Artist · chart history
Three Dog Night
Band Los Angeles United States Formed 1968 American rock band
Three Dog Night formed in 1968 in Los Angeles, United States. Three Dog Night has 21 chart appearances on 14 radio countdowns from 8 stations on RockLists, spanning 2001–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Mama Told Me Not To Come”, which appears on 6 lists with a best position of #222. The station that charted Three Dog Night most often is Big 100 (Washington, DC), with 7 appearances.
Three Dog Night came together in Los Angeles around a gimmick that turned out to be a secret weapon: not one lead singer but three, Chuck Negron, Cory Wells and Danny Hutton, trading the spotlight over a band of Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards, Joe Schermie on bass, Michael Allsup on guitar and Floyd Sneed on drums. Three big voices meant they could take anybody's song and make it sound like theirs.
That was the trick. They went shopping among the best young writers around and turned their tunes into radio: Harry Nilsson's "One", Laura Nyro's "Eli's Comin'", Paul Williams's "An Old Fashioned Love Song", Hoyt Axton's "Never Been to Spain" and "Joy to the World", and Randy Newman's "Mama Told Me Not to Come", a sly, rollicking romp that helped carry Newman's wit to a mainstream crowd. Plenty of listeners first met those writers through this band.
The run was enormous: 21 top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1969 and 1975, three of them going all the way to number one. It Ain't Easy and Naturally, both from 1970, caught them at the peak, and Cyan in 1973 brought the easygoing sway of "Shambala".
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Three Dog Night on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mama Told Me Not To Come | 6 | #222 | – | – | |
| 2 | Joy To The World | 4 | #52 | – | – | |
| 3 | Shambala | 6 | #348 | – | – | |
| 4 | One | 2 | #322 | – | – | |
| 5 | An Old Fashioned Love Song | 1 | #547 | – | – | |
| 6 | Out in the Country | 1 | #703 | – | – | |
| 7 | Liar | 1 | #801 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
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