WEST PALM BEACH, Florida - Davy Jones, the diminutive British heartthrob who rocketed to the top of the 1960s music charts by beckoning millions of adoring fans with the catchy refrains of The Monkees, died on Wednesday. He was 66.

His publicist, Helen Kensick, confirmed that Jones died of a heart attack near his home in Indiantown. Jones complained of breathing troubles early in the morning and was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, said Rhonda Irons, spokeswoman of the Martin County Sheriff's Office.

In an emergency services call released on Wednesday night, an unidentified woman anxiously pleads "Ambulance, please, hurry!" His home was about 43 km from the hospital and a fire rescue unit rushed him to the hospital.

Jones' moppish long hair, boyish good looks and his British accent endeared him to legions of screaming young fans after The Monkees premiered on NBC in 1966 as a made-for-TV band seeking to capitalize on Beatlemania sweeping the world.

Aspirations of Beatles-like fame were never fully achieved, with the TV show lasting just two years. But The Monkees made rock and roll history as the band garnered a wide US following with love-struck hits such as Daydream Believer and I'm a Believer that endure to this day.

Born in Manchester, England, on Dec 30, 1945, Jones became a child star in his native England who appeared on television and stage, including a heralded role as "The Artful Dodger" in the play Oliver.

He earned a Tony nomination at 16 when he reprised that role in the show's Broadway production, a success that brought him to the attention of Columbia Pictures/Screen Gems Television, which created The Monkees. Hundreds turned out for auditions, but the young men who became The Monkees had no idea what ultimately awaited them.

"They had an ad in the newspaper," Jones recalled on NBC's Today Show last year, "and then we all showed up".

The Monkees was a band clearly patterned on the Beatle's film A Hard Days Night, chronicling the comic trials and tribulations of a rock group whose four members lived together and traveled to gigs in a tricked-out car called the Monkeemobile. Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz starred with him. Each part was loosely created to resemble one of the Beatles.

At 1.60 centimeters, Jones was by far the shortest member of the group - a fact often made light of on the show. But he also was its dreamboat, mirroring Paul McCartney's role in The Beatles. And as the only Briton among the four, Jones was in some ways The Monkees' direct connection to the Beatlemania still strong in the US when the TV show made its debut.

In August 1966, The Beatles performed in San Francisco, playing their last live set for a paying audience. The same month, The Monkees released their first album, introducing the group to the world.

The first single, Last Train to Clarksville, became a number one hit. And the TV show would caught on quickly with audiences, featuring fast-paced, helter-skelter comedy inspired as much by the Marx Brothers as The Beatles.

It was a shrewd case of cross-platform promotion. As David Bianculli noted in his Dictionary of Teleliteracy, The show's self-contained music videos, clear forerunners of MTV, propelled the group's first seven singles to enviable positions of the pop charts: three number ones, two number twos, two number threes."

Yet after the show's launch, The Monkees came under fire from music critics when it was learned that session musicians - and not the group's members - had played the instruments on their recordings. They were derided as the Prefab Four, an insulting comparison to The Beatles' nickname, the Fab Four.

In reality, Jones could play the drums and guitar, and although Dolenz learned to play the drums after he joined the group, he also could play guitar, as could Nesmith.

Nesmith also wrote several of The Monkees' songs, as well as songs for others. Tork, who played bass and keyboards on the TV show, was a multi-instrumentalist.

The group eventually prevailed over the show's producers, including music director Don Kirchner, and began to play their own instruments. Regardless, the group was supported by enviable talent.

Associated Press