The Smiley Smile Message Board

It's been a while since I was last here - was out of the country for a while, in an area where internet was intermittent and generally of dialup speed at best.  I wish I could start a thread happier than this one.

Since it concerns two former members of the BBs backing band (one of whom was twice asked to be a member, IIRC from posts here), I'd say it's on topic.

Captainandtennille.net, the duo's official site, announced this morning (the 21st) that last Thursday - ten months short of 40 years since they wed - Toni Tennille filed papers in an Arizona court to end her marriage with Daryl Dragon.  The state court website in Arizona confirms it.

The Captain and Tennille have been rather inactive professionally since Daryl came down with a form of Parkinson's nearly five years ago, and I see at a forum devoted to A&M artists that somebody posted - hopefully, I guess - that Toni was doing it to help Daryl get around medical expenses. But there's no indication at their site that that is the reason.  This still has not shown up on entertainment sites, not even on TMZ yet, so there's been no reporting at all to explain what's happening. 

In any event, sad news to me at least. 

An update: the National Enquirer became the first media outlet to pick this up,

http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/captain-tennille-divorce-shocker

but says when a representative for C&T was contact, got a no comment.  But putting either Dragon or Tennille in the search at

http://apps.supremecourt.az.gov/publicaccess/caselookup.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

brings it up.

This afternoon the news of Daryl and Toni's divorce hit the news websites, with all the expected variations in the headlines on Love (Couldn't, Won't, Didn't, etc) Keep Them (or Us) Together.  But TMZ.com made some headway in getting to the bottom of the matter.

http://www.tmz.com/2014/01/22/captain-and-tennille-divorce/

The site's reporters were able to reach Daryl, who said: "I don't know why she filed. I gotta figure it out for myself first." He further noted that Toni had not moved out of their house.  (Someone posting on an FB group devoted to The Captain & Tennille says she's out of town right now.)

TMZ also examined the divorce papers, and reports that they have "special mention of health insurance coverage."  It has been indicated before that Daryl's Parkinson-related condition has been producing financial difficulties for him and Toni - in 2011 they were forced to sell their old house in Prescott, Arizona at a loss, and moved into a smaller one.  So it could be that medical costs are one factor forcing the split. 

That's kind of f***ed up. Granted I don't know the whole story but that's the time you're supposed to stick together to get out of trouble. Unless its a seperation to keep the bills separate.

While I'd rather keep this thread from getting Sandbox-bound, it is worth mentioning that if one puts "couples," "divorce," "healthcare" in Google, it turns out that in the last year or so a lot of couples have explicitly cited health costs as a factor forcing them to split. 

 The Captain & Tennille were never known for being involved in the political arena - the closest they came to that was their famed performance in Gerald Ford's White House before the Queen and Prince Philip - but if this is really the reason for Toni filing papers this could be quite the symbolic football in the coming American elections. In the world of popular music - or entertainment, period - you won't find too many couples that have stayed together as long as them. 

Medical costs are probably not forcing the split, unless Toni is receiving bad financial advice.  California has alimony.  If Daryl cannot make a living and cannot afford health insurance, Toni will likely be required to provide at least some support for him. The Affordable Care Act may help in this case, as Daryl would be able to buy health insurance, even though he has a preexisting condition. However, health insurance undoubtedly does not pay all of his medical costs.

Well, though Daryl and Toni married in California as I recall, they haven't resided there in a long time.  They were in Washoe County, Nevada, for years, then moved to Arizona about 2007.

 One thing worth remembering is that Daryl, brilliant musician and arranger though he is, didn't write songs.  Toni is a quite accomplished songwriter - "Do That To Me One More Time" and "The Way That I Want To Touch You" are among the C&T hits she wrote and are on all their compilations, so that provides ongoing income.  In interviews over the years, the couple always emphasized that they were careful about investing their earnings, and had enough to live comfortably in their old age. But those interviews were given before Daryl came down with his condition.

Anyway, Toni seems to be the only person who could explain the why and wherefore of the split and she hasn't been heard from. 

If Daryl's medical bills have made them broke, maybe their famous and wealthy friends can help them out by doing a benefit show for the, (of course they could also just give them money, but maybe Daryl and Toni would be too proud to take an outright gift).

