I Just Love Three Dog Night's Greatest Hits

There. I've said it.

I'm just grinnin'.

http://www.paulwilliamscouk.plus.com/dublin2003_12.jpg

2) We sang "Joy To The World" in elementary-school music class. I'm still wondering who made that decision - yeah, the first line's about a bullfrog, but just THREE lines later there's "I helped him drink his wine/and he always had some mighty fine wine."

3) Ever since reading Chuck Negron's "Three Dog Nightmare" - a quick read and one of the best trashy bios ever - I cannot listen to Three Dog Night without snickering, at least a little.

Listened to "Shambala" because of this thread a while back. Man, is that an earworm. Basically been humming it for weeks.

I'd pick that as their best. (I have to remind myself that it's a cover of B.W. Stevenson--the original's quite good too, no surprise.) They had five or six good ones. They were as popular as the Jackson 5 or Carole King or Rod Stewart in 1971. They should boot the Red Hot Chili Peppers and a few others out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and put them in instead. It'd be a better kind of silly.

Sad to say it but these dudes might be my biggest musical 'discovery' of 2013. What a killer run of singles! Had totally forgotten about "Celebrate" but it's there printed on the unconscious like so many of their other jams. Their only serious misstep I think is the cover of "One" which totally misses the one-ness of it...though clearly it worked out just fine for them.

Serious question: are there any acts in 2013 working anything like this territory without it being a) grotesque period-piecery or b) tuneless bar-band filler? I'm really enjoying most of the stuff I checked out from the 2012 ILM albums list but most of it seems to slot into this very wooshy, soft/spacey security-blanket indie zone, which I do dig but it kind of amazes me how little indie rock seems to have now in the way of tuneful, hooky crunch. This is probably off-topic for this thread but I'm just wondering if I'm missing something big and obvious.

I dunno if there <is> a contemporary equivalent. TDN was probably one of the last major Pop acts that (A) was reliant on outside material yet (B) wasn't manufactured by an impresario or producer(s) supplying them w/ready-mades. Alot of their stuff was pre-existing album tracks or flop singles. And look at the credits on those singles: Nilsson, Nyro, Paul Williams, John Hiatt, Leo Sayer, Russ Ballard, Allen Toussaint, Hoyt Axton--fuck, before they got big they where doing Elton John stuff before he got big (and then later turned him onto coke when he first hit LA). If they had been able to hold it together into the disco era they'd probably done well w/ABBA obscurities.

According to Shakey, Danny Hutton and Danny Whitten were running buddies, with Hutton considering asking him to join TDN as a singer before Neil snapped him up for Crazy Horse (TDN covered The Rockets' "Let Me Go" on their debut).

That's true - it'd be hard for a contemporary rock act to rely so heavily on outside-penned material without being gunned down by accusations of phoniness. They're a reminder that the Monkees weren't actually doomed by their reliance on (outstanding) songwriters but by their own discomfort with the idea. If they'd been cool to just roll on with it, maybe some of those TDN hits would have actually been Monkees tracks!

If I had to point to a current band, it'd probably be somebody like The New Pornographers, and even then mainly because they make a strong pull from songwriters that TDN recorded.

xpost--Intersting point. Davy Jones claimed that he'd been pushing for Paul Williams songs back in '67-8, but was only able to land "Someday Man", which flopped in '69. Lesley Gore had a similar thing happen w/Laura Nyro--when she finally was able to record "Wedding Bell Blues", she got crushed on the charts by The Fifth Dimension.

Heard "Black and White" on the AM heading downtown tonight. That's probably the simpiest hit they had, and even that holds up reasonably well.

I'm not completely kidding about them being in the HOF. I was thinking about them in comparison to the Pretenders or the Police. I know the latter two had the Stamp of Importance in their day, but are they still viewed that way? Three Dog Night--the Dog--had many more hits. (I counted.) Generational bias here.

Not only that, when people start threads about Three Dog Night, they put them on ILE instead of ILM so that the whole world can share the love.

ELI'S COMING, SO HIDE YOUR HEART.

Their only serious misstep I think is the cover of "One" which totally misses the one-ness of it...though clearly it worked out just fine for them.

...NUMBER!

Yes, that's Lily Tomlin as the fortune teller (this was from the Music Scene, of which she was a cast member prior to joining Laugh-In)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcVrZwVSORA

http://i.minus.com/i81URoWpHkQ24.gif

challop: 3DN version of "One" > Nilsson version of "One"

conventional-op for me.... 3DN's "One" absurdly overwrought. NUMBUH!!!!

