Singer Billy Scott Dies at 70

R&B and beach music singer Billy Scott has died, The Associated Press reports. He was 70.

Scott died in his Charlotte, North Carolina, home Saturday after battling pancreatic and liver cancer, the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame said.
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Scott was born in West Virginia, where he had an early R&B career with a group called The Prophets. Their first gold record was in 1968 for "I Got the Fever." Soon they moved to North Carolina, where they changed their named to the Georgia Prophets and began to sing beach music. Some of the band's beach hits included "California" and "Seaside Love."

"I kind of fell into it," Scott said in a 2000 interview. "It was there, and all the songs we were doing were R&B and soul and then this beach music term came up in the Carolinas, and it just became a part of what we were doing."

In 1999, Scott was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.