While waiting for further clarification about this divorce I've been playing some C&T tracks on YouTube.  I'd forgotten that they had a song of Bruce's on almost all of their albums.  The Love Will Keep Us Together LP had two - "Disney Girls" and "I Write The Songs."

(Indeed, theirs was the very first released version of "Songs," though David Cassidy was the first to put it out on 45 a few months before Barry Manilow.  I've read that Daryl got word that Cassidy was recording it and tried to talk A&M into releasing his and Toni's version as C&T's first 45, but the label was certain LWKUT was the better chance for a hit.)

I see from Wikipedia that on their fourth album C&T recorded "If There Were Time," by Bruce....and Rod McKuen.  Never knew that Historical and the man who once was the world's best-selling poet had written something together.  With McKuen, you never know if something of his is going to surprise you and turn out to be pretty good. (After all, he did compose the punk-rock anthem "Blank Generation" - Richard Hell pretty much just added new words to Rod's '58 single "The Beat  Generation.") So I guess I'll see about tracking that down sometime.

What medical bills would they have? Daryl suffers from a neurological condition, but he is not hospitalized. He probably takes a couple of pills a day. I would hope he has some prescription drug insurance. Now, in a couple of years...

It's hard to believe The Captain & Tennille haven't had a hit single since 1979. Daryl is almost always seen wearing that cap. The Captain doesn't know why his wife filed for divorce, while Toni continues to reside - with Daryl! Bizarre. You'd almost think they were part of The Beach Boys! :o

I really thought Daryl was on his way out. I'm glad he's still with us of course, but last I heard his prognosis was/is bleak. When called on the phone by a reporter, he said he was blindsided by this, he doesn't know anything about it, and has to figure it out himself why she's filing for divorce. I just can't believe a woman as nice as this is divorcing a guy that supposedly has a terminal ailment. Isn't she going to get everything in his will anyway when he dies? Maybe she knows what's in his will and she isn't in it so she's making sure she gets some of it! That can't be it. Or maybe he messed around, but that can't be it either. He's not an alcoholic/druggie either. Wow. It's just mind boggling that a woman would divorce a guy that's sick - you know, love in sickness and health and all that - especially at this age (71?). Why not just get sleep in separate rooms in the house?

You really take the cake, Mikie

Well bgas, Mikie has a point. What he, and others are saying is WTF? Muskrat Love it ain't. The dude is really sick.

Just a sad situation all the way around.

Agreed, ORR. Mikie's blunt, but he's right.

As regards Daryl's condition, pace Mikie, I've never seen it referred to as terminal, even when it was thought to be Parkinson's (of course, I'm not up to speed on all things C&T), and if what's been printed about him not wanting to be seen in public is true, that could understandably be a major strain on any relationship.

Bruce & Rod - "If There Were Time" is something Bruce demoed back in 1978. Not sure he & McKuen ever collaborated on it any more than Alan collaborated with Jeffers on "The Beaks Of Eagles", but again, I don't know the specifics.

Come to think, I believe back in the '70s I saw a poem titled "If There Were Time" in one of the many collections McKuen published, so I guess that Bruce was giving it a musical setting. 

Meanwhile, since TMZ.com posted the news, the story has just exploded all over the web.  When Questlove from The Roots feels obliged to Tweet about the breakup, you know that a deep emotional chord's been struck, and not just in people old enough to have watched C&T's variety series back when it was on.

And I've got the feeling that down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they're hoping that an explanation will surface that has nothing to do with the costs of Daryl's treatment.   It would be pretty heavy if the President were called on at a press conference to discuss that.  Heck, it could even lead to him being forced to explain just where he stands on "Muskrat Love."

(A song which is divisive as ever.  Its Wikipedia entry shows this has always been thus, but fails to note that some pundits in the film biz are currently convinced that Anchorman 2 grossed "only" $150 million instead of twice that because "Muskrat Love" was on its soundtrack.  Some people just have that kind of reaction to it. In that respect it makes something as oft-reviled as "Afternoon Delight" look as universally popular as, say, "Paperback Writer" or "Hey Ya."

Speaking of the tune's writer and original performer, Willis Alan Ramsey  -  The one blessing I've seen come out of this hubbub is that in the comments to Yahoo News's article on the split I finally learned the answer to something I've wondered about for years.  Ramsey did meet C&T some years back, when he went to one of their shows.)

