Bobby Sherman, the singer and actor whose boyish good looks and sweet if unshowy vocals made him a teen idol in the overlapping worlds of television and pop music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, has died. He was 81.

His death was announced Tuesday by wife Brigitte Poublon Sherman via friend John Stamos' social media.

"It is with the heaviest heart that I share the passing of my beloved husband, Bobby Sherman," she wrote. "Bobby left this world holding my hand — just as he held up our life with love, courage, and unwavering grace through all 29 beautiful years of marriage. I was his Cinderella, and he was my prince charming. Even in his final days, he stayed strong for me. That's who Bobby was — brave, gentle, and full of light."

No cause of death was given, nor was a specific date of death.

A textbook heartthrob of the shaggy-haired SoCal variety, Sherman put four singles in the Top 10 of Billboard's Hot 100 in less than a year, starting with Little Woman, which peaked at No. 3 in October 1969; after that came La La La (If I Had You), which got to No. 9 in January 1970, Easy Come, Easy Go, which hit the same position three months later, and Julie, Do Ya Love Me, which reached No. 5 in September 1970. The cheerful, catchy tunes — each a certified gold-seller — helped define the bubblegum pop sound that also encompassed the Archies, Tommy Roe and the Ohio Express.

At the same time that he was scaling the charts, Sherman starred on ABC's Here Come The Brides, a Western comedy series set shortly after the Civil War in which he played one of the owners of a family logging business determined to find love interests for the company's lumberjacks. The multimedia exposure drew the adoration of the era's teenyboppers, who raced to spend their allowance money on T-shirts, lunch boxes and magazines featuring the face of Bubblegum Bobby, as he was known.

"I could have sang Auld Lang Syne and they would have bought it," he said of his rabid fan base in a 1989 interview with The Times. "My audience was so young and impressionable, they would buy everything associated with Bobby Sherman."

In addition to his wife, Sherman is survived by sons Tyler and Christopher and six grandchildren. – Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service