Ronnie Dove, the 1960s pop crooner who launched his career in Baltimore clubs and later scored a run of national hits, died Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, at his home in Pasadena, Maryland. He was 91 — eight days after his birthday.
His wife, Marty, announced the death on Facebook. A fan page had recently said Dove was in hospice care.
Dove was one of the mid-1960s’ most consistent pop balladeers, a strong-tenor singer whose records stood apart from the British Invasion and Motown sounds around them. Over his career he was credited with 23 consecutive regional, national and internationally charted Top 10 records. In the mid-1960s alone, 11 of his songs reached Billboard’s Top 40. He appeared on national television programs including “American Bandstand,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “Where the Action Is,” “The Mike Douglas Show” and “The Merv Griffin Show.”
His best-known hits included “Say You,” “Right or Wrong,” “Little Bit of Heaven,” “One Kiss for Old Times’ Sake,” “Cry” and “Happy Summer Days.” “Say You” gave him his first chart breakthrough in 1964. “Right or Wrong,” a cover of Wanda Jackson’s country song, became his biggest pop success after Elvis Presley, whom Dove met in a Nashville studio, urged him to end the record on a high note — advice Dove later said became his trademark. He performed “Cry” on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on June 25, 1967. In 2019, “Happy Summer Days” was used in an Amazon commercial.
Born Ronald Eugene Dove on Sept. 7, 1935, in Herndon, Virginia, he learned to sing from his grandmother and performed as a child. After high school he joined the U.S. Coast Guard and was stationed near Baltimore in the 1950s. On nights off he sang in local clubs, including long stretches at Elmer’s, then formed Ronnie Dove and the Belltones (also billed as the Beltones). The group worked the East Coast club circuit for years and recorded early singles before Dove went solo and signed with Diamond Records in Nashville.
When pop radio shifted in the late 1960s and 1970s, Dove moved toward country music, placing records on the country charts for Decca, Melodyland and other labels. He later ran a nightclub, stepped away from performing in 1989 to care for his ailing mother, and returned to the stage after her death in 1991. He kept working the Baltimore area and the East Coast oldies circuit for decades, sometimes singing the national anthem at Orioles games, and considered Maryland more home than Virginia. “Everybody around Maryland is so friendly,” he told WBAL in 2012. “I love the people. I love the Chesapeake Bay. I love Maryland.”