‘Stay’ singer Maurice Williams dead at 86

nme.com:

Jackson Browne, the Four Seasons and Cyndi Lauper.Decades later, the song featured in Dirty Dancing, and became a hit with a different generation.

Williams wrote the track when he was 15 years old, inspired by his high-school sweetheart.He later told ClassicBands it only took him half an hour to write. “It took me about 30 minutes to write ‘Stay,’ then I threw it away,” he said. “We were looking for songs to record as Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs.“I was over at my girlfriend’s house playing the tape of songs I had written when her little sister said: ‘Please do the song with the high voice in it.’ I knew she meant ‘Stay.’ She was about 12 years old and I said to myself, ‘She’s the age of record buying,’ and the rest is history.

I thank God for her.”The ‘College Girl’ singer grew up in Lancaster, South Carolina. He had a musical upbringing and would sing in church and take piano lessons from his sister.

Influenced by groups like the Orioles, he formed a gospel group, named the Junior Harmonizers with Earl Gainey, a friend from Barr Street High School.At 16, he and the additional members of the group – William Massey, Willie Jones and Norman Wade – went to Nashville for an audition, and secured a contract with Excello Records and were renamed the Gladiolas.‘Little Darlin’ was their first hit and went on the feature in American Graffiti.