| Captain & Tennille | |
|---|---|
Captain and Tennille, 1976. |
|
| Background information | |
| Origin | United States |
| Genres | Soft rock, pop |
| Years active | 1974–present |
| Labels | A&M, Casablanca, Mirage |
| Website | Official Website |
| Members | |
| Daryl Dragon Toni Tennille |
|
Captain & Tennille are American pop music recording artists who achieved phenomenal chart success as a recording duo and were previously well known as backup musicians for Elton John and Neil Sedaka. The duo consists of husband and wife "Captain" Daryl Dragon (born August 27, 1942), and Cathryn Antoinette "Toni" Tennille (born May 8, 1940). They are best known for their singles which topped the charts in the 1970's and 1980's "Love Will Keep Us Together" and "Do That to Me One More Time". Their television variety series appeared on the ABC network in the 1976–77 season. They continue to perform occasionally with popular appeal in Lake Tahoe resort area and enjoy the following of large numbers of fans in North America.
Contents |
In 1971 Toni Tennille was the co-writer of an ecology-themed musical called Mother Earth. At that time, Daryl Dragon (son of composer Carmen Dragon) was the keyboardist for The Beach Boys. When Tennille's show was getting ready to move from San Francisco's Marines Memorial Theatre to Southern California's South Coast Repertory, a call was put out for a replacement keyboardist. Dragon was in between tours when he heard about the opening, went to audition for Tennille, and landed the gig.
Reciprocating in kind, Dragon later suggested Tennille to The Beach Boys when the band needed an additional keyboardist, and they hired her. She toured with them for a year, and Toni Tennille has since been forever known as The Beach Boys' one and only "Beach Girl".[1]
When the tour was over, and realizing their collaborative potential, they began performing as a duo at the legendary Smokehouse Restaurant across from Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank, California, eventually to sold out crowds, and started to make a name for themselves in the Los Angeles area. During this time, an early version of a Tennille-penned tune they had recorded, "The Way I Want to Touch You", became a hit on a local radio station and led to a recording contract with A&M Records.[2]
Their first hit single was a cover of Neil Sedaka's and Howard Greenfield's "Love Will Keep Us Together". The track went to number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 nine weeks after its debut in 1975, and it went on to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.[3] It sold over one and a half million copies, and was certified Gold by the R.I.A.A. in July 1975.[4] A Spanish recording of the single ("Por Amor Viviremos") also charted that same year. This was the first time two versions of the same single charted at the same time.[2][3]
Tennille and Dragon married on November 11, 1975.
Over the next few years Captain & Tennille released a string of hit singles including "The Way I Want to Touch You" (U.S. #4) and another million seller;[4] "Lonely Night (Angel Face)" (U.S. #3); "Shop Around" (U.S. #4); "Muskrat Love" (U.S. #4); and "You Never Done It Like That" (U.S. #10). Such was their level of success that they were given their own television variety show, The Captain & Tennille, but they were not only unhappy with its network-imposed heavy reliance on comedy, but also its physical demands and its resulting overexposure of their image, and they asked to be released from their contract. They also left A&M when it began to turn its attentions to the newly signed punk rock act Sex Pistols at the expense of acts such as The Carpenters and themselves.
In July 1976, Captain & Tennille were invited by First Lady Betty Ford to perform in the East Room of the White House in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II and President Gerald Ford during the Bicentennial celebration.
In 1979, Neil Bogart signed them to a contract with Casablanca Records, and they reached number-one with their first single "Do That to Me One More Time" in January 1980. Subsequent singles achieved only moderate success, and when Bogart died in 1982, Casablanca went bankrupt, and the duo was left without a record company. They signed with CBS Records but were released from their contract.
In between time, Toni Tennille had recorded two solo albums—one in 1984 with Mirage Records called More Than You Know and the other in 1987 entitled All Of Me for another unknown independent label.
