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AP
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Wayne Osmond, a singer, guitarist and founding member of the million-selling family band The Osmonds, known for 1970s teen hits such 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 in a Salt Lake City hospital after a “severe stroke.” The Associated Press reported Osmond’s death.

“I have never known a man who had more humility. A man without any guile,” Merrill wrote. “A person who 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 who grew up in a Mormon household in Ogden, Utah. The siblings’ musical 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 reached their peak as a quintet in the early 1970s, with younger brother Donny Osmond becoming 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 a white counterpart to the Jacksons’ lead singer, Michael Jackson.

The Osmonds’ popularity waned in the mid-1970s, although Donny and Marie Osmond both had successful careers as solo artists and as a brother-sister duo.

In the 1980s, Wayne Osmond teamed up 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 as a result of surgery and treatment. After a stroke in 2012, he was no longer able to play the guitar.

“I had a wonderful life. And you know, being able to hear isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, it really isn’t,” he told the Deseret News in 2018. “My favorite thing to do now is take care of my garden. I turn off my hearing aids, numb as a doorknob, turn everything off, it’s really enjoyable.”

Wayne Osmond married Kathlyn White in 1974. They had five children.