YORK — Wayne Osmond, a singer, guitarist and founding member of the million-selling family act The Osmonds, who were known for such 1970s 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 page that Wayne died this week at a Salt Lake City hospital after suffering a “massive stroke.”
“I’ve never known a man that had more humility. A man with absolutely no guile,” Merrill wrote. “An individual that was quick to forgive and had the ability to show unconditional love to everyone he ever met.”
Wayne Osmond was the fourth oldest of nine children raised in a Mormon household in Ogden, Utah, and the second oldest among the musical performers. The siblings’ 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 younger brother Donny Osmond the 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 by the mid-1970s, although Donny and Marie Osmond both enjoyed successful careers as solo performers and as a brother-sister duo.
In the 1980s, Wayne Osmond regrouped with Alan, Merrill and Jay as a country act 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 from the surgery and treatment. A stroke in 2012 left him unable to play guitar.
“I’ve had a wonderful life. And you know, being able to hear is not all that it’s cracked up to be, it really isn’t,” he told the Deseret News in 2018. “My favorite thing now is to take care of my yard. I turn my hearing aids off, deaf as a doorknob, tune everything out, it’s really joyful.”
Wayne Osmond married Kathlyn White in 1974. They had five children.