Captain & Tennille appeared on many television talk shows of the era. In an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show in July 1981, Tennille sang "Love Will Keep Us Together" accompanied by music played by a TI 99/4A home computer.[5]
During the duo's period of highest popularity, Tennille also worked as a session singer (most frequently partnered with The Beach Boys' Bruce Johnston), performing as a backing vocalist on three Elton John albums including Caribou, Blue Moves, and 21 at 33 (some vocally arranged by Dragon) and most notably on the hit track "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me". She also appeared as a backing vocalist on tracks by Art Garfunkel and The Beach Boys, as well as Pink Floyd for whom she performed backing tracks on The Wall album.
In the liner notes of the Captain & Tennille anthology Ultimate Collection: The Complete Greatest Hits, Tennille explains how her work on Pink Floyd's album gained her at least one new fan:
| “ | I went to see the [Pink Floyd] concert at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles. There was a 15-year-old boy sitting in front of me who recognized me. He turned around and snottily said, 'What are YOU doing here?' So I told him I sang on the album. He ran off to find a friend who had brought the LP to the show, and looked at the back to see if my name was really on there. A few minutes later, he came back and apologetically said, 'Can I have your autograph?' | ” |
Throughout the 1990s, they continued to perform various concert dates at venues around the world, frequently at Harrah's Lake Tahoe which was close to their home near Carson City, Nevada. One of their appearances in that decade occurred when they played at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1995, as part of their twentieth anniversary as an act.
At the same time throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Tennille enjoyed a second career as a big band and pop standards singer, not unlike pop colleague Linda Ronstadt. She released several albums and performed with orchestras throughout the country.
Both the Captain and Tennille had a guest appearance as themselves in the television series Vega$ (Year 2, Ep 18).[6]
Tennille also enjoyed a year as the star of the Broadway tour of Victor/Victoria. At the end of that project, she and Dragon were to have embarked on a twenty-fifth anniversary tour; however, the stresses of the road proved too demanding and Captain & Tennille instead put an indefinite hold on their career as a performing duo. During their run through the mid 1970s into the early 1980s, Captain & Tennille sold close to 25 million records.
Nevertheless, Captain & Tennille's popularity remained evident in the release of their Ultimate Collection: The Complete Hits on Hip-O Records (a subsidiary of Universal Records) in 2001 and More Than Dancing... Much More, a 2002 compact disc. The latter contains what was originally their final album in 1982, More Than Dancing, which at that time was released only in Australia, and is combined with selected tracks from their 1995 20 Years of Romance, originally on K-Tel (re-recordings of their songs, and cover versions of others), as well as five tracks never-before-released.
In November 2003, Tennille performed a benefit concert for the Reno, Nevada Chamber Orchestra, where her surprise guest was Dragon. This was the first time they had publicly performed as Captain & Tennille in many years. As a result, their first live recording, An Intimate Evening with Toni Tennille, was released to commemorate the event.
2005 marked a resurgence for Captain & Tennille when Brant Berry, the vice president of a small Portland, Oregon–based entertainment company, Respond 2 Entertainment (R2), signed an agreement with Captain & Tennille to release three separate projects featuring the duo. The first was the home video release of Captain & Tennille's 1976 variety series, on a three-disc DVD set containing eleven complete episodes with bonus musical tracks. Second, R2 re-released all six of their albums, both from the original A&M and Casablanca labels, on newly-remastered CDs. Several of the CDs were previously only available in Japan. The new CDs, packaged both as individual CDs and in a box set, contain new liner notes written by Toni Tennille.
Third, a new recording by Captain & Tennille was released—a three-song Christmas CD entitled Saving Up Christmas. This effort was followed by The Secret of Christmas released on Captain & Tennille's own label, Purebred Records, on November 1, 2006. This is Captain & Tennille's first complete original album produced in more than a decade, and their first-ever Christmas album.
Tennille returned to the UK airwaves and to club play when Bent sampled a small portion of her vocals from Captain & Tennille's 1979 track, "Love on a Shoestring" (from the album Make Your Move), into their "Magic Love" single in 2003. An Ashley Beedle remix of the single heightened the danceability of the original ambient track.
In October 2006, Cartoon Network's animated special Casper's Scare School was aired. The duo recorded two songs for the film, and voiced the dialog for the characters who sang the songs. Tennille portrayed Aunt Belle and Dragon was Uncle Murray, who together formed a two-head-on-one-body being known as the Ankle. The two songs they performed, "Why Does Love Make Me Feel So Good" and "World Without Fear", were written by Magnus Fiennes. Captain & Tennille's co-stars on the show included Phyllis Diller, James Belushi, Dan Castellaneta, and Bob Saget.
