There has never been a better origin story in pop stardom, but Three Dog Night had a secret sauce that was more like curation than mythology; find the right song, and then sing it like it belonged to them.
One of the original members and the lead singer of the group Chuck Negron passed away at 83 years old at his home in Studio City, California. He was living with a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) over several decades and during his last few months, he developed heart failure.
It is as though Negron was on a detour that became by chance the road: he was born in Manhattan, grew up in the Bronx, sang in doo-wop bands and, as he became a serious basketball player, was offered scholarships to go to California. It happened to Los Angeles, which dragged him into the music business, and in 1967 he was creating Three Dog Night with Cory Wells and Danny Hutton. The time of the band was strange and ideal. In the late 60s, rock culture came to regard self-written content to a greater extent as a sign of authenticity. Three Dog Night did the same thing but established a reputation as the band that could pick a song by another writer and at the same time with its vocal combination that it could shift grit to AM-radio smooth without making listeners think they were dealing with a different concert. It was not the point to succeed despite the cover-heavy strategy; it was their success.
That point hit fast. Harry Nilsson reached No. 5 with his song, One (Is the Loneliest Number): the group continued making a sharp-songwriter discovery a mainstream event: Laura Nyro, Randy Newman, Hoyt Axton, Paul Williams, etc. Through their period of greatest success, the band managed to pile up 21 consecutive Top 40 hits, a streak that made their taste seem almost prophetic. In another article, Rolling Stone described them as the discoverers, of such writers as Nyro, Nilsson, Newman and even Elton John and Bernie Taupin, since even a Three Dog Night recording did not simply play some music, but pushed the sound into mass action.
The voice of Negron was in the heart of that engine: it was loud, demanding, almost colloquial full volume, a voice that sold happiness and did not mock, sorrow and did not brood. One of the fan tributes that went round in his death made the emotion plain: in a way, I always loved his voice. Especially on ‘Easy To Be Hard.’
The story did not stay glossy. When the band was selling out their concerts and, at one point, even topping the sales of some of the biggest acts in rock, Negron descended into heroin addiction with the use of drugs. The consequences were vicious: money, time and years spent on the Skid Row of Los Angeles. In 1976, Three Dog Night broke up, got back together in the early eighties, and broke another time as addiction continued to distract Negron out of the working rhythm of the band.
Reverse was later to be the protracted chapter. Negron eventually cleaned up in 1991 after numerous efforts and wrote a memoir about the crash of fame and dependency that was to be published under the title Three Dog Nightmare. He continued to release music as well, with seven solo albums between 1995 and 2017 work that was influenced less by chart success than by the consistency of turning up.
Ultimately it came down to the very human detail. Hutton visited Negron a few months before his death, several decades later, and told of a reunion in which they embraced, wept, recalled and swapped numerous stories, and he wrote, It was a beautiful and very moving reunion.
Negron had already presented his own blunt north star, in a 1998 interview: I have found that in my case, going out there and trying to make 50 no. 1 records or sell another 90 million records is not going to do anything to me. I understand what obsesses me to do the work, to be a musician, to earn a living, to take care of my family and to have my priorities straightened out.
