Rant #3,879: Joy To the World

We lost Demond Wilson the other day, and now, we have lost another popular performer from a different time and place.

Chuck Negron died the other day at age 83, and if you don't know the name, you do know the following three words:

Three Dog Night.

Negron was one of the three lead singers of this ultra-popular band, and he was probably the most lead singer of that three-headed monster, along with Cory Wells and Danny Hutton.

With a superb backing band, the three had numerous hits from the late 1960s into the mid 1970s, and you know all of them, whether you knew Negron's name or not.

"Joy to the World," "Eli's Coming," "Mama Told Me (Not To Come)," "Black and White," and my favorite, "The Show Must Go On," where Negron's vocals, I felt, were among the top lead vocals of any song of that era.

And he was a trailblazer.

He was of Puerto Rican descent, and decades before Bad Bunny even was born, Negron was perhaps the first lead singer of Puerto Rican descent to nab top hits and albums.

Three Dog Night was not without controversy.

First off, a lot of people derided them because they sang other peoples' songs, like those from Laura Nyro, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and Leo Sayer, among others--

Not realizing that the three lead singers had all been around the block, so to speak, had paid their dues, and had been business veterans even before the forming of the band.

Having three lead singers led to a lot of ego issues, and with Negron the actual lead singer on most of the hits, there was a lot of animosity between him and Wells and Hutton, which eventually led to a breakup in the late 1970s.

There was also a lot of hard drug use in the band, and Negron was a major part of that environment, by his own admission.

It got so bad for him that the other two singers broke away from him, and he was so down in the dumps at one time--spending his fortune on hard drugs--that he actually lived on Skid Row in Los Angeles for a time.

He was sick, and had a very bad case of COPD, but somehow, he rehabilitated himself, and during his last few years, he recorded a number of solo albums and was part of the "Happy Together" Tour.

His voice was unmistakable, and while his ills greatly impacted his health, the voice may have been a little more ragged, but it was still there.

I saw him during one of the "Happy Together" Tour stops on Long Island, and he sounded good--and really happy.

Wells and Hutton toured separately under the Three Dog Night banner into the 1990s, and Wells' passing left Hutton as the sole lead singer of the act.

Reports are that a few months ago, Hutton and Negron finally buried the hatchet, and there have always been persistent rumors that the two--and when Wells was alive, the three--would get back together someday, which actually happened in the late 1980s when they recorded an EP together that garnered some FM rock station airplay,

But it was nothing permanent, and with Negron's passing and Wells' own demise, Hutton remains the last Three Dog Night singer standing.

So, with Negron's passing, one of the great voices of that era is gone, but the records remain as his legacy.

Listening to Three Dog Night all these years later, a lot of those hits hold up pretty well, and Negron's voice continues to stand out from the rest.

R.I.P. Chuck Negron.

You brought a lot of "Joy to the World" with your voice, and your overall talent.