Background and early collaboration In 1972,
Toni Tennille was the co-writer of an ecology-themed musical,
Mother Earth. At that time,
Daryl Dragon (son of composer
Carmen Dragon) played keyboards as a member of
the Beach Boys, where he got his stage name "Captain Keyboard" because he wore a ship captain's hat while performing. When Tennille's show was preparing 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 between tours when he heard about the opening, met Tennille in San Francisco to audition, and landed the gig. Dragon later reciprocated by recommending Tennille to the Beach Boys when the band needed an additional keyboardist, and they hired her. She toured with them for a year, and has since been known as the Beach Boys' one and only "Beach Girl." Realizing their collaborative potential when the tour was over, Tennille and Dragon began performing as a duo, The Dragons, at the Smokehouse Restaurant in
Encino, California. They started to become popular in the
Los Angeles area and, borrowing on Daryl's Beach Boys nickname, renamed their act to the more dynamic Captain & Tennille. Their early version of the Tennille-penned "The Way I Want to Touch You" became popular on a local radio station which led to several offers from a number of record companies. They ultimately decided to sign a recording contract with
A&M Records.
Mainstream success '' advertisement, May 17, 1975 Their first hit single, a rendition of
Neil Sedaka and
Howard Greenfield's "
Love Will Keep Us Together", reached #1 on the
Billboard Hot 100 singles chart nine weeks after its 1975 debut, and went on to win the
Grammy Award for
Record of the Year. It sold over 1 million copies and was awarded a
Gold disc by the
RIAA on July 1, 1975. Tennille paid tribute to Sedaka in the recording when she sang the overdub "Sedaka is back" at the ending. The duo successfully mined the Sedaka songbook a number of times over their career. Two of their other hit singles were the Sedaka co-writes "
Lonely Night (Angel Face)" and "
You Never Done It Like That". Their Spanish recording of "
Love Will Keep Us Together", "Por Amor Viviremos", also charted in 1975; it was the first time two versions of the same single charted simultaneously. Tennille and Dragon included renditions of several other Sedaka songs on their albums. Tennille and Dragon married on November 11, 1975. A wedding date of Valentine's Day 1974 had long been erroneously reported: On their television variety show, Tennille claimed they were married on Valentine's Day, as did the February 14, 1976, edition of
Casey Kasem's
American Top 40 radio show. Over the next few years, Captain & Tennille released a string of hit singles mostly from their first two albums
Love Will Keep Us Together (US #2, 1975) and
Song Of Joy (US #9, 1976) including "
The Way I Want to Touch You" (US #4), "Lonely Night (Angel Face)" (US #3), "
Shop Around" (US #4), and "
Muskrat Love" (US #4). In July 1976, they 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 country's bicentennial celebration. Such was the level of their popularity that they were given their own television
variety show.
The Captain and Tennille TV show aired from September 1976 to March 1977 on
ABC. It featured musical numbers and comedy sketches performed with various guest stars. The show finished in the
Nielsen ratings tied at 41 for the 1976-77 season with
The Rockford Files and
Chico and the Man. Despite decent ratings, it ranked #19 among the network's shows and was canceled by ABC. Other, lower ranking shows on the network were renewed. The cancellation likely was the result of the duo's desire to get out of their contract to focus on their music career. The duo's third album
Come in from the Rain (US #18, 1977) produced three singles: "Can't Stop Dancing" (US #13), the title track (US #61), and "Circles", which did not chart. A&M Records later released a
Greatest Hits album (1977) which peaked at #55 on the US Top 200. The duo released their fourth studio album
Dream (US #131, 1978), although their first single "I'm on My Way" (US #74) failed to become a hit. However, their second single, and third Sedaka title, "You Never Done It Like That," fared much better at #10. A third single was "You Need a Woman Tonight" (US #40).
Dream would be the last Captain and Tennille studio album released by A&M. In 1979,
Neil Bogart signed them to a contract on his
Casablanca Records label. The album
Make Your Move (US #23, 1979) rose much higher on the chart than the act's previous release, and the first single "
Do That to Me One More Time" reached the summit on February 16, 1980, becoming their second #1 single. However, subsequent singles "Love on a Shoestring" (US #55) and "Happy Together (A Fantasy)" (US #53) only achieved minimal success.
Keeping Our Love Warm (1980) was the duo's second Casablanca release, and sixth studio album overall, but failed to crack the Top 200. The first single from this album, the title track, was performed live (although lip synced) during the 1980
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Later career Throughout the 1990s, they continued to perform various concert dates at venues around the world, frequently at
Harrah's Lake Tahoe and
Harrah's Reno, which were located close to their home near
Carson City, Nevada. One of their more notable 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 20th anniversary as an act. In 1999, on
Cartoon Network, the duo made a guest appearance, interviewed by
Harvey Birdman, rather than
Space Ghost (who is sent to jail and breaks out) in an episode of
Space Ghost Coast to Coast. In 2000 Captain & Tennille were to have embarked on a 25th anniversary tour; however, the stresses of the road proved too demanding, and they instead put an indefinite hold on their career as a performing duo. 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-recording of their songs, and cover versions of others), as well as five newly released tracks. In November 2003, Tennille performed a
benefit concert for the
Reno, Nevada Chamber Orchestra, where her surprise guest was Dragon. It was the first time they had publicly performed as Captain & Tennille in many years. Their first live recording,
An Intimate Evening with Toni Tennille, was released to commemorate the event. The same year, Tennille's voice returned to the
UK airwaves and to club play when the band
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. An
Ashley Beedle remix of the single heightened the danceability of the original
ambient track. In 2005, 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 projects. The first was the home video release of Captain & Tennille's 1976 television variety series, on a three-disc
DVD set containing 11 complete episodes with bonus musical tracks. Second, R2 re-released newly remastered CDs of all six of the duo's studio albums, both from the original A&M and Casablanca labels. Several of the CDs were previously available only in
Japan. The new CDs, packaged both as individual CDs and in a
box set, contained new liner notes written by Tennille. The third R2 project was the release of a new recording by Captain & Tennille–a three-song Christmas CD entitled
Saving Up Christmas. This effort was followed by
The Secret of Christmas, Captain & Tennille's first complete original album produced in more than a decade, and their first-ever Christmas album. Released on Captain & Tennille's own label, Purebred Records, on November 1, 2007, it would also become the duo's final studio album. 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 the Captain 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. ==Personal lives==