I won't pretend to know anything about Daryl's illness or Daryl and Toni's current medical insurance plans, but I do find it very interesting that this is occuring in January...coinciding with a change to the medical plans of almost everyone in America...and I can say that with my own 2014 plan, I pay the total cost of EVERYTHING until my deductible is met sometime later this year...and I can also say that the cost of some prescription meds is staggeringly high...

Food for thought.

Muhammed Ali has it. Michael J Fox has it and is very active. I can understand it if Daryl doesn't want to be seen in public with his condition. But he never really was an upfront showman anyway. He's very reserved and preferred to take a back seat and give Toni the limelight. I thought they were pretty much retired (or semi-retired) anyway. They went from living in L.A., up to Virginia City, then they moved to Prescott, Arizona about five years ago. Haven't heard about them doing any gigs in a few years. A few years ago I e-mailed their secretary, who relayed questions I had for Daryl about songs he wrote with Dennis for the Carl & The Passions album. He was very gracious and they got back to me very quickly. Hope Daryl hangs in there - he's got a good musical family to fall back on for support.

So it's hard for me to believe.  This was a couple that always seemed to be very much in love and it inspired their music.  But schtuff happens.....

Most puzzling aspect is that it seems Daryl knew nothing about it until they called him for a comment. Bitch of a way to find out.  :(

Daryl is old enough for Medicare. Maybe Toni is not into caring for him and wants her life back. They have no kids to pick up the slack so it might be hard for her.

Michael J. Fox has sure battled it with courage and in a public way.  But Ali's case is different. For a quarter-century he stayed as active as ever.  He gradually cut his efforts to speak to a minimum, but he was still as omnipresent as he was in his heyday.

 But for the last six or seven years - as it happens, pretty much from the time his museum opened in Louisville - Ali's tended to be reclusive.  The only times you seem to see him in public now are at the funerals of his old opponents in the ring and he seems to look thinner, wispier, grayer every time he's photographed.   For better or worse, Daryl chose the path of stepping out of the limelight.  

And when he did that, Toni's showbiz career dwindled down to a concert appearance or two a year.  And the thing is, she had a career quite separate from her work with Daryl for decades, like her nationwide tour starring in the musical Victor/Victoria in the late '90s.  Giving it up to take care of him wouldn't have been easy.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhn9pQt5B5M

The current news has led me to look again at some of the dozens of C&T YouTube videos.  The above especially tickled me.  It's their second and last #1 hit from 1979, not that well remembered now because it wasn't the #1 single of the year like their first hit.  Daryl is cap-less - for a year or two, he ditched the headgear, grew a mustache, and faced the camera with a hairdo not dissimilar from that of the late Robert Goulet in that era.  

During this period, Toni went platinum blonde and went for the all-out Marilyn look.  Except Marilyn's legs didn't quite go on for a couple hundred miles.  (There are several clips from this time where she wears an almost crotch-level skirt and Daryl looks as if he'd like a bazooka at hand to use on some members of the audience. Hard to blame him.)

Best of all, you learn from this clip what Lisa Simpson's music teacher was doing before he got his gig at Springfield Elementary.

Yes, but in some cases private insurance probably pays more. Or having both types of coverage might pay for all of a certain type of medication.

There may be some benefit for Daryl and it may not be what it seems.  (c-man you seem correct on this.)

(And, the less said the better.) I wish them both well.

If they are looking into the future and Daryl ending up permanently in a nursing home, Medicare would only pay for a short stay (something like 30 days) then the rest is the responsibility of the patient until they essentially have no more money (Toni could keep the house), then Medicare steps back in.  I don't know how much money they have, but it could be used up very quickly.  Divorcing him and splitting their assets allows Toni to keep half of what they've saved, then Daryl would use up his half until that was gone and then Medicare would pick up the rest.

I have an uncle who is looking to divorce his wife for exactly this reason.

Not sure which is the more dispiriting: that someone has to contemplate such a move, or the system that puts them in such a position.

Andrew - it is unconscionable of the system, to make people choose between good medical care and depleting your hard-earned assets. You both nailed it.

Calling John Manning for some new lyrics to "Love Will Keep Us Together".

