It’s been a long time since its heyday, but during the first half of the 70s it was hard to find a band much more popular than Three Dog Night.
Between 1969-1974 the seven-man band scored 11 Top 10 and 18 Top 20 hits — including “Joy to the World,” “Black and White,” “Shambala,” “Mama Told Me Not to Come,” “One” and more. During the same period it also rolled off 12 straight gold or better albums.
These days the band is down to one original Dog. Danny Hutton remains from the vocal triumvirate that included the late Cory Wells and Chuck Negron, who’s largely retired and who also published a vindictive memoir, “Three Dog Nightmare” in 1999. But Hutton, 81 — whose career also includes writing for Hannah-Barbera Records during the 1960s and record for the Beach Boys’ Brother Records label — is happy to keep letting the Dog out, not just to play the old songs but also with a new album that’s coming later this year…
* Three Dog Night has been both praised and criticized over time for covering so many other songwriters’ songs, including Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Laura Nyro, Hoyt Axton, Paul Williams and others. “We used to get nailed all the time — ‘Ah, you’re just doing somebody else’s songs!’” Hutton recalls. “I’ve always said we haven’t covered any songs; we’ve resurrected them. All the songs probably came out but we did them our way and made hits out of them. I don’t think any of those (songwriters) were complaining about us when they got their royalty checks, y’know?”
* Hutton says he learned a lot about arranging songs from his time spent with the Beach Boys and particularly Brian Wilson in the studio. “I was there for ‘God Only Knows,’ all those sessions. I’ve learned so much from him and tried to incorporate it into what (Three Dog Night) did, really using a lot of vocal harmonies an complicated rhythmic parts. It’s basically like the Beach Boys but I would say we did a little more. It’s a little more rhythmical, a little more hard-edged.”
* Hutton says Three Dog Night actually turned down Axton’s “Joy to the World,” arguably its signature song, twice before recording it and scoring a No. 1 hit in 1970. “Hoyt just kept coming by the studio and pushing for it. We did the song as kind of a favor to him, and then we really started fiddling and the track ended up being a good track. It wasn’t the first release from the album (“Naturally”)l we had other singles out before that and we thought that was it, and then all of a sudden the phone calls started coming in, and it went nuts, 10 million records or something like that. It’s not one of my favorites, but I like that song now because everybody is so happy when they hear it.”
* Hutton is often asked why he’s still as active as he is, and he responds that, “I love it. It’s wonderful. After the Covid thing happened I didn’t do anything for about three or four months, then we had this whacky gigs in these big…parking lots, drive-in movie theaters. Everybody had to sit in their cars and the applause was car horns honking. I barely got through the show, though, and that scared me to death. So ever since I sing every day now. Every day I sing the set and do an hour and a half every day. I’ve found that’s it, you’ve got to use your voice. It’s really helped me keep it strong.”
* Three Dog Night’s new album — which Hutton hopes to release this year — will be the group’s first new set since “It’s a Jungle” in 1983. “We’re just thrilled to death. I’m so proud of it. It’s got everything — the ballads, the hard stuff, a lot of big, huge anthem choruses and all that stuff. I know everybody who puts out an album says, ‘This is gonna be really good’ and people are like, ‘Yeah, right, here come the old farts’ and blah, blah, blah.’ But it really is a good album. The lyrics are there, and Bill Cooper, who did all the hits, is engineering it. I think it’ll surprise a lot of people.”
Three Dog Night performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 10, at the Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit. 313-872-1000 or broadwayindetroit.com.
