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Singer with the Walker Brothers, one of the most popular bands of the 1960s
While British groups were conquering the American pop charts in the mid-1960s, the American-born Walker Brothers were a three-man invasion of Britain. They were one of the most popular and highly paid bands of the era, dominating the British hit parade. The trio, who were not related, and none of whom was really called Walker, comprised the lead singer Scott Engel, the drummer Gary Leeds and the harmony singer John Maus, who has died of liver cancer, aged 67.
Maus and Engel were part of the Los Angeles music scene, playing as session musicians and making occasional recordings of their own, when in 1964 they met Leeds, who had recently returned from a successful tour of Britain with another American pop singer, PJ Proby. Leeds convinced them that they could emulate Proby and make it big across the Atlantic and, with plane tickets paid for by Leeds's father, they landed at Heathrow in February 1965.
A recording contract was soon arranged with Philips, whose musical director, Johnny Franz, was already masterminding Dusty Springfield's hits. Franz and the arranger Ivor Raymonde took a similar approach to the Walker Brothers – now known as Scott Walker, Gary Walker and John Walker – supplementing their beat ballads with lavish orchestral arrangements.
Their first single, Love Her, had been recorded in the US, and was a minor hit, but the first Franz-produced number, Make It Easy On Yourself, composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, shot straight to No 1. It capitalised on the similarity of the vocal harmonies to those of the Righteous Brothers (whose You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling had topped the British chart earlier in 1965) and was the first of five top 20 hits over the next year. My Ship Is Coming In was followed by a second No 1, the doleful The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, then (Baby) You Don't Have to Tell Me and Another Tear Falls.
There was a constant round of television appearances and tours. The Walker Brothers appeared frequently on Ready Steady Go!, even having a whole show built around them. On their first package tour, alongside Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, they were banned from the stage of the Blackpool North Pier, whose management feared a riot by the trio's fans. Other tours found them variously performing on the same bill as the Rolling Stones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Jimi Hendrix, who chose the first night of the 1967 tour to burn his guitar onstage for the first time.
This proved to be the Walker Brothers' final tour and they announced their dissolution in May 1967 after a London show at the Tooting Granada. They were frustrated with their lack of success in the US and were wilting under the pressure of stardom. Scott described them as "the drunkest group ever" and John told an interviewer that "I've known Scott for four years but now I can't even talk to him any more."
Each of the trio made solo recordings. John Walker had a small hit in Britain with Annabella (1967) and made two albums that sold poorly. In contrast, Scott Walker went on to a solo career that was by turns commercially successful and critically acclaimed. There was a Walker Brothers reunion between 1975 and 1978, resulting in two more albums and a hit with the Tom Rush song No Regrets, before they once again went their separate ways. John and Gary chose No Regrets as the title of a joint autobiography published in 2009.
John was born in New York City but a few years later his parents, John and Regina Maus, moved the family to the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. Young John had his first taste of show business as a child actor in Hello Mom, a television sitcom starring Betty Hutton. As a teenager, he was smitten by rock'n'roll and learned to play the piano and electric guitar. His proficiency was such that he briefly gave lessons to a near neighbour, Carl Wilson, later to be a member of the Beach Boys.
With his elder sister Judy, John next formed a small group to play at local dances, billed variously as John and Judy and Judy and the Gents. One of the Gents was Scott Engel,on bass guitar. After Judy left the group to concentrate on her studies, John, Scott and the drummer Al Schneider were hired in 1963 as a house band at Gazzara's, a leading Los Angeles nightclub, where they performed as the Walker Brothers Trio. One explanation of this choice of name was that John had used the name Walker to acquire a false ID so that he could play in clubs while under age.
After the Walker Brothers split up, John lived in Brighton for several years before returning to California in the 1980s. There he studied sound engineering and built his own home studio. He recorded a solo album of his own compositions in 2000 but made few live appearances until Dave Dee invited him in 2004 to join the Solid Silver 60s Show, an annual nostalgia-fest which wends its way round Britain. John sang the Walker Brothers' hits to rapturous audiences in that year, 2007 and 2009. He made another solo album, Just for You, in 2007, with his wife Cynthia and sister Judy on backing vocals, and Schneider on drums.
He is survived by Judy, Cynthia and four children, Jamie, Nickoletta, Adam and Heather.
• John Walker (John Joseph Maus), musician, born 12 November 1943; died 7 May 2011