(In this video of “Eli’s Coming”)
They had three lead vocalists-- Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron, and Cory Wells, but I can’t tell who’s who in this video. Normally, I’d ask in the comments, but those are disabled.
Cory Wells leads off with the extended opening. Danny Hutton sings solo for a bit starting at 2:52. Mustachioed Chuck Negron starts in at about 3:23.
Thanks! There’s nothing like this message board for acquixk answer to almost any imaginable question.
I was wondering about the extended opening especially. Did Cory Wells get that good just from performing, or did he have some kind of vocal training?
Don’t know any more about Wells’ background beyond what I can read online. Three Dog Night’s manager Joel Cohen wrote a contemporaneous biography of the band in 1971 titled Three Dog Night and Me. That might be worth checking out.
Meanwhile, from Wikipedia:
Wells came from a musical family and began playing in Buffalo, New York-area bands in his teens. His biological father, who was married to someone other than his mother, died when Cory was a small child, leaving his mother to struggle financially until she eventually married. She gave Cory her birth surname, although Cory eventually changed his surname to Wells (a shortened version of his birth father’s surname, Wellsley). His full stage name “Cory Wells” was suggested by The Enemys’ first manager, Gene Jacobs, who had a son named Cory.
Having survived childhood in a low-income, blue-collar neighborhood and an even more brutal home environment fueled by an abusive stepfather, this according to manager Joel Cohen’s band biography, Three Dog Night And Me, Wells joined the United States Air Force directly out of high school. While in the Air Force, he formed a band of interracial musical performers, inspired by his boyhood love of a similar popular band called The Del-Vikings, who had a national hit with the doo-wop song, “Come Go with Me”.
It’s funny that you raise this question. I’ve always liked Three Dog Night, I have a bunch of their songs on my playlist… But I couldn’t tell you a single thing about them. Are they American? How many members are in the group? Who knows?
Maybe it’s because they mostly recorded other peoples songs, they almost feel like an ad-hoc group of studio musicians. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
A great song (written by Laura Nyro). The clip gives one the impression that they were tired of singing it.
They were playing the Whisky-a-Go-Go when the guys from my high school’s Boys League audition team were looking for a band to play at their annual show. They signed them just before they really hit big. They tried to get out of the gig, but the contract must have been airtight, because they couldn’t get out of it. In their favor, they didn’t stint. They put on a really great performance.
They supplanted the Bobby Fuller Four as most well known band to play that show.
Her version’s well worth checking out. When I think of the term “blue eyed soul” I can’t think of any female performers who are commonly described that way, but Laura Nyro’s rendition of her own song qualifies IMHO.
I’m glad this got bumped again as another reminder to watch this. I love the performance of “Eli’s Coming” linked to in the OP. I ripped the Youtube audio to MP3, but it’s not a great copy. They have a live album, but it omits Cory’s awesome intro.
I can’t believe Chuck’s outlived Cory by seven years so far. . .