But i like it anyway if only for pointing more attention Nilsson's way. Although several prominent acts were covering his songs by this point, his own records weren't selling beans at this point.

Holy crap, that video! Fantastic stuff.

Production so tight on so many of these songs

3DN was all about studio production and a tight pop sound. They were never about greatness, depth or reach.

This reminds me that the first rock band I ever saw live was Bruce Laing (vocals), Chris Karolidis (guitar), Scott Reis (guitar), and Norm Allen (drums), who played at our school talent show in 1971 when I was in grade 4. They must have had a name, but I've forgotten it--let's call them the Fields of Nephilim for now. They played "Joy to the World," and they had reach, depth, and greatness--they were godlike.

First arena rock show I saw WAS Three Dog Night. I'm guessing 1972.

Nice--probably more of a rock show than mine, which took place in the school gym. (My other first show was the Guess Who at Toronto's Exhibition Stadium, a year after yours I think.)

their original drummer was sick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eecQeAErJ8Q

And what a great name: Floyd Sneed!

Man, "Never Been To Spain" will never be dislodged from my brain. WOAH LAWWD!

Could be my favorite 3DN. "I've never been to Heaven, but I've been to Oklahoma" can work on so many different levels.

Even my blue-collar WWII-veteran grandpa liked these guys (owned Naturally and Golden Bisquits)

pplains OTM, it is a killer lyric. Cheers to Hoyt Axton.

Weird - my bookmark to this thread keeps not working and refusing itself. I suspect an anti-Dog conspiracy.

Elvis knew what was up...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdYYcMH4dmw

Thread's relocation from "I Love Everything" presumably to blame for bookmark-fail? xpost

man, elvis pretty much straight ripping 3DN's whole arrangement/performance, just a few details changed here and there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87b5dLN7r4o

(Couldn't find the one with them and James Brown, which is apparently Episode 1.17)

It was just last week that I was thinking of all the things I still hoped to see one day, and Gore Vidal and Hugh Hefner strolling into the mosh pit of a Three Dog Night performance topped the list.

Was what is on the Cowsills thread also on your list?

Took a look--Tony Hendra, right? (Weren't the Cowsills too young to get inside the Mansion?)

Also: this probably shouldn't go here, but I've been groovin' on Santana lately, and was amazed that this hit actually wasn't either TDN or BST:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wwfUEM3BWU

"Everybody's Everything", from Santana 3.

The David Clayton-Thomas Syndrome (designated as such in The American Journal of Medicine, Vol. 25, Issue 3, I believe) was the scourge of white rock bands in the early '70s. Most egregious example: the Ides of March's "Vehicle."

Never knew of Clayton-Thomas by name before but that connection makes a lottttt of sense. The bombastic ham delivery also reminds me of Gary Puckett, and some of Neil Diamond's stuff (Cracklin' Rosie, I Am I Said) though he's sanded down some of the worst affectations. Jim Morrison also probably bears some responsibility. Apparently this was a style of singing that really landed with middle-of-the-road top 40 listeners circa 1967-1971, but now it feels like maybe the biggest barrier to new audiences getting into these songs. OTOH I played my friend a bunch of TDN last night and she was digging it, even the more OTT stuff (tho I didn't go as far as "The Show Must Go On" - surely their worst single by some distance?).

This thread may also be relevant: covers that folk/rock/soul song-interpreters of the '60s and '70s would have on their records

Their cover of "Try a Little Tenderness," closely modeled on Redding's, also gives some clue to what they *thought* they were getting at.

"Cracklin' Rosie"'s pretty light on its feet, I'd say, but you're right, Neil's overcome with DCTS on "I Am...I Said" and "Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show" and probably other songs I don't know. Morrison's a good starting point. Chicago, obviously, on something like "Make Me Smile," even though I like them and I like that song. Rare Earth--advanced DCTS.

At least one of Hamilton, Joe Frank, or Reynolds seems to have also been a sufferer. Three Dog Night... man, they have such a fascinating sound. Their rockier numbers genuinely rock, fuzzed-out, great rhythm section, and they often chose kind of weird material for hit singles ("Never Been To Spain" is just three verses, no chorus, and then those same three verses again but louder!), but the vocals always give the sense that the performer is giving a big, wide Vegas entertainer's smile for the parents watching this in the back row.

Also, quoth Wiki:

Three Dog Night's original recordings were released by ABC Dunhill Records (except for 1983's It's A Jungle). In 1973, executives at ABC Dunhill (Jay Lasker is usually blamed) decided to discard all of their multi-track recordings and mono masters to save storage space in a cost-cutting measure. [1] As a result, all re-issues on CD have been remastered using album masters (sometimes second or third generation tape) which often results in an inferior sound when compared to other catalogs of the era.

