Eric Carmen, the American singer who took Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and turned it into the chart-topping soft rock ballad All By Myself, has died. He was 74.

Eric Carmen

Born into a family of Russian Jewish immigrants in Cleveland, Ohio, he took early violin lessons from his aunt Muriel Carmen, a violinist in the Cleveland Orchestra. By age 11, he was playing piano but at 15 he fell under the sway of The Beatles and switched to guitar.

While at John Carroll University, Carmen joined a band named Cyrus Erie, which recorded several now-forgotten singles for Epic Records. He later co-formed Raspberries, a rock and roll band in the pioneering first wave of the power pop movement. In 1975, after the breakup of Raspberries, he started his solo career and focused on writing and singing the kinds of power ballads that were becoming popular with the rise of commercial FM stations.

Carmen’s first two solo singles were chart hits in 1976. Both were built around themes by Rachmaninov. The first, All...