Post by erik on May 6, 2023 19:51:19 GMT -5
The first Top Ten hit for the band Three Dog Night is in this week's Pop Music Hits Spotlight, and it comes from perhaps the most radical and subversive Broadway musical of all time.
EASY TO BE HARD (Three Dog Night; Dunhill; 1969)—Formed in Los Angeles in 1967, Three Dog Night were led by vocalists Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron, and Cory Wells, and featured, among their instrumental core, noted studio pianist Jimmy Greenspoon. Between 1969 and 1975, they managed to get twenty-one songs into the Billboard Top 40, with three of them reaching #1. The vast majority of their hits were cover songs by the likes of Randy Newman (“Mama Told Me Not To Come”), Paul Williams (“An Old-Fashioned Love Song”) and Hoyt Axton (“Joy To The World”). The band’s first hit came in early 1969 with a version of the 1940’s standard “Try A Little Tenderness”; but their first really big hit came about from the then-revolutionary Broadway rock musical Hair. Written by the musical’s composers and lyricists Gail McDermot, James Rado, and Gerome Ragni, “Easy To Be Hard” was sung on the original cast recording (which was the #1 album for several months in 1969) by Lynn Kellogg, who portrayed Sheila. Three Dog Night’s recording became the fifth song from that musical to reach the Billboard Hot 100, making it arguably the most successful singles-generating musical of the rock era. The Fifth Dimension had scored a #1 hit for six weeks in the spring with “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In”; the Cowsills hit #2 in May with “Hair”; and Oliver hit #3 in the summer with “Good Morning Starshine”. “Easy To Be Hard”, in the Three Dog Night version, hit #5 on the Hot 100 in September, setting the group’s pop-rock sound up for huge successes over the next several years.
EASY TO BE HARD (Three Dog Night; Dunhill; 1969)—Formed in Los Angeles in 1967, Three Dog Night were led by vocalists Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron, and Cory Wells, and featured, among their instrumental core, noted studio pianist Jimmy Greenspoon. Between 1969 and 1975, they managed to get twenty-one songs into the Billboard Top 40, with three of them reaching #1. The vast majority of their hits were cover songs by the likes of Randy Newman (“Mama Told Me Not To Come”), Paul Williams (“An Old-Fashioned Love Song”) and Hoyt Axton (“Joy To The World”). The band’s first hit came in early 1969 with a version of the 1940’s standard “Try A Little Tenderness”; but their first really big hit came about from the then-revolutionary Broadway rock musical Hair. Written by the musical’s composers and lyricists Gail McDermot, James Rado, and Gerome Ragni, “Easy To Be Hard” was sung on the original cast recording (which was the #1 album for several months in 1969) by Lynn Kellogg, who portrayed Sheila. Three Dog Night’s recording became the fifth song from that musical to reach the Billboard Hot 100, making it arguably the most successful singles-generating musical of the rock era. The Fifth Dimension had scored a #1 hit for six weeks in the spring with “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In”; the Cowsills hit #2 in May with “Hair”; and Oliver hit #3 in the summer with “Good Morning Starshine”. “Easy To Be Hard”, in the Three Dog Night version, hit #5 on the Hot 100 in September, setting the group’s pop-rock sound up for huge successes over the next several years.