Captain & Tennille

. Cooke was inducted as a charter member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. On the TV show MXC, the character "Captain Tenneal" is a spoof of the name of their act. Some posthumous releases followed, many of which became hits, including "A Change Is Gonna Come", an early protest song which is generally regarded as his greatest composition. Tennille has also worked as a session singer (most frequently partnered with Beach Boy Bruce Johnston), performing backup on no less than three Elton John albums including "Caribou," "Blue Moves," and "21 At 33" (some vocally arranged by Dragon) and most notably (and prominently) on the classic "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me." She also appeared as a backup 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. The verdict was justifiable homicide, though many believe that crucial details did not come out in court, or were buried afterward. Dragon's father was the legendary conductor, Carmen Dragon. Though the details of the case are still in dispute, it seems he was shot to death by Bertha Franklin (the manager of Hacienda Motel, where Cooke was staying) who claimed she killed him in self-defense and that he had raped a young woman, then threatened Franklin.

Her mother was a talk show hostess in Montgomery, Alabama. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California. Tennille's father was singer Clark Randall (aka Frank Tennille), a member of the legendary Bob Crosby's Bobcats. Sam Cooke died under mysterious circumstances on December 11, 1964 in Los Angeles, California. Additional trivia:. In spite of this, he released a critically acclaimed blues-inflected LP in 1963, Night Beat. The couple still reside in Northern Nevada where Tennille was appointed "Ambassador For The Arts" by the governor of the state. Like most R&B artists of his time, Cooke focused on singles.

Not available on commercial websites, the double-CD, "An Intimate Evening with Toni Tennille," can be acquired solely through the Reno Chamber Orchestra website, http://renochamberorchestra.org. This was followed by more hits, including "Sad Mood", "Bring it on Home to Me", "Another Saturday Night" and "Twisting the Night Away". This was the first time they had publicly performed as Captain & Tennille in many years and, as a result, a live recording (their first) was released to commemorate the event. His first RCA single was the hit "Chain Gang"; this is probably his most famous song. In November 2003, Tennille performed a benefit concert for the Reno Chamber Orchestra where her surprise guest was none other than Dragon. Cooke then created a publishing imprint and management firm, then left Keen to sign with RCA. 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 on vinyl or CD. Though a R&B performer writing his own songs and achieving mainstream fame was innovative enough, Cooke continued to astonish the music business in the 1960s with the founding of his own label, SAR Records, which soon included The Simms Twins, The Valentinos, Bobby Womack and Johnnie Taylor.

Nevertheless, Captain & Tennille's popularity remained evident in the release of their "Ultimate Collection: The Complete Hits" on Hip-O (a subsidiary of Universal Records) in 2001 and "More Than Dancing...Much More," a 2002 CD. He signed with Keen Records in 1957, with his own "You Send Me", which had massive mainstream success. She 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 25th 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. Specialty Records, the label of the Soul Stirrers, complained to Bumps Blackwell, Cooke's pop producer, resulting in the loss of Cooke's contract. She released several albums and performed with orchestras throughout the country, which she still does to this day. His first pop single, "Lovable" (1956) was released under the alias of Dale Cooke, in order to not alienate his fan base. At the same time throughout the '80s and '90s, Tennille enjoyed a 2nd career as a big band and pop standards singer, mimicking the success of pop colleague Linda Ronstadt. In 1950, he joined The Soul Stirrers and achieved significant success and fame within the gospel community.

One of their most legendary appearances occurred when they played a one-time-only date at The House Of Blues on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1995 as part of their 20th anniversary as an act. He started his musical career as a member of a quartet with his siblings, the Soul Children, followed by a teenage turn as a member of the Highway CQs, a gospel group. They continued to perform various concert dates for years at venues around the world and, increasingly, in Lake Tahoe, which was close to where they lived in Northern Nevada. Sam Cooke (January 22, 1931 - December 11, 1964) was a massively popular gospel music and R&B singer, born Sam Cook in Clarksdale, Mississippi. They signed with CBS Records but, not being able to find a niche there, were released from their contract. Subsequent singles achieved only moderate success, and when Bogart died in 1982, the company went bankrupt, and the duo were left without a record company.

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". 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 Carpenters and themselves. Such was their level of success that they were given their own television show, but they were not happy with its format and asked to be released from their contract. Over the next few years they released a string of hit singles including "The Way I Want To Touch You", "Lonely Night (Angel Face)", "Shop Around", "Muskrat Love", and "You Never Done It Like That".

In November of 1975, they got married. They also received a Grammy Award for Record of the Year for this recording, which also gave Sedaka his first Grammy. Their first single, a cover version of Neil Sedaka's "Love Will Keep Us Together" spent four weeks at number one in the US in 1975 and became the top selling single of the year. Their popularity as a musical duo reached unprecedented heights for The Smokehouse which, after Dragon & Tennille released a single on their own label (Butterscotch Castle Records) as Captain & Tennille, eventually led to a recording contract with A&M Records.

They soon discovered they made a great team on their own and began performing on a regular basis at The Smokehouse club in Encino, CA (Los Angeles), initially billed as The Dragons. Tennille hired Dragon as a musician for the production after which, in turn, Dragon helped Tennille land a gig as a touring keyboardist with The Beach Boys. When they met in 1971 in San Francisco, Dragon had been performing for a few years as a keyboardist for The Beach Boys and Tennille was staging a musical she had written called "Mother Earth" at the Marines Memorial Theatre. The duo consists of "The Captain", Daryl Dragon (born August 27, 1942) and "Tennille", Toni Tennille (born May 8, 1943).

The Captain & Tennille are a husband and wife US pop music duo who achieved success during the 1970s.