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NEW YORK โ Daryl Dragon, the cap-wearing โCaptainโ of Captain & Tennille who teamed with then-wife Toni Tennille on such easy listening hits as โLove Will Keep Us Togetherโ and โMuskrat Love,โ died Wednesday. He was 76.
โHe 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,โ 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 the ever-smiling Tennille singing and the dourer Dragon on keyboards. He would later serve as Captain & Tennilleโs producer.
Their breakthrough came in 1975 when they covered the bouncy Neil Sedaka-Howard Greenfield song โLove Will Keep Us Together.โ
โLove Will Keep Us Togetherโ Topped Charts in Summer of 1975
Sedaka and Greenfield, a top hit-making team in the late 1950s and early 1960s, were nearing the end of their partnership and had written โLove Will Keep Us Togetherโ as an ode to their longtime bond. Sedaka himself recorded the song, released it as a single in France, and included it on his 1974 album โSedakaโs Back.โ
Captain & Tennilleโs version, slightly faster and funkier than the original, wasnโt Dragonโs first choice as a single. He had favored a cover of Beach Boy Bruce Johnstonโs โI Write the Songs,โ which in 1976 became a signature hit for Barry Manilow.
But โLove Will Keep Us Togetherโ topped the charts in the summer of 1975. It won a Grammy for record of the year and not only made Captain & Tennille stars, but helped further revive Sedakaโs career. In October 1975, his single โBad Bloodโ hit No. 1.
Sedaka tweeted Wednesday that Dragon was โa great musician, keyboard player and friend for over 40 years. He took โLove Will Keep Us Together,โ made it his own with the magic of his playing and her incredible voice.โ
Meanwhile, Captain & Tennille โ known early on as The Captain & Tennille โ followed with a mix of covers such as โMuskrat Loveโ and โShop Aroundโ and original songs, including Tennilleโs ballad โDo That to Me One More Time,โ which hit No. 1 in 1980. They also briefly starred in their own television variety show before their careers faded in the 1980s.
Over the past 30 years, they continued to perform and work together on occasion, with more recent albums including โThe Secret of Christmas.โ
Dragon Played Keyboards for the Beach Boys
A Los Angeles native, 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 โThe Captainโ by singer Mike Love, who noted Dragonโs fondness for sea captainโs caps. Tennille briefly worked with the Beach Boys as a backup singer.
In 2016, Tennille published โToni Tennille: A Memoir,โ in which she alleged their marriage was far removed from their cheerful hits. They wed in 1975, but Tennille recalled that their marriage was announced in advance โ and to their surprise โ by the record company. The couple, which had been living together, made it official in November of that year.
Tennille would allege that the couple suffered from lack of intimacy and blamed it on what she described as Dragonโs โvery, very difficult family and โfamous but overbearing father.โ
โI kept trying and trying and thinking I could bring this man who has so much to give into the light,โ she told NBCโs โTodayโ show in 2016. โI wanted him to experience the joy that I had with my very loving family.โ
Dragon is survived by his older brother, Doug Dragon, and two nieces, Kelly Arbout and Renee Henn.
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