Jack Jones dead at 86: Grammy-winning singer of The Love Boat theme song passes away
Grammy award-winning Jack Jones, who sang the iconic Love Boat theme song, has died aged 86.
The singer and actor died on Wednesday evening, his family announced KESQ.
His stepdaughter Nicole Whitty shared The Hollywood Reporter that Jones died after a two-year battle with leukemia. He died at Eisenhower Medical in Rancho Mirage, California, she said.
In addition to the Love Boat theme song, Jones has also released the popular songs Wives and Lovers and Lollipops and Roses.
Jones earned two Grammy awards during his career and regularly appeared on variety shows in the 1960s and 1970s, according to KESQ.
Grammy award-winning Jack Jones, who sang the iconic Love Boat theme song, has died at 86; pictured 2010
In addition to singing, Jones was also an actor with credits in 1982’s Airplane II: The Sequel and 2013’s American Hustle.
Jones was a long-time resident of the Coachella Valley and received a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in 2003.
“Thanks to The Love Boat theme, everything was great on ships after that,” he said Las Vegas Magazine during a 2016 interview. ‘I did that six weeks a year. They gave me the best suite on the ship, and it was the SS Norway. We just had a great time.’
Show business was in Jones’ blood; his mother Irene Hervey was an actress with decades of film and TV experience, according to The Hollywood Reporter. She was even nominated for an Emmy.
Jones’ father, Allan Jones, was also an actor and singer behind the song The Donkey Serenade.
According to THR, the song Love Boat was released as a single by Jones in 1979.
And the singer didn’t mind poking fun at the love song every now and then — in Airplane II: The Sequel, he briefly appeared as a lounge singer performing the song.
“So it’s not the best song in the world,” Jones once told a reporter Washingtonpost. “But I think almost every singer would like to have a song that he or she identifies with.”
Jones pictured with wife Eleonora in 2015
Jones performing at the BBC Television Theater in London in 1972
Jones won his first Grammy for best male solo vocal performance in 1964 for Lollipops and Roses, which peaked at No. 12 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, according to THR.
His second Grammy came with the 1942 song Wives and Lovers, a song he credits with really helping launch his career.
“The people at Kapp Records, who I was recording for at the time, put the tune on the B-side of the single, but the disc jockeys turned it around and played it anyway,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1993.
Jones’s smooth vocals served as the theme for the hit series Love Boat