Co-founder of the Turtles, half of duo Flo & Eddie

The singer and his friend Howard Kaylan rose to fame with ’60s hit ‘Happy Together.’

- By STEPHEN THOMAS ERLEWINE

PAUL NATKIN Getty Images HAPPY FOREVER Mark Volman, right, and Howard Kaylan were high-school pals before they were harmonists.

Mark Volman, the singer who co-founded the buoyant 1960s hitmakers the Turtles and was half of the humorous harmony duo Flo & Eddie, has died. He was 78.

Representatives for Volman confirmed the death to Rolling Stone, citing a “brief, unexpected illness.” In 2020, Volman was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, but continued touring and only announced his diagnosis in 2023.

When promoting his memoir “Happy Forever: My Musical Adventures with the Turtles, Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Flo & Eddie, and More” in 2023, Volman went public with his 2020 diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, a disease that results in a decline in cognitive ability, affecting reasoning, memory and movement.

In a People magazine story, Volman accepted his fate: “I got hit by the knowledge that this was going to create a whole new part of my life. And I said, ‘OK, whatever's going to happen will happen, but I'll go as far as I can.’”

Volman’s partner in both the Turtles and Flo & Eddie was Howard Kaylan, a high-school friend who turned into a lifelong creative partner. Sharing a taste for sweet melodies, cultural fads and unrepentant silliness, Volman and Kaylan adeptly navigated the cultural changes of the 1960s, steering the Turtles from surf-rock survivors to psychedelic freaks over the course of a decade.

The group's sweet spot arrived in the second half of the 1960s, when they polished their Southern Californian folk-rock with studio savvy, creating hits — “Happy Together,” “She'd Rather Be With Me,” “Elenore” and “You Showed Me” — that appealed to mainstream listeners — they were the favorite band of Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia, even playing the White House in 1970 — while winking at hipper audiences.