Dr. Hook Biography and interview with images whatsapp mobile Contact number and Address info

Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show was an American pop, country and soft rock band, formed around Union City, New Jersey in 1967 as The Chocolate Papers. They enjoyed considerable commercial success in the 1970s with hit singles including "Sylvia's Mother", "The Cover of the Rolling Stone", "A Little Bit More" and "When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman". In addition to their own material, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show performed songs written by the poet Shel Silverstein. Often later billed simply as Dr. Hook, they had eight years of regular chart hits, in both the U.S. and the UK, and greatest success with their later gentler material. The founding core of the band consisted of three Southerners that had worked together in a band called "The Chocolate Papers", George Cummings, Ray Sawyer and Billy Francis. They had played the South, up and down the East Coast, and into the Midwest, before breaking up. Cummings, who moved to New Jersey with the plan of forming a new band, brought back Sawyer to rejoin him. They then took on future primary vocalist, Jersey native Dennis Locorriere, at first as a bass player. Francis, who had returned South after the Chocolate Papers broke up, returned to be the new band's keyboardist. When told by a club owner that they needed a name to put on a poster in the window of his establishment, Cummings made a sign: "Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show: Tonic for the Soul". The "Hook" name was inspired by Sawyer's eyepatch and a reference to "Captain Hook" of the Peter Pan fairytale, though, humorously, Captain Hook was neither a doctor or wore an eyepatch. The "Medicine Show" and "Doctor" were intended as tongue-in-cheek references to recreational drug use. Ray Sawyer lost an eye in a near-fatal car crash in Oregon in 1967, and has worn an eyepatch ever since. The band played for a few years in New Jersey, first with drummer Popeye Phillips (who had also been in "The Chocolate Papers"), who went on to be a session drummer on The Flying Burrito Brothers' first album, The Gilded Palace of Sin. Citing musical differences, Popeye returned home to Alabama and was replaced by local drummer Joseph Olivier. When the band began recording their first album, Olivier left in order to spend more time with his family, and was replaced by session player, John "Jay" David, who was asked to join the band full time in 1968.