‘Captain’ sails over horizon
Daryl Dragon, the cap-wearing “Captain” of The Captain and Tennille who teamed with thenwife Toni Tennille on such easy listening hits as Love Will Keep Us Together and Muskrat Love, has died.
Dragon, who was 76, died of renal failure at a hospice in Prescott, Arizona, according to spokesman Harlan Boll. Tennille was by his side.
“He was a brilliant musician with many friends who loved him greatly. I was at my most creative in my life, when I was with him,” Tennille said in a statement.
Dragon and Tennille divorced in 2014 after nearly 40 years of marriage, but they remained close and Tennille had moved back to Arizona to help care for him.
Dragon and Tennille met in the early 1970s and soon began performing together, with Tennille singing and Dragon on keyboards. (He would later serve as producer).
Their breakthrough came in 1975 when they covered the Neil Sedaka-Howard
Greenfield song Love Will Keep Us Together, their slightly faster and more elaborately produced version topping the charts that year.
The song won a Grammy for record of the year and not only made the Captain and Tennille stars, but helped revitalise Sedaka’s career. The Captain and Tennille followed with a mix of covers such as Muskrat Love and Shop Around and original songs, including Tennille’s ballad Do That to Me One More Time, which hit No 1 in 1980.
Dragon was the son of Oscar-winning composer Carmen Dragon and singer Eloise Dragon and was himself a classically trained musician. Before he was with Tennille, he played keyboards for the Beach Boys and was dubbed The Captain by singer Mike Love, who noted Dragon’s fondness for sea captain’s caps.