Bonnie Jean Brown (July 31, 1938 – July 16, 2016) was an American country music singer and member of the Browns, a trio popular in the 1950s. Bonnie Brown was born in Sparkman, Arkansas into a musical family. In 1955, at age 18, she joined her older sister Maxine Brown and brother Jim Ed Brown, who were already performing as a duo, to form the musical trio the Browns. Signed by RCA Victor in 1956, the trio scored their biggest hit when their folk-pop single “The Three Bells” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop and country charts. The single held the No. 1 spot on the pop charts for 4 weeks, and on the country charts for ten.
The Browns joined the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1965 and disbanded in 1967.
Unlike her siblings, Bonnie did not pursue a solo music career after the Browns dissolved, though the trio did reunite twice: in the 1980s, and in 2006 for a TV special Country Pop Legends.
In 2015, the trio was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
On September 28, 2015, she announced that she had been diagnosed with stage 4 adenocarcinoma right lung cancer. Brown died of the illness on July 16, 2016, fifteen days before her 78th birthday. She was survived by her daughter, Kelly Ring, co-anchor of the evening news at WTVT-TV in Tampa, Florida.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_Brown_(musician)
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Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths…
July 2016
20: André Isoir, 81, French organist; Lawrence Minors, 73, Bermudian calypso bassist.
19: Garry Marshall, 81, American director, producer, writer and actor (Happy Days, Pretty Woman, Murphy Brown), pneumonia; Tamás Somló, 68, Hungarian musician and singer (Omega, Locomotiv GT), cancer.
18: Mubarak Begum, 80, Indian playback singer; Karina Jensen, Danish singer (Cartoons), cancer (death announced on this date); Stewart Pearce, American opera executive (Metropolitan Opera), developer of Tessitura.
17: David Horowitz, 86, American show business publicist.
16: Bonnie Brown, 77, American country singer (The Browns), lung cancer; Gary S. Paxton, 77, American record producer (“Monster Mash”) and singer-songwriter (Skip & Flip, The Hollywood Argyles); Alan Vega, 78, American singer and musician (suicide); Claude Williamson, 89, American jazz pianist.
15: Erik Petersen, 38, American punk rock musician (Mischief Brew); Roland Prince, 69, Antiguan jazz guitarist.
13: El Lebrijano, 74, Spanish flamenco singer; Steven Young, British musician (Colourbox, MARRS) and songwriter (“Pump Up the Volume”).
12: Gregg Smith, 84, American conductor and composer, heart attack.