ALBUMS: Their Greatest Hits (1974); Live at the Forum (1969); Seven Separate Fools (1972).
MVC Rating: Greatest, 4.0/$$$; Live, 3.5/$$; Fools, 3.5/$$.
A guilty pleasure.
That’s because it was kind of uncool to like Three Dog Night in my teen years. ‘Too commercial’ and ‘they don’t write their own songs’ were among the comments. But when you are driving down the road, and ‘Joy to the World’ comes on you can’t resist the urge to unleash your best shower-trained rock voice: Jeremiah was a bullfrog!
They may have been a glorified covers band but between 1969 and 1975 the band notched 21 Top 40 hits — three of those were No. 1.
Was a good friend of mine!
Three Dog Night introduced artists to a wider audience. Joy to the World was written by country artist Hoyt Axton, for example. Laura Nyro (Eli’s Coming); Randy Newman (Mama Told Me Not to Come); and Harry Nillson (One) to name a few others the band made hits of their songs.
Never understood a single word he said but I helped him drink his wine … Joy to the world, all the boys and girls now, joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me. … and so on.
Besides a knack for picking good songs, Three Dog Night used three lead singers: Chuck Negron, Cory Wells and Danny Hutton, all strong singers in different ways. It allowed the group to match the lead voice with the song.
YouTuber ‘The Professor of Rock’ called the opening to Joy to the World to be the best known four-word opening in the history of rock.
Other Three Dog Night songs you may know the words to: ‘I’ve Never Been to Spain,’ ‘Black and White,’ ‘Shambala,’ ‘Easy to be Hard,’ ‘Liar,’ and ‘Just an Old Fashioned Love Song.