Is this significant? Is it something I can hear in the recordings? I don't think anything I've heard by them sounds bad but there is certainly some kind of quality to the recordings that sounds, idk, different? Is it just that they've been spared terrible late 80s CD remasters....?

I don't know. The only thing I have is their greatest hits on vinyl (used to have Harmony on 8-track! we listened to it, and the Guess Who's Greatest Hits, on the way to Florida in 1972). I've never given any thought to sound quality.

One thing they had was excellent taste in songwriters. First LP: Harry Nilsson, Lennon & McCartney, Danny Whitten, Randy Newman, Tim Hardin, Neil Young. Second: Dave Mason, Elton John & Bernie Taupin, Sam Cooke, Laura Nyro. Third (studio): Newman again (twice), Roger Nichols & Paul Williams, Nyro again, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil. Fourth: Jesse Colin Young, Hoyt Axton. Fifth: Axton, Williams, Stevie Wonder & Syreeta Wright, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Miller & Don Stevenson (Moby Grape). I'm sure I missed some great lesser-known names, too. That's an amazing five-LP run.

And one thing anyone younger than 40 won't know is how really, really big they were around the decade changeover. After the Beatles, the Jackson 5, CCR, and maybe the Carpenters, they might have been the biggest Top 40 group for '70-72. (I'd have to check that...Elton was taking off, there was the Guess Who, maybe a handful of other contenders too.)

(The Beatles, as you may have heard, called it quits in '70.)

Also on the list of material: they gave John Hiatt his career by covering "Sure As I'm Sitting Here." He's not in the same league as those others, but he's penned a few other hits including "Thing Called Love."

TDN had a very very dense run of hits from '69 to '75: they released twenty-one singles, every single one made the top 40, eleven top-tenners, three #1s. CCR weren't even as reliable! The Carpenters and the Jacksons are closer matches with three #1s and more near-misses than TDN, but not quite as many hits overall, and capable of releasing things that people didn't send up the charts. Not saying TDN were "bigger" than those bands, I wasn't there and it seems clear enough that all three made a bigger impact on the culture, but I get the sense that the Dog, like the Carpenters, had some kind of crossover power that tells us something about the state of the culture beyond the counter- part of the culture in that moment.

In the back of the Joel Whitburn pop singles book I've got from the mid-'80s, he's got them 14th for the '70s. But all the people ahead of them (except for the Carpenters) had hits throughout the decade: Elton, Chicago, Bee Gees, etc. If you made the cut-off '75, at which point they're literally finished, I think you're right, they'd be top two or three.

For anyone wondering why this thread is very active suddenly, it's just a couple of guys with Dog Fever.

re:Sound Quality--I've got the two disc "Celebrate" set from '93, which I picked up used ages ago. It sounds quite good.* In the liner notes they mention something about using "Original Mono and Stereo Singles Masters for the First Time on CD", which had to be a great selling point to folks willing to shell out $30 or so bucks for TDN on CD in the mid-'90s.

*I'm not sure what the AMG guy is on about nothing being Remastered. Early MCA CDs were kind of notorious for having fairly high-quality mastering for the time, but also being quiet af. This set (and alot of '90s period MCA/Universal reissues) fixed the latter.

Also, looking at that tracklist I see another superb song they picked up: "You" a minor hit for Marvin Gaye just prior to "Grapevine" blowing up, and a big 'keep e'm on the floor' number at the local Soul Night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_2NpgHkyfY

Oh hey I forgot about "You"! I know it from Gaye's terribly packaged but amazingly stuffed Super Hits; listening to it right now in the context of this thread, it's almost screaming for a Three Dog Night cover. Listening to theirs, it's got a nice feel to it, nice that it's not a super-close copy and it naturally wanders into one of their rocked-out jam-type sections, but for once it'd be nice to hear them belting it out the vocals a little harder. I mean anybody's voice is going to sound kind of weak and thin next to Marvin Gaye's but still...

Youtube just recommended this to me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W3MGr19IyY

i think excerpts of that have crossed my path before, there's some really fun performing in there along with some seemingly adrift frontmanning. hutton's outfit and mic-cord manipulation make me wonder if they were hoping to catch a bit of the glam train. there's a real "please clap" moment before "Black and White" where they try and fail to get the crowd to sing along. "now i know you know the words to this one..."

the wikipedia for that song reveals that TDN had discovered it via the reggae group The Greyhounds' cover, which had gone to the top ten in the UK, so maybe that's why they figured it would go over well. also: apparently it was originally written by one Earl Robinson in 1954 and was explicitly about the Brown decision:

Their robes were black, Their heads were white,
The schoolhouse doors were closed so tight,
Nine judges all set down their names,
To end the years and years of shame.

