Three Dog Night
It Ain't Easy/Naturally

Among the great American bands of the seventies that are scarcely remembered in Italy, the Three Dog Night should certainly be counted. Finding one of their CDs in a well-stocked music store in our country is quite a feat, which is not the case in America where they are remembered, respected, and revered at the level of legends. "Three Dog Night" (an Australian saying, referring to the old local custom of sleeping with a few dingoes huddled around during the coldest nights) was a band with a couple of almost unique characteristics: to begin with, the four instrumentalists (guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums) were complemented by three official singers, who democratically shared the lead vocals between songs and even within the same song, to then invariably come together in powerful and spectacular choruses that made the repertoire's refrains bright and highly catchy.

The second peculiarity of the band was that it was essentially a cover band, and this was long before this trend: in those years of great creativity and expansion of rock, performing original music was an essential requirement to enter the big leagues, but they were the exception to the rule, limiting themselves to composing no more than two tracks per record. The group's skill was in choosing to reinterpret almost always unknown pieces composed by young talents at the beginning of their careers, not yet established even if highly valid (Elton John, Randy Newman, Harry Nillson...), as well as in their ability to deliver them with brand new arrangements that enhanced the three voices and channeled their original style, as diverse as it might have been, to that preferred by the band, namely commercial rock with strong rhythm&blues undertones.

The three singers were all excellent, three solid and resonant voices whose commendable, meticulous, and creative pursuit of cohesion, alternation, or intertwining, as the case may be, lent full dignity and respect to the repertoire, certainly not avant-garde. Among other things, the three voices were very similar...hard to distinguish who sang what unless you were well acquainted with the Three Dog Night matter. Trying to focus on them separately, it can be said that Danny Hutton, even though the only non-American (born in old Ireland), had the most hoarse and soulful tone, that Cory Wells had the most powerful and sonorous voice, and finally, that Chuck Negron possessed, simply, the most beautiful voice of the three, the most pleasant and communicative.

The discography of the Three Dog Night in the early days averaged two records a year, made possible by the limited commitment in the compositional phase, as well as the habit of limiting almost every track to three minutes or a little more of the classic single format. The Long Playing records thus ended up being no more than thirty/thirty-five minutes, and it makes sense and is useful to find them now digitally remastered two at a time. The disc in question conveniently brings together the third and fourth LP releases of the band, both from 1970, for a total of nineteen songs in just sixty-eight minutes.

"It Ain't Easy" opens with "Woman", a track from the early career of the James Gang of Joe Walsh, with the original hard rock drive being largely altered in favor of an extraordinary vocal performance. Following is the very beautiful "Cowboy", a work by Randy Newman that contributed to the soundtrack of the film "Urban Cowboy", being replaced by the very famous "Everybody's Talking" interpreted by Harry Nillson. The song that gives the album its title is instead by the Kinks, and everyone knows it especially for Bowie's version, released two years later on "Ziggy Stardust".

An absolute gem of the first of the two albums is without a doubt "Mama Told Me Not To Come", again owed to the pen of the great Randy Newman. He had written it for Eric Burdon (Animals) in 1966, but in that version, it went nowhere. The Three Dog Night revitalized it powerfully with a sparkling arrangement: the discomfort (but not too much!) described in the lyrics, of the guy who ended up at a party and is not having fun at all (or rather, he repeats how his mom had told him he wouldn't have any fun...) while everyone else gets drunk, gets high, passes out, and reeks of bad smells, is wittily rendered with an electric piano loaded with disorienting vibrato, framing the debauched and amusing singing of Chuck Negron and then the high-pitched and gleaming chorus. Result: a number one hit in the USA and Newman eternally grateful for the first, important acknowledgment as a composer in his life, acknowledging that the version by the Three Dog Night was far beyond anything he had conceived, managing to cloak his usual irony with irresistible brilliance.

The perhaps most renowned song on the CD, "Your Song", was given to the group by an Elton John who was still a perfect nobody and preceded by a few months the version he himself interpreted, just to reiterate how the Three Dog Night had an uncanny knack and taste in selecting what to reinterpret.

The second album "Naturally" includes a cover of the Free, along with others from figures who remained niche here with us, like Jesse Colin Young and Alan O'Day, but above all the usual couple of number one ranked songs. The first of these, featuring Danny Hutton as lead singer, is the tense and dynamic "Liar" by Argent, another English band just starting out, and despite its typically progressive image, it counted an unsuspected and talented pop-rock songwriter in its ranks, in the person of guitarist and vocalist Russ Ballard. Many artists would draw from this songwriter's repertoire (Rainbow, Uriah Heep, Dokken, Santana, Bad English, Kiss, Roger Daltrey, Hot Chocolate, Hello)... the Three Dog Night again paved the way, later well-trodden by others.

Placed at the end of the second album, and hence at the end of the CD, is the authentic anthem of the group "Joy To The World". Its secondary position is explained by the fact that it entered the tracklist at the last moment and only as a filler, just to complete the album. The group did not rely much on it, but fortunately, the record company did, and a few months later the single was number one in half of the world. The juxtaposition between the calm version released by its baritone and languid singer, the country musician Hoyt Axton, and the exuberant and joyfully powerful rendition by the Three Dog Night is devastating. The initial nonsensical phrase sung by an overflowing Chuck Negron "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog..." (Jeremiah was a bullfrog...), at the time improvised by Axton with guitar in hand to propose the song to his producers and then unexpectedly retained in the lyrics, has become a shared heritage for every American citizen for the past thirty-eight years; many of them even believe the song is called that way. "Joy To The World" conveys exactly what it wishes in the title: an irresistible serenity and happiness, an energy boost every time it is heard. It is a great, sunny, and catchy gospel tune, deservedly famous; I would give anything to see it sung in an American church by one of those choirs composed of dozens of large black men and women, all tall, chubby, and dressed all alike. It would be mind-blowing:

"Joy To The World

All The Boys And Girls

Joy To The Fishes In The Deep Blue Sea

Joy To You And Me".