If Daryl Dragon is hurting for money, maybe he should pull together the tapes of the album he was working on with Dennis (wishful thinking).

Well Mr Rider you have come upon an excellent idea.. Also I think getting divorced is because of health care rules.. There were rules in place like that long before Obama Care... Its not that unusual for older people to live together and not get married..

Purty gross suggestion, methinks.

Well maybe Bruce could organize a concert for them..!

How so? I'm sure there are some interesting things lying around from Dennis and Daryl.


To quote  Bellagio 10452   http://www.esquarterly.com/bellagio/unreleased.html

"Poops/Hubba Hubba
recorded spring 1971-1972
produced by Dennis Wilson & Darryl Dragon
It's a New Day - Behold the Night - Ecology - Baby Baby - Wouldn't it Be Nice to Live Again - Old Movie - Slow Song - Make It Good - Barbara
(track sequence not known)
 
   Despite his lack of material on Surf's Up (reportedly due to a falling out with Carl over sequencing), it's undeniable that in the early seventies, Dennis was the major creative force of The Beach Boys, and equally hardly surprising that he gave serious thought to forging a solo career, to which end he worked intensively in Brian's home studio with the pre-Captain & Tennille Darryl Dragon and band engineer Steve Desper. The results of theses sessions were a precursor to his only released solo album five years hence, richly textured soundscapes imbued with considerable passion. Although the sessions continued into early 1972, the fate of the album was effectively sealed when he offered "Make It Good" and "Old Movie" (a Surf's Up outtake reworked as "Cuddle Up"... and also as "4th of July": apparently "Old Movie" was a catch-all title used by Dennis back then) to round out Carl And The Passions - So Tough - where they naturally stuck out like a pair of sore thumbs ! (A demo of "Barbara" was released in 1998 on Endless Harmony). Some further points - the title(s) of the album were tentative, the Beach Boys reportedly played "Baby, Baby" during their 1972 fall tour, "It's A New Day", a collaboration with Stanley Shapiro, was recorded (at Sunset, with a Blondie Chaplin lead) for possible use in a hair grooming product promo, upon which The Beach Boys expressed an interest in cutting it. However their version was never completed, foundering in a legal morass.  "Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again", another magnificent Wilson/Shapiro opus, was another Surf's Up outtake (and ws slated to be included on the proposed DVD-A of the album). One final interesting observation from Steve Desper: not only does he contend that "90% of [the album] was 90% done", but that a lot of Pacific Ocean Blue had its origin in these sessions. Hmmmmmm…
Possibility of release: wouldn't it be great to hear this as part of a Dennis Wilson box set ?  Realistically, unlikely in the extreme… but stranger things have happened."

http://www.tmz.com/2014/01/23/tmz-live-justin-bieber-charlie-sheen-president-obama-eg-daily-lupita-nyong-o-captain-and-tenille-tori-spelling-dean-mcdemott/

The above podcast contains, starting at the 10 minute mark, a pretty intense discussion of the passages in the divorce papers re health insurance.  The AP's report said that the papers stated that Daryl and Toni were splitting all assets right down the middle, and neither was seeking spousal support.  That would imply that their house would be sold and the proceeds divided...which raises the implication of where Daryl would go - whether his condition might have gotten to the point where he would have to enter a care facility. 

Meanwhile, this has shown up on the White House website:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reconcile-captain-and-tennilles-marriage/GsfPtkCt

Maybe the petition's writer buys the Obamacare-is-not-keeping-us-together argument and figures that if the President broke it, he should fix it.

Would you just stop with the political BS? They're both old enough for Medicare and "Obamacara"/ACA does not apply to Medicare. They may have Medicare supplemental policies, but again, that's not under the umbrella of ACA.

Long term care was never covered even before ACA, and it isn't now.  There is also no assistance available for people who aren't ready for a nursing home. A person has to be very ill to qualify for a nursing home. Most very disabled people either need to have a family member or hire practical nurses to come into their home, or both. If they can't or won't do that, then they can go to an assisted living facility, but assisted living facilities aren't covered by Medicare or Medicaid, and never have been. They're not cheap, either.

