Jimmy Beaumont | Doo-wop singer, 76

Jimmy Beaumont, 76, lead singer of the doo-wop group the Skyliners and a cowriter of the ballad "Since I Don't Have You," died Saturday at his home in McKeesport, outside his hometown of Pittsburgh, his family said.

Joe Rock, who would eventually manage the Skyliners, was helping to promote Mr. Beaumont's former group, the Crescents, when Rock wrote some lyrics lamenting his girlfriend's departure for flight attendants' school. That was 1958, and Mr. Beaumont was 18.

Mr. Beaumont set the lyrics to music, and a hit was born.

"I had been listening to all the doo-wop groups from that period - the Platters, the Moonglows. I guess just from listening it came out of me," he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2009.

The song has been covered by Barbra Streisand, Patti LaBelle, Art Garfunkel, Don McLean, and even Guns N' Roses. It hit No. 1 on the Cashbox R&B chart and No. 3 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1959.

The Skyliners were the first white group to top the Cashbox R&B charts, and Mr. Beaumont said that when American Bandstand's Dick Clark signed the group to his Caravan of Stars tour, people expected a black act.

"At the Apollo Theater in New York, everyone was laughing and pointing to each other when we came out," he told the newspaper. "They couldn't believe we were a white group. They got real quiet during the song, then when we went into the 'yous,' the women in the audience were all singing along."

The Skyliners had two lesser hits, "This I Swear" and "Pennies from Heaven," before disbanding in 1963. It regrouped and scored a Top 100 hit in 1975 with "Where Have They Gone." That gave the group, with Beaumont as the only original member, enough traction to keep performing through last month. - AP