Singer, LV headliner Cochran dies at 78

For a few years in the 1960s and 1970s, one of the music world’s most extraordinary showmen was a Georgia-born rhythm-and-blues singer named Wayne Cochran. Inspired by the vocal styles of soul superstars Otis Redding and James Brown, he was once billed as the “White Knight of Soul.”

With his gravelly voice, gravity-defying hairstyle and outrageously dynamic performances, Cochran became a cult favorite and was an influence on Elvis Presley.

He had an unforgettable stage presence that led entertainer Jackie Gleason to call him “the wildest guy I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Cochran died Tuesday at his home in Miramar, Florida. He was 78.

The cause was cancer, said a grandson, Jason Cochran.

Cochran began his career in the 1950s, singing country and rockabilly music and writing songs. One of his tunes, “Last Kiss,” became a major hit for two other groups, 35 years apart.

In the 1960s, he was a headliner in Las Vegas and appeared on national television and at the Apollo theater in Harlem. He recorded several albums and was sometimes proclaimed “the King of Blue-Eyed Soul” and “the white James Brown,” after whom he patterned much of his stage style.

“We were all about performing,” Cochran told the Miami New Times newspaper in 1997. “We had lines waiting outside clubs for basically 25 years.”

In Las Vegas, where he once made $14,000 a week, Cochran began wearing custom-designed capes and rhinestone-studded jumpsuits — a style later picked up by Presley, who also borrowed some of Cochran’s songs.

“Last Kiss” became a hit in 1964 for J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers and again in 1999 for Pearl Jam, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard pop charts both times.

Cochran seldom performed the song himself, especially after becoming enamored of the music of Redding, Brown and other Georgia-bred soul singers. He played bass on some of Redding’s early recordings.

“All that I am today is because of those two men: Otis Redding and James Brown,” he told Atlanta’s Creative Loafing newspaper in 2007.

Cochran had lived in South Florida since 1965.

His song “Goin’ Back to Miami” was recorded in 1980 by the Blues Brothers, fronted by comic actors Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.