DR. HOOK AND THE MEDICINE SHOW
Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, shortened in 1975 to Dr. Hook, was an American rock band, formed around Union City, New Jersey. They enjoyed considerable commercial success in the 1970’s with hit singles including “Sylvia’s Mother”, “The Cover of Rolling Stone”, “Sharing the Night Together”, “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. The band had eight years of regular chart hits, in both the U.S. and the UK, and greatest success with their later gentler material, as Dr. Hook. (More from Wikipedia)
Name shortening has been common among rock bands: The Young Rascals became the Rascals, the Troglodytes lost a little something in the translation when they changed their name to the Troggs, Small Faces morphed into Faces, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark was abbreviated to OMD, and (believe it or not) the 1990’s Irish band the Cranberries started out with the name The Cranberry Saw Us. Sometimes the official name never changes, but fans and DJ’s naturally begin to shorten the name, so the Rolling Stones are just as often the Stones, the Doobie Brothers are sometimes rendered the Doobies (as on two of their Greatest Hits albums, Best of the Doobies and Best of the Doobies Volume II), and bands like, say, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show are called just Dr. Hook. Occasionally it can even go the other way: A DJ on one of our local radio stations where I was growing up in Winston-Salem, Dick Bennick at WTOB-AM Radio was forever calling the Fab Four “the beetley, bootley Beatles”.
(June 2012)
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Shel Silverstein had a long series of novelty hits as well, but mostly as a songwriter, not a performer (he was also a fine cartoonist). He wrote most of the music for the rock band Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, including their hits “The Cover of the Rolling Stone”, “Sylvia’s Mother”, and “Freakin’ at the Freakers Ball”; he is also the author of a famous novelty hit by Johnny Cash, “A Boy Named Sue”, and “I Got Stoned and I Missed It” for Jim Stafford.
(March 2013)
