Captain & Tennille

Keyboardist/arranger "Captain" Daryl Dragon and his wife, singer/pianist Toni Tennille, scored a series of pop/rock hits in a light, romantic vein in the second half of the 1970s, the most successful of which was the first, "Love Will Keep Us Together." The couple met in the summer of 1971, when Dragon was engaged as the keyboard player for a musical revue, Mother Earth, composed by Tennille. Dragon, born August 27, 1942, in Los Angeles, was the son of conductor Carmen Dragon; his mother was a singer. He studied piano while growing up and briefly attended California State University at Northridge before dropping out to form an instrumental jazz trio with his brothers called the Dragons. The group released the single "Elephant Stomp"/"Troll" on Capitol Records in 1964, but its style was out of step with labelmates the Beatles, who dominated popular music at the time. In 1967, Dragon became a touring backup musician for the Beach Boys. He was dubbed "Captain Keyboard" by lead singer Mike Love because he always appeared on-stage in a yachting cap. In addition to touring with the Beach Boys, Dragon appeared on their albums of the period, including Sunflower and Holland, and he was billed as Rumbo on a British single released in 1970, "Sound of Free"/"Lady," credited to the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson & Rumbo. Tennille, born Cathryn Antoinette Tennille on May 8, 1943, in Montgomery, AL, was the daughter of Frank Tennille, a big-band singer (under the name Clark Randall) who had given up music to run his family's furniture store, and Cathryn Tennille, who became a local television talk-show host. Tennille also studied piano and occasionally appeared on her mother's show as a child. She attended Auburn University, studying music. In 1965, she moved to California, where she...