Toni is an older person herself.  She's not built like an East German shotputter so helping him in the shower or whatever he might need help with now or in future is not something she may be able to do. She risks injuring herself or ruining her health. They have no kids to help them. As it is, a lot of adult children aren't always there to help or aren't willing to do so. She posted on her blog a few years ago that Daryl was refusing to go to dinner or movies due to not wanting people to see him like he is, which may have led to her become depressed since she could barely leave the house. I can imagine it's worse now and I think it's terrible that some people may be judging an elderly woman for not "taking care" of her husband or are using this case as some kind of political football to prove a point. It's a tragedy. That's about all you can say about it.

OK, until further solid info is available on the why and wherefore of the split I'll stay clear of Sandbox territory.

But looking at the bio on C&T's site, I see something that puzzles me, and I figure AGD would know the answer right away, so here goes.

(An aside about C&T.  In the recent articles on the split the act as often been called The Captain & Tennille.  But their official name has always omitted the definite article, as all their album covers and record labels show.)

Now, at the bio page,

http://www.captainandtennille.net/ct_completebio.html

Toni states that after the duo's self-released 45 ("The Way That I Want To Touch You" b/w "Disney Girls") started getting a bit of airplay around LA,  C&T were approached by three major labels. 

One is identified by Toni as CBS - she says the label passed because it already had a blonde female singer signed in the form of Chi Coltrane of "Thunder and Lightning" fame.

Another was A&M, which offered the duo a deal that allowed them to produce and arrange at least the first album. Then as now, that was not an easy proviso for a new act to get, and it was apparently the primary reason they signed.

The third was RCA....and that's where our favorite Mr. Tambourine Man comes in.  Bruce is quoted in the bio as saying: "Terry Melcher and I got them a deal with RCA, but RCA backed out after seeing them live, saying they were an older lounge act."

I guess what Bruce is saying is that he and Terry offered them a contract with Equinox, their RCA-distributed label which was in operation by this time (toward the end of '74, I'd guess), but that the A&R brass at RCA overruled them.

I was under the impression that B&T did not need RCA's OK to sign an act at Equinox.  But maybe that applied only for one-off 45 deals with an option for an album deal if the single went anywhere.  AGD (or anybody else expert on Equinox) - what was the label's arrangement with Nipperland?

As for the reasons RCA gave - it seems pretty likely whoever saw them perform had the example of Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan in mind.

Blanchard and Morgan are, indeed, the original chart-topping husband-and-wife dual-keyboard act, preceding the pairing of Daryl and Toni by about six years. After years in the vinyl-boothed trenches of Miami, they went to Nashville and scored a #1 country and #23 pop hit with "Tennessee Birdwalk" -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-OrVQaqkg0

- but only had two or three more solid hits in the country charts.  By 1974 they were back in lounges.  Note the reference to ages as well. Toni has always been blessed enough to look about a decade younger than she is, but evidently RCA's people thought Daryl was a little too stolid-looking for the youngsters.

Yes, but Daryl is the original Yacht Rock-er, with his jaunty cap. Why did he start wearing the cap and how did he get "The Captain" nickname?

Mike Love gave him that name.  He started wearing the hat soon after.

Got a mention on Letterman last night.

Said things haven't gone well for the Captain ever since he ran that cruise ship aground off the coast of Italy a few years back.   ;D

Lookiing around at info about C&T online, I see a bunch of things I didn't know about.

 Like the fact that the flower-power musical Toni composed, Mother Earth (through which she met Daryl), actually made it to Broadway for a couple of weeks in the fall of 1973.  The producer was Roger Ailes.  Yes, as in the head of Fox News. It turns out there's quite a bit about this show in the new book about Ailes by Gabriel Sherman.

But I saw something else, that I'd plumb forgotten ages ago - that Daryl toured with Al and BB's Family & Friends in '99, one of his very infrequent ventures onto a stage without Toni after they met. Via news.google, I see he was doing shows around the country with them that spring.  But he had gone by the time the Vegas live CD was recorded that November.  Does anybody recollect how long he gigged with them?

Other way around.

Not very...maybe even only one or two shows, if that. He WAS with them for their only TV appearance that I'm aware of, on the Regis & Kathy Lee show in October or November of '98.

Didn't know they were on Regis; would have loved to have seen that. Hope it shows up on You Tube.