In 2007, three new DVDs were released of Captain & Tennille's ABC TV specials: Captain & Tennille in Hawaii, Captain & Tennille in New Orleans, and Captain & Tennille Songbook.
Dragon & Tennille spent most of the 1990s and 2000s in the Lake Tahoe area in Nevada, where they had lived for more than a dozen years, and where, during that time, Tennille served as Ambassador for the Arts for the state. In the mid-2000s, they temporarily took year-round residence at their second home, located in the Palm Springs area of Southern California, until 2008, when they built a house and settled down in Prescott, Arizona, where Tennille participates in the annual Prescott Jazz Summit.
| Year | Album | RIAA Certification | US 200 | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1975 | Love Will Keep Us Together | Gold | 2 | A&M |
| 1976 | Por Amor Viviremos D | A&M | ||
| 1976 | Song of Joy | Platinum | 9 | A&M |
| 1977 | Come in From the Rain | Gold | 18 | A&M |
| 1977 | Greatest Hits | Gold | 55 | A&M |
| 1978 | Dream | 131 | A&M | |
| 1979 | Make Your Move A | Gold | 23 | Casablanca |
| 1980 | Keeping Our Love Warm | — | Casablanca | |
| 1980 | 20 Greatest Hits | — | Music for Pleasure | |
| 1981 | Scrapbook | — | Spectrum | |
| 1982 | More Than Dancing B | — | Wizard | |
| 1993 | A&M Gold Series: Captain & Tennille | — | A&M | |
| 1995 | Twenty Years of Romance | — | Nouveau | |
| 1997 | Captain & Tennille | — | Arcade | |
| 1998 | A&M Digitally Remastered Best | — | A&M | |
| 2001 | Ultimate Collection | — | Hip-O | |
| 2002 | More Than Dancing … Much More C | — | Raven | |
| 2005 | 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection | — | Universal | |
| 2005 | Saving Up Christmas | — | R2 Entertainment | |
| 2005 | Songs of Joy: The Complete Captain & Tennille Collection | — | R2 Entertainment | |
| 2007 | The Secret of Christmas | — | RetroActive |
(A) Also charted at No. 33 UK
(B) Australian release only
(C) Worldwide re-release of 1982 Australian album with bonus tracks
(D) Spanish Version
see Captain & Tennille Singles Discography
| Year | Single | RIAA Certification | Hot 100 | AC | Country | R&B | UK Pop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1975 | "Love Will Keep Us Together" | Gold | 1 | 1 | — | — | 32 |
| 1975 | "Por Amor Viviremos" | 49 | — | — | — | — | |
| 1975 | "The Way I Want to Touch You" | Gold | 4 | 1 | — | — | 28 |
| 1976 | "Lonely Night (Angel Face)" | Gold | 3 | 1 | — | — | — |
| 1976 | "Shop Around" | Gold | 4 | 1 | — | — | — |
| 1976 | "Muskrat Love" | Gold | 4 | 1 | — | — | — |
| 1977 | "Can't Stop Dancin'" | 13 | 12 | — | — | — | |
| 1977 | "Come in From the Rain" | 61 | 8 | — | — | — | |
| 1977 | "Circles" | — | 9 | — | — | — | |
| 1978 | "I'm on My Way" | 74 | 6 | 97 | — | — | |
| 1978 | "You Never Done It Like That" | 10 | 14 | — | — | 63 | |
| 1978 | "You Need a Woman Tonight" | 40 | 17 | — | — | — | |
| 1979 | "Do That to Me One More Time" | Gold | 1 | 4 | — | 58 | 7 |
| 1980 | "Love on a Shoestring" | 55 | — | — | — | — | |
| 1980 | "Happy Together (Fantasy)" | 53 | 27 | — | — | — | |
| 1980 | "This Is Not the First Time" | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 1981 | "Keeping Our Love Warm" | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 2007 | "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 2007 | "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" | — | — | — | — | — |
|
||||||||