Tom Jones , who wrote the book and lyrics for “The Fantasticks,” passed away at age 95.

Tom Jones passed away on Friday at his home in Sharon, Connecticut. He was the author of the script and lyrics for the musical “The Fantasticks,” which played for 42 years. His son stated that he died at the age of 95 from cancer.

The Fantasticks debuted in Greenwich Village in 1960 and are most known for their introductory track, “Try to Remember.”

Working with another composer, John Donald Robb, Jones began his theatre career in New York by writing for the revues that the entrepreneur Julius Monk was staging.

The play was titled “Joy Comes to Deadhorse,” and Jones and Robb presented it in 1956 at the University of New Mexico, where Robb served as dean. After a disagreement between the two over the production’s successes and failures, Jones began working with a buddy, Harvey Schmidt.

Jones continued to work on the composition that Schmidt and Robb had originally developed. They pitched their simple one-act musical about two teenage lovers and their quarrelling fathers in 1959 when a friend was looking for a one-act musical for a summer festival at Barnard College. The play took odd detours from the typical Broadway musical format, employing a narrator and minimalist production.

The Barnard College play was transferred to the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village by producer Lore Noto, where it debuted in May 1960 as “The Fantasticks.” Jerry Orbach was a part of the cast and portrayed El Gallo, the narrator and singer of the opening song “Try to Remember.”

Although several critics applauded, the initial reviews were conflicting. It didn’t matter because the audience decided to support the show financially. The production ran at Sullivan Street for more than 17,000 performances before finally closing in 2002, making it the longest-running musical in American history.

Later, Jones and Schmidt worked together on other series. Schmidt’s musical “110 in the Shade,” which debuted on Broadway in 1963 and ran for 330 performances, contained lyrics written by Jones. Another collaboration of his that played on Broadway for an entire year and a half in the middle of the 1960s was “I Do! I Do!” for which he also penned the book and lyrics.

The men received Tony Award nominations for each of those productions. The song “My Cup Runneth Over,” from “I Do! I Do!,” was covered by Ed Ames, and it got Grammy Award nominations. It peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967.
Naturally, nothing was as good as “The Fantasticks.” In Manhattan, the production was resurrected in 2006, and it ran for more than 4,300 performances.

Eleanor Wright and Jones’s first marriage ended in divorce. Janet Watson, a choreographer, with whom he had a second marriage, passed away in 2016. He is survived by Sam Jones, another son from that union, and by Michael Jones.