LONDON (AP) – Clarinet player Acker Bilk, whose smooth sound topped music charts on both sides of the Atlantic, has died at the age of 85.
Manager Pamela Sutton says Bilk died Sunday at a hospital in Bath, southwestern England. The cause of death was not announced.
Born Bernard Stanley Bilk in 1929, Bilk adopted the name Acker from a local term for friend.
He learned the clarinet as a bored army conscript, stationed in Egypt after World War II, and became one of the stars of Britain’s 1950s “trad jazz” scene.
He was the first U.K act to top the U.S. charts in ’60s, with “Stranger on the Shore.”
Bilk attributed his playing style to losing lost part of a finger in a sledding accident and two teeth in fight at school.