Dino Valenti died on November 16, 1994, in Santa Rosa, California. The singer and songwriter helped shape Quicksilver Messenger Service’s recordings of the early 1970s, while his “Get Together” took a separate route to a national audience through The Youngbloods.
Born Chester William Powers Jr. in Danbury, Connecticut, Valenti worked in Greenwich Village’s folk scene before moving to California. He recorded “Birdses” for Elektra in 1964, with a harpsichord prominent in the arrangement. In a 2023 interview with Guitar International, Jesse Colin Young recalled discovering “Get Together” when he arrived expecting to rehearse and found an open mic underway. Buzzy Linhart was performing it, and Young asked him to write out the lyrics. “I fell in love with it, Dino Valenti wrote it,” Young told the magazine. The Youngbloods included the song on their 1967 debut album. Its initial release brought modest chart success, but a reissue changed its fortunes. As NPR reported, “Get Together” reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1969, two years after the band first released it.
Valenti’s own solo album arrived between those two releases. Epic issued Dino Valente in 1968, with that alternate spelling on the sleeve. Writing for The Arts Desk in 2013, Kieron Tyler traced its recording from November 1967 through April 1968. Much of the album centered on Valenti’s guitar and voice, surrounded by echo and occasional strings. Songs including “Children of the Sun” and “Listen to Me” gave listeners a sustained introduction to his own singing and writing.
His connection to Quicksilver had begun before that solo release. Imprisonment on drug charges kept him out of the group’s early performing and recording life, although the band included his “Dino’s Song” on its self-titled 1968 debut. Valenti and Quicksilver guitarist Gary Duncan attempted a separate band in 1969. When that project dissolved, Duncan returned to Quicksilver with Valenti. By the release of Just for Love in 1970, a songwriter already represented in the band’s catalog was also its frontman.
Valenti supplied most of the material for Just for Love and What About Me, both released in 1970. “Fresh Air” appeared on the former, while many of his writing credits used the name Jesse Oris Farrow. The albums shared a recording history, too: AllMusic’s Lindsay Planer describes work on both beginning during the band’s stay in Hawaii in May and June 1970. With Valenti singing his own material, the group placed greater emphasis on structured songs alongside its instrumental playing.
He continued recording with Quicksilver on Quicksilver in 1971 and Comin’ Thru in 1972, then participated in the 1975 reunion album Solid Silver. His writing remained central to that return: he wrote or co-wrote six of its ten tracks, including “Cowboy on the Run” and “The Letter.”
Recordings from before those albums also survived. In 2019, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame received a collection of Valenti’s unreleased early-1960s demos from music journalist Richie Unterberger. Digitized from a cassette copy, the recordings preserve his work before the solo LP, the Quicksilver albums and The Youngbloods’ hit.