Ooh, that concert looks great, bookmarking to watch later. TDN were my first arena rock concert, right about this time.

You know I love the ladies
Love to have my fun
I'm a high-life flyer and a rainbow rider
A straight shootin' son-of-a-gun

The Sensitive Male, circa 1971.

Riding that rainbow in white bell-bottoms.

SOOOOOO hard
FAM'ly of MAN
SOOOOO hard
DOO DOO DOOOOO

I knew that would be you.

Last year I was *this* close to buying a used copy of Chuck Negron’s autobio. Guy knew how to party I guess.

Ooh, that concert looks great, bookmarking to watch later. TDN were my first arena rock concert, right about this time.

haha i'm a simple man

I probably mentioned it on the Fargo thread, but "Shambala" was used really well in S2, just the daughter driving and singing along with it over the radio.

Picking up right where I left off...I was comparing notes with a friend today on how well they've been used in films and on TV.

"Mama Told Me Not to Come," Boogie Nights - Jack Horner's pool party. A+
"Shambala," Fargo - As described above. A
"Easy to Be Hard," Zodiac - A song I never liked growing up, but in Zodiac--opening scene, 4th of July fireworks--it's perfect. A
"One," Magnolia - I don't remember particulars (a montage of different characters?), but I recall it being used effectively. A-
"Joy to the World," The Big Chill - So-so on the film, but I liked this at the end. A-

Anything else?

I think this clip may have been put together for a PTA series that played in Toronto a couple of years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwpzwqmJPe0

I thought I'd seen every PTA film, but I'm drawing a blank on the black-and-white stuff there...is that one of Magnolia's "this happened" flashbacks?

out in the country is the one i'm loving these days

Beat Club Jam...Chuck Negron offstage somewhere doing drugs and/or breaking his penis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4l6FU74pUY

Floyd Sneed's got one of oh-so-'70s clear drum kits. Would be kinda cool to have a power trio with one of those and two Ampeg Dan Armstrongs.

oops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aAlOysB8z4

u gotta admit that yelling "jeremiah was a bullfrog" is just a gloriously deranged way to start a song

— lil jon lovitz (autumn version 🦃🍂) (@liljonlovitz) November 21, 2021

Missed this sad news in January - Floyd Sneed passed away at 80:

https://bestclassicbands.com/floyd-sneed-obituary-three-dog-night-drummer-1-29-23/

Spending time with the Dog and this thread over the past decade has really gotten me to pay attention to his drumming. Truly great imho, deserves to be much more in the conversation. Not a one of their hits would have had half the energy and momentum with somebody else at the kit. "Family of Man," my big obsession of late, is as good as proof of that as you could ask for.

Just heard "Liar" on an archival American Top 40 (8-14-71) on Sirius XM--Such a banger and maybe the best production they ever got.

One of my speculative picks for the final Mad Men song!

That would have been wild.

"Indian Reservation" is also in this countdown, and it could totally pass for a more serious 3DN song/recording ala "Liar" or "Out In The Country".

Good(Three Dog)Night Chuck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGtqZ8hHX3s

On the road to Shambala--sorry to hear.

you ever play that game where you try to out-funny each other by adding the phrase "in my pants" to song titles?
"mama told me not to come" is the all time winner.

i guess "easy to be hard" is pretty good too

"Celebrate", "Joy To The World", and "Liar" too.

...and "Eli's Comin'" of course

Never Been To Spain!

Talking about this on FB, I realized that Three Dog Night have a song in:

1) probably my favourite film of the '90s ("Mama Told Me" in Boogie Nights);

2) definitely my favourite film of the '00s ("Easy to Be Hard" in Zodiac);

3) my favourite single season of an omnibus--? whatever you call a series where each season is a different cast/story than the others--TV series ("Shambala" in S2 of Fargo)

And each one is used memorably. They're not quite Donovan in the soundtrack department, but they're up there.

I can’t believe I never posted to this thread.

but you kinda like the Beatles.

Honest to god--wish I had video--I had a last-minute supply/substitute for grade 1 today, the school in my town, and they were all dancing on the carpet (they asked if they could) to "Joy to the World." I played a YouTube clip with lyrics--was pretty sure there'd be no inquiries about certain lyrics.

<3 <3

“Black and White” is actually my favorite song by these guys. Yes, based on the Greyhound version, but they fricking nailed it. It’s a fascinating record, pretty much all repetition.

Curiously a number one hit in South Africa during apartheid.