H/t Mike Dinsmore, whose comment yesterday alerted us to the death two weeks ago of Dennis Locorriere, co-frontman of Dr. Hook. No, not the guy with the eyepatch. That was Ray Sawyer, who died in 2018.
Sawyer took the lead on the band’s signature song, “The Cover of Rolling Stone,” and his antics during their raucous concert performances made him seem like their titular leader. But Locorriere was lead vocalist on their biggest hit, the Shel Silverstein-penned “Sylvia’s Mother,” and most of their later soft-rock releasees.
Silverstein was heavily involved with the band’s early success – he wrote their entire first two albums, including “The Cover of Rolling Stone.” The song reached No. in 1973, and the magazine’s editors gave in to the inevitable by putting the group on their cover, though in caricature form. The cartoon fit their loose, good-time image, evident in this TV appearance. Lead guitarist George Cummings taking the lines about his freaky old lady.
The band went through a few lean years before they adapted to the disco-ized soft rock of the later ’70s, when they had a few more Top 10 singles, including this No. 5 hit from 1980.
Dr. Hook broke up in 1982. Locorriere kept rights to the name but let Sawyer use it as well. Locorriere, who last toured in 2022 and announced his retirement last year, died of kidney disease at age 76.