Three Dog Night
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Three Dog Night was an American rock and roll band active from 1968 to 1975.
The band started with three lead vocalists — Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron, and Cory Wells — who landed a recording contract with Dunhill Records in Los Angeles. They made some early recordings with Beach Boys producer, composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist Brian Wilson, and initially went by the name Redwood. The band changed their name based on an article describing how Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a "three-dog night." The vocalists soon hired a group of backing musicians — Michael Allsup on guitar, Floyd Sneed on drums, Joe Schermie (from the Cory Wells Blues Band) on bass, and Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards — and soon became one of the most successful bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Three Dog Night collected no fewer than fourteen gold albums and recorded twenty-one Billboard Top 40 hits, nine of which went gold. Their first gold record was "One" in 1969, followed by "Easy To Be Hard" from the musical Hair. They had three number one songs: "Mama Told Me Not to Come," "Joy to the World", and "Black and White". Dunhill Records claimed 40 million units sold by them.
Their use of songs by Randy Newman ("Mama Told Me Not to Come", their only Top 10 hit in the UK), Laura Nyro ("Eli's Coming"), Hoyt Axton ("Joy to the World"), Elton John & Bernie Taupin ("Lady Samantha"), Leo Sayer ("The Show Must Go On"), and Harry Nilsson ("One") were the first major hits for songs by these singer/songwriters.
Joe Schermie quit in 1973 and was replaced by Jack Ryland. The band then became an eight-piece with the induction of another keyboards player, Skip Konte. By now Negron had become the principal vocalist, and a dissatisfied Hutton left the group in 1976; the group disbanded the following year, at least partly due to Negron's drug addiction problem.
In the mid-1980s Three Dog Night began appearing again, and as of 2006 they are still touring actively. The current lineup features founding members Wells and Hutton on lead vocals, keyboardist Greenspoon and guitarist Allsup, with new members Paul Kingery on bass & vocals and Pat Bautz on drums.
Discography
- Three Dog Night (1969)
- *"One" (US chart #5)
- *"Try a Little Tenderness" (#29)
External links
- [Three Dog Night official website]
- [Three Dog Night at AllMusicGuide.com]
- [Three Dog Night at Oldies.com]
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