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In 1977, the year after releasing his debut album, he shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with the lachrymose ballad \u201cDon\u2019t Give Up on Us.\u201d<\/a> Many years later, Owen Wilson, as Hutch, parodied the song in none-too-loving<\/a> fashion in a 2004 feature-film comedy version<\/a> of the show, which also starred Ben Stiller as Starsky and Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear.<\/p>\n Mr. Soul, who often said that music was his priority over acting, released five albums<\/a> in his career and notched four Top 10 hits<\/a> in Britain in the 1970s, including \u201cDon\u2019t Give Up on Us,\u201d which climbed to No. 1; \u201cSilver Lady,\u201d<\/a> which also went to No. 1 although it reached only No. 52<\/a> in the United States; and \u201cGoing In With My Eyes Open\u201d<\/a> \u2014 No. 2 in Britain and No. 54 on the American chart.<\/p>\n He became enough of a singing sensation that, in reviewing a 1977 concert of his at Radio City Music Hall, Robert Palmer of The New York Times described \u201ccamera-wielding teenage girls<\/a> charging the stage, the flicker of hundreds of exploding flash cubes and a continual squealing.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Soul was born David Richard Solberg on Aug. 28, 1943, to Richard Solberg, a professor of political science and history as well as a theologian, and June (Nelson) Solberg, a teacher.<\/p>\n In David\u2019s youth, the family lived in Cold War-era Berlin as well as in South Dakota. He aspired to be a diplomat or a minister before turning his sights on a show business career. In his late teens, he learned that his girlfriend, Mim, was pregnant; under parental pressure, they married.<\/p>\n Later, when he was 22, he found his wife another man, a friend of his, and left her and their young son, Christopher, to chase his dreams of stardom in New York.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n