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'Wooden Heart' singer dies at 76

NEW YORK — Joe Dowell, a singer briefly popular in the early 1960s who had a No. 1 hit with the ballad “Wooden Heart,” has died. He was 76.

Dowell died Thursday at a hospital in his longtime hometown of Bloomington, Ill.

His publicist and friend Johnny Vallis said that Dowell suffered a heart attack last weekend and never recovered.

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