BJ Thomas (BJ Thomas), a Grammy Award-winning singer, has achieved success on the pop, country and gospel charts, and has won such as “I can’t believe it”, “Raindrops make me addicted to my head” and Popular singles like “Fucked with Emotions”. already dead. He was 78 years old.

Thomas’ public relations officer Jeremy Westby said in a statement that Thomas announced in March that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and that he died of a concomitant disease at his home in Arlington, Texas on Saturday. disease.

Billy Joe Thomas (Billy Joe Thomas) is a Hugo native of Hugo, Oklahoma. He grew up in Houston. In 1966, he used the gospel style cover work of Hank Williams (Hank Williams). I’m lonely, I can cry” has a breakthrough and continues to sell millions of records, and has dozens of record genres hits. In 1976, he became number one among popular, adult contemporary and country listeners for “(Hey, you can’t play) another person did the wrong song”. In the same year, his “My Hometown” became one of the first gospel albums to receive platinum certification, with more than 1 million copies sold.

Dionne Warwick (Dionne Warwick), who played Duo with Thomas, sent a tweet on Saturday to express condolences.

“I express my sincere condolences to the family of one of my favorite duo partners, BJ Thomas. I will miss him because I know there are so many others too. My friend rests in peace,” she said.

Thomas (Thomas)’s signature record is “Raindrops Make Me Fall on My Head”. This is a hit song and won the Oscar for Best Original Song. This is part of the soundtrack of one of the biggest movies of 1969. This It’s the disrespectful West “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Boy.” Thomas is not performing a whimsical ballad composed of Burt Bacharach and Hal David The first choice. Ray Stevens rejected the songwriter. But his passionate, soulful tenor fits the easygoing mood of this song, when Butch (Paul Newman) told Sundance Boy (Robert Redford)’s girlfriend Aita Press When (Katharine Ross) showed his new bike, his mood was immortal in the live movie.

Since then, everyone from “The Simpsons” to “Forrest Gump” has heard “Raindrops” and was selected into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013. However, not everyone was satisfied at first. Thomas was recovering from laryngitis when recording the vocal cord version, and his vocals were harsher than the separately released soundtrack. At the same time, Redford doubted whether the song still belongs to “Butch Cassidy”.

“When the movie was released, I was very picky-did the song match the movie? Redford told USA Today in 2019. It didn’t rain at that time. What was wrong with me.”

Thomas later said that the “raindrops” phenomenon has increased dependence on drugs and alcohol, which can be traced back to his teenage years, when a record producer in Houston advised him to take amphetamine to keep him energetic. He often toured and recorded, taking a lot of medicine every day. By 1976, when “(Hey, you can’t play) another person did the wrong song” ranked first, he felt that he was already “ranked 1000th.”

He said on the “Debby Campbell Happy Hour Show” in 2020: “My addicts and problems put me at the bottom.” He quoted with his wife Gloria Richardson. Shared “mental awakening” to help him get clean.

Thomas was rarely sought after by pop music after the mid-1970s, but he continued to rank first on the country charts, which included “whether it happened to old-fashioned love” or “the new look of an old lover”. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was also a top gospel and inspirational singer. He won two Dove Awards and five Grammy Awards, including the 1979 Grammy Award, and won the “Master The best gospel performance of “Prayers”.

Fans of the 1980s sitcom “Growing Pains” heard him as the singer of the show’s theme song. He also participated in many film performances, including “Jory” and “Jake’s Corner”, and often toured. Recent recordings include “Living Room Music”, which includes guest appearances by Lyle Lovett, Vince Gill and Richard Marx. He originally planned to record in Muscle Shoals, Alabama in 2020, but the meeting was postponed due to the epidemic.

Thomas married Richardson in 1968 and has three daughters: Paige, Nora and Erin. He and his wife worked in the 1982 memoir “In Tone: Finding a Good Life”. His book “My Hometown” came out in 1978 and was co-authored by Jerry B. Jenkins, who was later co-authored by Tim LaHaye (Tim LaHaye) of the best-selling million-book ” “Zuo Zhuan” is famous for religious novels.

In addition to music, Thomas also liked baseball as a child and began to call himself BJ because so many minor league teammates are also known as Billy Joe. When he was a teenager, he sang in the church and joined a local rock band Triumphs. He will live with him in his 20s. He likes Ernest Tubbs, Hank Williams and other country music performers that his parents like, but he himself is influenced by what he hears on the radio or on stage It was inspired by the soul, rhythm and blues singers seen on it, especially Jackie Wilson, whose ballad “To Be Be Thomas (Thomas) later covered it and adopted it as a guide for his life.”

“I grew up under quite abnormal conditions and experienced years of alcoholism and drug addiction, so this song has always been my touchstone. When you accept drugs and alcohol at such a young age, it will become a must for the rest of your life. Facing things,” he said in an interview with the Huffington Post in 2014.

What a hindrance these addictions have caused me, a period of heartbreak and failure. But that song left me a little bit of lightning. This is the essence of the whole thing. Love and be loved. It takes a lifetime to complete. This has always been an important part of my emotions. “