They did Darlin' with Carnie and Matt trading leads. As far as I can remember, that was the only complete performance to make it to actual air, but IIRC, they also did a couple of songs leading in and out of the breaks (don't know how complete they were in terms of what the studio audience actually saw). I think I Can Hear Music was one of them. Al did a short sitdown interview as well where he referenced Carl's passing. The show aired on November 23, 1998.

I taped it, but I have a better chance of hitting the lottery than finding that VHS tape these days. Though, I also upped an audio-only file of Darlin' to a mailing list in that primitive, pre-YouTube era...if perhaps that's still floating around somewhere in cyberspace?


Maybe, someone else taped it...and could possibly up it?

I checked before I posted that to make sure of the order. Assuming that Wikipedia isn't always correct, I posted it anyway. Here's what they say:

"Beach Boys lead singer Mike Love gave him the nickname "Captain," and it stuck; Dragon began the tradition of wearing a nautical captain's hat to go along with the name".

Daryl's version: "It was after I started jumping around on the piano on stage during Help Me Rhonda, I kind of did something as a joke and called myself Captain Keyboard and got Mike Love to introduce me and give me a solo. We got a crowd reaction and then everybody started jumping around and that's when Mike Love started dancing on stage like Mick Jaggar".

Also, Toni stops short of calling it Parkinson's. It's "a neurological condition (not Parkinsons, but something similar) that causes him to have tremors". And forget his shyness of going out in public because of his condition, he just flat out can't play keyboards any longer.

Toni must have deleted the most recent posts on her blog. The story I read a few days ago linked to her blog and she had a post from 2011 where she stated that Daryl was not wanting to leave the house due to being self-conscious about his appearance, even for something like going to a movie or a restaurant. The post was reprinted in a news story about the divorce, which is where I saw it (and it provided a link). Maybe she felt the media was twisting that against her and it was too much of an invasion of privacy to leave it up on her blog. Not to mention harmful to Daryl's morale.

"Hey, I know you're dying and all, but you should do something for me."

He isn't dying at the moment but it does sound like he needs some money with selling a house, getting a divorce and medical expenses.
As I said, wishful thinking that unreleased stuff gets out before it's gone forever.

It's true that Toni, although being the "outgoing" and "talkative" member of the duo, generally tends to be poised and diplomatic about what she says.  It was a little uncharacteristic of her to get that personal  in communications with the public, so I'm unsurprised she removed the post.  

By contrast, when Daryl is persuaded to be interviewed, he usually lets it all hang out.  Such as in that Earcandy online thing, and also in this clip from Toni's short-lived TV talk show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlnvs0uGQRY

- where, a couple of years short of 40, he speaks movingly about the plight of the elderly in American society, apparently having his dad Carmen in mind. Words that have a particular resonance now.  (Daryl's siblings were mentioned above. Both of his brothers are still around, but one sister died in 2010 and the other, the wife of ex-Sunray Rick Henn, passed away last year.  So he's been burdened with losses apart from his physical disability.)

Another clip from that show, a little bit more lighthearted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJsncglFU4I

One can picture the scene at home with the Dragons.  Daryl, practicing scales at the keyboards. Toni walks in.

TT: Honey, guess what? We've booked Dusty Springfield for the show!

DD: Great! (as he's well aware that it would have almost been easier to get JD Salinger on the set than Dusty)

TT: She wants to sing "Proud Mary" with me.

DD: Oh, yeah, CCR (as he starts in on the riff).

TT: Yes, we'll do it in the style of Tina Turner.

(At the mention of whom, DD stops playing, and proceeds to Toni's walk-in closet.  Later, Toni does the song dressed in one of her sorority outfits from Auburn in 1959.  No silver lame crotch-length minidress for her!  Anyway, the performance is very amusing - Dusty flubs a line, Toni comes in too early a la the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie," and the band, led by future soundtrack maestro Ira Newborn, is having a blast.)

Well, whenever a musical act is in the news in a big way - and the truth is that only Justin Bieber's arrest outpaced C&T's split when it came to trending music-related stories in the days before the Grammys - then book editors in NYC start to get interested.

And the fact is, while on this board Daryl and Toni may be thought of by some primarily as two guys in the backing band who split and hit it big, across America they have a significance in the public eye that has been belied by the very low profile they've had in recent years. 

