Jack Jones, singer of The Love Boat TV show theme, dies aged 86

Jack Jones was a Grammy-winning singer who had hits with Lollipops and Roses, Wives and Lovers and The Impossible Dream. He recorded about 20 albums in the 1960s, but his most famous song is the theme to the TV series The Love Boat.

The Aaron Spelling-produced show started in 1977 and Jones’ version was the theme song for the first eight series - more than 200 episodes.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, which spoke to his stepdaughter Nicole Whitty, Jones died on Wednesday night at Eisenhower Medical in Rancho Mirage, California, after a two-year battle with leukaemia. 

Jones’s mother Irene Hervey was an Emmy-nominated actress who spent more than 50 years in film and on television, while his father, tenor Allan Jones, portrayed the romantic male lead in the 1936 film Show Boat, in the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, and also had his own hit song The Donkey Serenade.

Featuring words and music by Charles Fox and Paul Williams, the tune added a new layer to Jones’ decades-long career.

“Because of The Love Boat theme, everything was great on ships after that,” Jones told Las Vegas Magazine in 2016. “I did six weeks a year. They gave me the best suite on the ship, and it was the S.S. Norway. We just had a great time.”