The founding core of the band consisted of four friends—George Cummings, Dennis Locorriere, Ray Sawyer, Billy Francis—who had played up and down the East Coast and into the Midwest, ending up in New Jersey one by one, with invitations from founding band member George Cummings. 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 name was inspired by the traveling medicine shows of the old West. To this day, frontman Ray Sawyer is mistakenly considered Dr. Hook because of the eyepatch he wears as the result of a near-fatal 1967 car accident in Oregon.
Tracklist:
01 Freakin At The Freaker's Ball 02 Cover Of The Rolling Stone 03 Sylvia's Mother 04 Only Sixteen 05 A Little Bit More 06 Life Ain't Easy 07 Carry Me, Carrie 08 The Things I Didn't Say 09 You Ain't Got The Right 10 I Call That True Love 11 Makin It Natural 12 If I'd Only Come And Gone 13 Get My Rocks Off 14 Queen Of The Silver Dollar
Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show - The Essential (2003)
