English clarinet player Acker Bilk, who beat the Beatles and other British rockers to the top of the US music charts with the instrumental ‘Stranger on the Shore,’ has died at the age of 85. Manager Sutton said Bilk died on Sunday at a hospital in Bath, England. The cause of death was not announced.Born Bernard Stanley Bilk in 1929 in the southwestern English county of Somerset, Bilk adopted the name Acker from a local slang term for friend.He learned the clarinet as a bored army conscript, stationed in Egypt after World War II, and became one of the stars of Britain’s 1950s ‘trad jazz’ scene.