Ray Sawyer, who cut a distinctive figure as a member of the band Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show thanks to his flamboyant style and attention-drawing eye patch, and who sang lead on one of the group’s best-known songs, “The Cover of Rolling Stone,” died on Monday in Daytona, Fla. His wife, Linda Lombardi Sawyer, announced his death on Facebook. Mr. Sawyer and the band rose to prominence in the early 1970s with a country-rock sound that later became more lush and occasionally even displayed a disco influence. Dennis Locorriere usually sang lead, but Mr. Sawyer was the most recognizable band member. His eye patch gave the group its name, a sort of skewing of the Captain Hook character from “Peter Pan.”“I’ve had the eye patch since I was 27,” Mr. Sawyer told The St. Petersburg Times in 2010.

Source: New York Times January 02, 2019 22:18 UTC