Dennis Locorriere, the guitarist and singer with the chart-topping soft rock band Dr Hook, has died aged 76.

A statement from his management company said he died on Saturday “after a long and courageous battle with kidney disease … Dennis faced his illness with remarkable strength, dignity, and resilience throughout, and remained deeply cherished by all who knew him”.

Locorriere, who shared lead vocal duties with Ray Sawyer, was part of the band for the whole of its run from 1969 to 1985, scoring hits such as When You’re In Love With a Beautiful Woman, which spent three weeks at UK No 1 in 1979.

Born in New Jersey in 1949, Locorriere was in his late teens when he sat in with a group of more experienced musicians a decade older than him, with Locorriere on vocals, bass, guitar and harmonica. “I just knew that I didn’t want to have a regular job because at that time I was a hippy,” Locorriere said. “I would go to bars at night and play until three in the morning, playing and having fun with my friends and I really wasn’t thinking too much about it.”

But the band – initially named Dr Hook and the Medicine Show – became a serious endeavour, and got signed to CBS in 1971. They were successful from the off, with their 1972 single Sylvia’s Mother going Top Five in the US and UK, and The Cover of Rolling Stone reaching the US Top 10 the same year.

The band’s appeal rested in part on their gorgeous multi-voiced harmonising, with Locorriere’s boyish yet soulful voice paired with the slightly more grizzled country music tones of the cowboy-hatted, eye patch-sporting Sawyer. A Little Bit More spent five weeks in a row at No 2 in the UK in the summer of 1976, held off the top by Elton John and Kiki Dee’s duet Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, while the soft-centred Sharing the Night Together – Dr Hook’s most enduringly popular song on streaming services – took them back to the US Top 10.

Locorriere was the leading voice on their biggest hit When You’re in Love With a Beautiful Woman, an up-tempo disco-pop song about the paranoia that springs from having an attractive girlfriend, sung with wry humour from Locorriere. As well as topping the UK charts in a 17-week run, it was a global success and another US Top 10 placing. Dr Hook finessed that disco sound on the follow-up Sexy Eyes, which was another transatlantic hit in 1980, and another song that foregrounded Locorriere.

Locorriere said he was upset at audiences often thinking the eye-catching Sawyer was the lead singer and frontman – “that used to really hurt my feelings” – and Sawyer left in 1983, saying he’d become “a product with a patch and a hat”.

Dr Hook continued until a 1985 farewell tour with Locorriere as frontman. “We found that Dr Hook had started to become a bit of a re-tread and so we decided to call it a day,” he said. Thereafter, Locorriere toured under his own name with the subtitle “the voice of Dr Hook”, and released three solo albums between 2000 and 2010.

Many of Dr Hook’s songs were written by songwriters outside the band, but Locorriere co-wrote some of them, including A Couple More Years, which was covered by Bob Dylan, and You Ain’t Got the Right, covered by Olivia Newton-John.

Locorriere was married three times, eventually settling with his third wife in Sussex, UK.