Captain & Tennille

Crossing swooning, romantic lounge music with cheery, pop ballads, husband and wife duo Captain and Tennille scored a string of US hits in the mid-1970s and were renowned as wholesome family entertainers. Daryl Dragon started out in a jazz trio with his two brothers and worked as a touring musician with The Beach Boys in the '60s where he picked up the nickname Captain Keyboard because of his fondness for wearing a sailor-style cap on stage. He was recruited by Cathryn 'Toni' Tennille, the daughter of a former swing band singer, to feature in a musical show she had written, and he ended up convincing The Beach Boys to take her on the road as another piano player. The pair married and started performing in Los Angeles clubs before landing a deal on A&M Records who saw them as an upbeat version of The Carpenters. They had immediate success with their cover of Neil Sedaka's ballad 'Love Will Keep Us Together' which shot to number one and became the biggest-selling track of 1975, winning them a Grammy Award for Record of the Year. A run of top five hits included 'The Way I Want to Touch You', 'Lonely Night', 'Shop Around' and 'Muskrat Love' and a second album 'Song of Joy', released in 1976, became a huge platinum-selling success. The quiet, introverted nature of keyboardist Captain stood in stark contrast to the bubbly, charismatic personality of Tennille, yet the couple hosted their own television variety show on ABC on which they performed with guests such as Chaka Kahn, Dionne Warwick, John Travolta and Ella Fitzgerald. They had their last big chart-topping single in 1980 with 'Do That to Me One More Time', but Tennille went on to work as a backing vocalist on records by Elton John, Pink Floyd and Art Garfunkel and perform in the Broadway show 'Victor/Victoria' before the couple divorced in 2014. They remained close friends until Captain's death in 2019.

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