Gerry Goffin: Loco-Motion Songwriter Dies at 75

Gerry Goffin, the songwriter whose hits with his former wife Carole King include Will You Love Me Tomorrow and The Loco-Motion, has died aged 75.

Goffin was a hugely successful lyricist who had more than 50 top 40 hits, including Crying in the Rain by the Everly Brothers, Some Kind of Wonderful for the Drifters and Take Good Care of My Baby by Bobby Vee.

His wife Michelle Goffin confirmed his death at his home in Los Angeles on Thursday. The cause of death has not been revealed.

Louise Goffin, one of his two daughters with Carole King, said her dad "wore his heart on his sleeve, and I am deeply blessed to have had a father who could so easily make the world laugh and cry with just a spiral notebook and a pen".

Goffin and King were married from 1959 to 1968 and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three years later.

King said in a statement that Goffin was her "first love" and had a "profound impact" on her life.

"Gerry was a good man with a dynamic force, whose words and creative influence will resonate for generations to come," King said.

"His words expressed what so many people were feeling but didn't know how to say."

Despite their split, Goffin kept writing hits including Savin' All My Love For You for Whitney Houston.

He also received an Academy Award nomination with Michael Masser for the theme to the 1975 film Mahogany for Diana Ross. He earned a Golden Globe nomination for So Sad the Song in 1977 from the film Pipe Dreams.

Goffin was born in Brooklyn in 1939 and was working as an assistant chemist when he met King at Queens College.

"She was interested in writing rock 'n' roll, and I was interested in writing this Broadway play," Goffin told Vanity Fair in 2001.

"So we had an agreement where she would write (music) to the play if I would write (lyrics) to some of her rock 'n' roll melodies. And eventually it came to be a boy-and-girl relationship. Eventually I began to lose heart in my play, and we stuck to writing rock 'n' roll."

A whirlwind romance led to a marriage and their first hit, when she was only 17 and he was 20, Will You Love Me Tomorrow for the Shirelles, which a pregnant King helped write while suffering morning sickness.

The Goffin-King love affair is the subject of the Tony Award-nominated musical Beautiful: The Carole King Musical on Broadway which King watched in April.

Goffin is survived by five children and his wife.