Maurice Williams, the singer and songwriter whose 1960 single “Stay,” recorded with his doo-wop group the Zodiacs, shot to No. 1 and became a cover-song staple for a long line of musical acts, including the Four Seasons, the Hollies and Jackson Browne, died on Aug. 6 in Charlotte, N.C. He was 86.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Ron Henderson, a former member of the Zodiacs.
Mr. Williams owed a considerable career debt to a girl he dated when he was 15. She provided the inspiration for his two biggest hits: “Little Darlin’,” recorded when his group was called the Gladiolas, which hit No. 41 on the Billboard pop chart in 1957; and “Stay,” which briefly topped the chart in 1960.
Mr. Williams recalled the origins of “Stay,” his only chart-topping single, in a 2018 video interview. “This young lady I was going with, she was over to my house, and this particular night, her brother was supposed to pick her up at 10,” he said. “So he came, and I said, ‘Well, you can stay a little longer.’ And she said, ‘No, I gotta go.’”
The next morning he woke up and wove that and other snippets from their conversation — “Now, your daddy don’t mind/And your mommy don’t mind” — into song form, building to its indelible signature line, which, seven years later, the Zodiacs’ Henry Gaston would render in a celestial falsetto: “Oh, won’t you stay, just a little bit longer.”
Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ recording of the song stood out not only for its infectious hooks but also for its eye-blink length — slightly over 90 seconds.
“We wanted to make it short so it would get more airplay,” Mr. Williams said. And, he added, “It worked.”
On Nov. 21, 1960, “Stay” peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. “I thought the Top 10 was big,” Mr. Williams said in a 2015 interview with The Charlotte Observer. “But when we hit No. 1, oh man, we were superstars.”
Although Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” knocked the song off its perch the next week, “Stay” lived on for decades as perhaps pop music’s most glorious example of recycling.
The British band the Hollies, featuring Graham Nash, hit No. 16 on the British charts with their uptempo, Merseybeat-style take in 1963. The next year, the Four Seasons released their highly syncopated version, which shaved another few seconds off the original’s length and rose to No. 16 on the Hot 100.
The song still had plenty of life in it. Mr. Browne created a mini-medley by tacking his own interpretation onto his song “The Load Out” as the final track on his platinum-selling 1977 album, “Running on Empty.” The song became a live staple for Mr. Browne, with its ringing falsetto from his guitar-wizard sidekick David Lindley and its tweaked lyrics, directed at an audience and not a girl:
People, stay just a little bit longer
We wanna play just a little bit longer
Now the promoter don’t mind
And the union don’t mind …
In 2003, Cyndi Lauper provided another notable take on the song with her Caribbean-inflected spin.
“We had so many covers of ‘Stay,’” Mr. Williams told The Observer, “it’s hard to keep up with.”
Mr. Williams was born on April 26, 1938, in Lancaster, S.C. He was already showing off his vocal chops in his church choir as a young child. He and his friend Earl Gainey formed a group called the Royal Charms at the suggestion of the director of his high school glee club, and soon he was coming up with his own material.
“We would hear WLAC radio from Nashville every night,” he said in a 2011 interview published on the music website Riveting Riffs, “and when I started writing, I said, ‘My songs sound just as good as what I am listening to on the radio.’”
When he was 16, Mr. Williams and the other members of his sweet-harmonizing group — its original incarnation included Mr. Gainey, William Massey, Willie Jones and Norman Wade — headed to Nashville for an audition and secured a contract with Excello Records, whose flower-loving owner suggested they rechristen themselves the Gladiolas. (Mr. Gaston joined the group in 1960.)
“Little Darlin’” became the group’s first hit, although their version was largely supplanted in doo-wop lore by a hit cover released just two weeks later by a white Canadian group called the Diamonds. Their take, which featured richer production and a more ambitious arrangement, was later heard in the landmark 1973 film “American Graffiti.”
Regardless, Mr. Williams, at 17, reaped a windfall from the songwriting rights, and, with the success of his group, turned down a music scholarship to Allen University in Columbia, S.C.
By 1960, the group had signed with Herald Records, a New York label, and changed its name, inspired by the Ford Zodiac, a British model they saw in a showroom. In need of new material, Mr. Williams dug up his old song “Stay,” which Al Silver, the label’s owner, loved — although he insisted that they change the line about having “another smoke” to “another dance,” to make it more radio-friendly.
The group notched other minor hits with “I Remember” (1961) and “Come Along” (1961). The Zodiacs’ 1965 single “May I” sold well but failed to chart.
Mr. Williams’s survivors include his wife of 63 years, Emily Williams.
Mr. Williams’s career continued after the doo-wop era ended. He performed for decades with various Zodiac lineups.
Fans showed a lasting appetite for “Stay,” his most famous song, which hit home with a new generation when it was included in the enduring 1987 film “Dirty Dancing.”
Over the years, Mr. Williams praised many of the song’s cover versions. In the 2018 interview, he singled out Cyndi Lauper’s cover as “fantastic.” He also praised the Four Seasons: “I liked their version more than anybody’s — except mine.”