From 1969 to 1975, Three Dog Night was a force to be reckoned with in pop and rock music. But the success of their 21 Billboard Top 40 hits, with three of those hitting number one, was actually a result of mostly using songs written by other people.
Two of their biggest hits were written by writers that didn’t have much success on their own, but once the band put their funk spin on “An Old Fashioned Love Song” by Paul Williams, and “Joy to the World” by Hoyt Axton, the music took off.
Most often asked about the band is the origin story of their strange name. Three Dog Night apparently refers to an old Australian ritual in which the country’s indigenous people would sleep in a hole with a dog (or in the case of Australia, a Dingo), on really cold nights. If it was reeeeeeally cold, it was a Three Dog Night.
The band has also accomplished a feat not often done in music: producing 12 gold records. The very first of those gold records was One.
The success of their albums just may have something to do with the immense amount of films and television shows where their music has been featured. Notably, TV series The Wonder Years, the movies Forrest Gump and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and another popular TV series, the X Files.
Three Dog Night also holds the distinction of having 27 different members in and out of the band since 1967. Though that’s an unusually high number for a band, it doesn’t come close to the nearly 100 members the band Chicago has had since their inception. But still too large of a number to confidently say you’re really seeing “the real” Three Dog Night today.
