Three Dog Night

Three Dog Night is an American rock band formed in 1967, founded by vocalists Chuck Negron, Cory Wells, and Danny Hutton. This lineup was soon augmented by Jimmy Greenspoon (keyboards), Joe Schermie (bass), Michael Allsup (guitar), and Floyd Sneed (drums). The band had 21 Billboard Top 40 hits between 1969 and 1975, with three hitting number one. Three Dog Night recorded many songs written by outside songwriters, and they helped to introduce mainstream audiences to writers such as Randy Newman ("Mama Told Me Not to Come"), Paul Williams ("An Old Fashioned Love Song"), and Hoyt Axton ("Joy to the World", "Never Been to Spain"). Name origin The commentary included in the CD set Celebrate: The Three Dog Night Story, 1965–1975 states that vocalist Danny Hutton's girlfriend, actress June Fairchild (best known as the "Ajax Lady" from the Cheech and Chong movie Up In Smoke) suggested the name after reading a magazine article about Aboriginal Australians, in which it was explained that on cold nights they would customarily sleep while embracing a dingo, a native species of wild dog. On colder nights they would sleep with two dogs and, if the night were freezing, it was a "three dog night". Musician Van Dyke Parks, an arranger at Warner Bros Records, disputed the above story and said he coined the name. On 10 September 2018, he wrote on Twitter, "I wuz [sic] nuts about Hutton's girlfriend. Quite a dancer. Yet, she didn't read Mankind magazine, nor have an inkling of anthtopology [sic] and the cold aboriginal nights that inspired my suggestion." History