Lawrence, of popular stage duo Steve & Eydie, dies
NEW YORK — Steve Lawrence, a singer and top stage act who as a solo performer and in tandem with his wife Eydie Gorme kept Tin Pan Alley alive during the rock era, died Thursday. He was 88.
Lawrence, whose hits included “Go Away Little Girl,” died from complications due to Alzheimer’s disease, said Susan DuBow, a spokesperson for the family.
Lawrence and Gorme — or Steve & Eydie — were known for their frequent appearances on talk shows, in night clubs and on the stages of Las Vegas. The duo took inspiration from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and other songwriters.
Soon after Elvis Presley and other rock music pioneers began to dominate radio and records, Lawrence and his wife were approached about changing their style.
“We had a chance to get in on the ground floor of rock ‘n’ roll,” he recalled in a 1989 interview. “It was 1957 and everything was changing, but I wanted to be Sinatra, not Rick Nelson.
“Our audience knows we’re not going to load up on heavy metal or set fire to the drummer — although on some nights we’ve talked about it,” he joked.
Although Lawrence and Gorme were best known as a team, both also had huge solo hits just months apart in the early 1960s.
Lawrence scored first in 1962 with the achingly romantic ballad “Go Away Little Girl,” written by the Brill Building songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. Gorme matched his success the following year with “Blame It on the Bossa Nova,” a bouncy tune about a dance craze of the time that was written by Brill hitmakers Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
By the 1970s, Lawrence and his wife were a top draw in Las Vegas casinos and nightclubs across the country. They also appeared regularly on television, making specials and guesting on various shows.
In the 1980s, when Vegas cut down on headline acts and nightclubs became scarcer, the pair switched to auditoriums and drew large audiences.
“People come with a general idea of what they’re going to get with us,” Lawrence said in 1989. “It’s like a product. They buy a certain cereal and they know what to expect from that package.”
Lawrence launched his professional singing career at age 15. After two failed auditions for “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” TV show, he was accepted on the third try, going on to win the competition and the prize of appearing on Godfrey’s popular daytime radio show for a week.
King Records, impressed by the teenager’s strong, twooctave voice, signed him to a contract. His first record, “Poinciana,” sold more than 100,000 copies, and his high school allowed him to skip classes to promote it with outof-town singing dates.
After several guest appearances on Steve Allen’s television show, Lawrence was hired as a regular. When the program became NBC’s “Tonight” in 1954, he went with it, singing and exchanging quips with Allen. The series set the pattern for the long-running “The Tonight Show.”