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Jimmy Sohns, Who Sang ‘Gloria’ With Shadows of Knight, Dead at 75

The singer, who kept the band alive after its big hit in 1966, had a stroke earlier in the week.

Jimmy Sohns, lead singer of the 1960s band Shadows of Knight—best known for the hit “Gloria”—has died at the age of 75 after suffering a stroke earlier in the week.

Shadows of Knight, based in Chicago, put out three albums in five years, and their big single—originally written and recorded by Van Morrison, but not the same later recorded by Laura Branigan—hit No. 10 on the Billboard charts.

They had a few other lesser hits before the group all but disintegrated, leaving Sohns to re-form it and carry on. They put out one more album in 1970—and then again during a comeback of sorts in 2006.

Sohns was inducted into the Chicago Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame in 2005 and later told an interviewer he could not believe his dreams had come true.

“When I was really young, and you’re growing up and the relatives come over at Thanksgiving and Christmas and always ask you what you’re gonna be when you grow up,” he said. “I always told them a baseball star or a rock ’n roll singer. And, it was weird that it happened.”

He said Shadows of Knight went from playing for teen clubs in Chicago to the big time almost overnight.

“We were a teen club band. Teen clubs and concerts. We had this huge following. The record was taken over to the radio station before there was any printed acetates of it,” he said. “It was taken over on a reel-to-reel tape and it sold over 100,000 copies in 10 days. The rest is rock ’n roll history.”

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Tracy Connor

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