Song of the Day 9/16: Three Dog Night, “Celebrate”
The best night for progressives in Delaware primary history is certainly something to celebrate. Sarah McBride, Marie Pinkney, Eric Morrison, Madinah Wilson-Anton, Larry Lambert — all of them are going to the celebrity ball.
As Danny Hutton relates to this Soundstage audience in 1975, Three Dog Night used this as their closing number for several years after it reached No. 15 on the Hot 100 in 1970.
Three Dog Night was as uncool as a band could be in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Their arrangements and stage act smacked more of Las Vegas than the Haight, they didn’t write their own material and none of their three lead singers played an instrument on stage. It was like a pop-rock precursor to the Three Tenors. Despite the scorn, the band scored a string of 18 consecutive Top 20 singles from “One” in 1969 to “Sure As I’m Sittin’ Here” in 1974.
From this distance, I can better appreciate the fact that each of these guys really was a lead vocalist, and this song is one of the few on which each singer takes a turn at it — Hutton the first verse, Chuck Negron the second and Cory Wells the third.
Ironically, the song’s tempo dancing difficult-to-impossible, no matter how much you want to celebrate.
Hey! Be nicer to these guys, they had lots of hits even if they were not the very definition of cool, at some point you’ve got to pay the bills and make money. Played in many commercial bands and had fun, also played in original bands that went nowhere fast.(But still had fun, it takes so little to make me happy.)
Hey, 18 straight Top 20 singles is nothing to sneeze at. Seven of them went gold, and the royalty checks certainly helped guys like Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and Hoyt Axton.
Of course I heard most of those songs on the radio, but it wasn’t until many years later than I appreciated the musicianship. Absurdly, they are not in the Rock Hall of Fame.