I was listening to this album last night....
I was listening to this album last night.... 1970:
Naturally it was their 4th album, i believe.
cover shot was done on the North shore of Oahu, HI
quite the hodgepodge of songs.....
producer's choice, i'm sure.
i remember that i was most impressed with the drummer, floyd sneed.
he never used a click.
and man, what a pocket groove, he was having to battle with 3 singers, instead of just one, who wanted the feel of the song to be 3 different ways.
Floyd was the inventor of the rock n roll drumbeat that has the ride cymbal playing on the "and" (upbeats), while the snare does the back beat on 2 and 4.
LOL
joe schermie, the king of how to leave holes and create air space in arrangments.
some wiki notes:
The band started in 1968 with three lead vocalists, Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron, and Cory Wells who landed a recording contract with Dunhill Records in Los Angeles. They had made some early recordings in 1967 with Brian Wilson, and initially went by the name Redwood. Shortly after abandoning the Redwood moniker, the vocalists hired a group of backing musicians Michael Allsup on guitar, Floyd Sneed on drums, Joe Schermie from the Cory Wells Blues Band on bass, and Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards and soon became one of the most successful bands in the US during the late 1960s and early 1970s. On a number of early recordings as Three Dog Night one of their in-studio background singers was Donna Gaines, who would later find stardom on her own as Donna Summer.
Three Dog Night earned 13 gold albums and recorded 21 Billboard Top 40 hits, 7 of which went gold. Their first gold record was "One" (US #5), which had been written and recorded by Harry Nilsson. They had three U.S. number one songs: "Mama Told Me Not to Come" ,which was also their only Top 10 hit in the UK, "Joy to the World" and "Black and White".
Dunhill Records claimed 40 million LP units were sold by them during that time period. Three Dog Night covered songs by Randy Newman "Mama Told Me Not to Come", Laura Nyro "Eli's Coming" (US #10), Russ Ballard of Argent "Liar" (US #7), Hoyt Axton "Joy to the World", Elton John and Bernie Taupin ("Lady Samantha" & "Your Song"), John Hiatt "Sure As I'm Sittin' Here" (US #16) and Leo Sayer "The Show Must Go On" (US #4). Elton John later credited their cover of "Your Song" with being a major factor in catapulting him to stardom. They also popularized songs by Paul Williams "An Old Fashioned Love Song" (US#4) and "Out in the Country" (US #15) as well as Easy to be Hard from the musical Hair
Original bassist Joe Schermie died on March 26, 2002
In the pilot episode of That 70's Show, during the credits the gang is seen singing "Out In The Country".
vocalist Danny Hutton’s then-girlfriend June Fairchild thought of the name when she read a magazine article about indigenous Australians, in which it was explained that on cold nights they would customarily sleep in a hole in the ground while embracing a dingo, a native species of wild dog. On colder nights they would sleep with two dogs, and if a night was especially cold, it was a "Three Dog Night"
post edited by batsbrew - 2009/03/11 16:00:19