 Heck, Ron Sexsmith Tweeted a few days ago about Nostradamus writing that the end of days would be signaled by a) Dylan putting out an Xmas album and b) C&T divorcing.  (He left out WIBNTLA getting an official release, but OK, this is Twitter and there's only so many characters.)

So possibly somebody could approach the duo about a book. There's a lot of their story we don't know.

 For example, I always wondered what the heck Toni did between coming to LA from 'Bama in 1960 and meeting Daryl thru her musical in early '72 or whenever it was.  Looking thru books.google's search, I got an answer from a book about Auburn University alumni - apparently she spent most of the 1960s as a receptionist/secretary at North American Aviation in Downey, California, where she says she had a top-secret security clearance one level below that of the President of the United States.

(Downey is the hometown of Richard & Karen Carpenter, of course, which might help explain how Toni came to be such a close friend of Karen's, besides her labelmate, later on.)

 A publishing deal - could it keep them together like love did?

I think the impending divorce got so much attention because of the irony of their biggest hit being "Love Will Keep Us Together". Well, it (love) didn't. That irony was too much for the media, or anyone who likes to point those things out, to let go. If the Captain & Tennille never sang that song, and "Muscrat Love" was their biggest hit, you might've seen a sentence or a paragraph at most.

The Captain must already be lonely, which is why he started posting a lot here recently! ;D :o :P :police:

I think you're right, the news was all about that song title. 

I'm one of those people who when a pun or a joke is that obvious, I refrain from it,

especially when it's about old people  going through a divorce, and disease, at the same time.

I have it and in the next several weeks, I'll be loading it up to my channel  http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG0rWE6uhNWHUv0u8B33Peg

That'll be much appreciated...I too have it on VHS...somewhere...and as I recall, they did complete versions of "Darlin'" and "I Can Hear Music", and a partial performance of "Fun, Fun, Fun" was also aired. Al played 12-string electric, Ed Carter played bass on the first two mentioned songs and lead guitar on "FFF" while Daryl covered the bass part on synth for the latter. I'm pretty sure Bobby F. wasn't with them yet, so someone else played drums.

The one other thing I remember is that Carnie and Matt *briefly* flubbed their opening lines of Darlin' (i.e. as in..."who's supposed to sing which line of the duet") but quickly and nicely recovered.

I thought ICHM was only partial...but I guess we'll soon see!

http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/tennille-dumped-captain-another-woman

It turns out a couple of days ago the National Enquirer did a followup article on Daryl and Toni's split. Most of the article is of a pretty speculative nature, suggesting that another woman rather than man is involved. This is the kind of talk that always swirls around a female celeb when she gets her hair cut shorter than usual so not worth paying that much attention to if gossip's all that attached to it.

But it does have a quote from Daryl that sounds like Daryl. (Toni declined to comment when reached.)

 He says Toni has told him she filed papers for "spiritual" reasons and because there had been a change in "values." But from what Daryl says she didn't get much more specific.  He says he personally still doesn't understand why she filed, and that he still loves her - and says she's still living in their house and there are no plans to sell it.

Which indicates that a) if health insurance does figure into this as speculated, Toni has not made that clear to him, and b) he is not going into a care facility. I'm wondering now if this just might be some kind of last-ditch tough-love effort to stop Daryl from sitting in his house all day, afraid of people seeing him.  (Which Toni had said in her now-deleted blogposts he had been doing since this started.)

 I have a friend with a condition pretty similar to Daryl's - featuring Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis-type symptoms - and this started at the same time Daryl's illness did. But my friend has made it a point to not only get out of his house every day and do errands though he can't drive anymore, but to travel all over the country in connection with his work. He's handled it his way, Daryl has handled it in the opposite fashion.  Well, maybe in the next few weeks Toni will clear up things a little.

The National Enquirer also had a recent story about Penny Marshall and Carrie Fisher being lesbian girlfriends. The women have been friends for decades. I guess the Enquirer never heard of people having friends of the same gender.  I take what they say with a grain of salt, but I do feel sorry for Daryl. Glad she's still living in his house and keeping an eye on him.

Why is it HIS house?

The National Enquirer is not considered a reliable resource in these parts.

Good enough for Men In Black, good enough for me!

Well, their house.  Or just THE house.

Thanks for that and for all of your other uploads. There is some great stuff on your channel.