R&B legend Ben E. King, best known for his hit song “Stand By Me,” died Thursday, his publicist told NBC News. He was 76.
King, whose real name was Benjamin Earl Nelson, had a string of hits that cracked the Billboard Top 40 in the 1960s and 1970s. But none were as popular as “Stand By Me,” which was voted one of the Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Just last month, the 1961 track was among 25 recordings selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in its national registry.
King died Thursday, his publicist, Phil Brown, said, without providing any details about about the cause of death.
King was born in Henderson, North Carolina, on Sept. 28, 1938, and moved to Harlem when he was nine years old. He joined a doo-wop group in 1958 that eventually came to be known as The Drifters. They scored a number of successful R&B singles.
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In 1960, after a contract dispute. he left the group and assumed his stage name out on his own.
“Stand By Me,” King’s second single during his solo career, was re-issued in 1986 after it was used as the theme song to the movie of the same name.









