Three Dog Night was an American rock and roll band active from 1968 to 1975. Their hits included; "Joy to the World", "Easy To Be Hard" from the musical Hair, and "Black and White".

The band included three lead vocalists — Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron, and Cory Wells — and Michael Allsup on guitar, Floyd Sneed on drums, Joe Schermie (from the Cory Wells Blues Band) on bass, and Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards.

The band was the protegé of Beach Boys producer, composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist Brian Wilson, and at the time went under the name Redwood. The band changed their name based on an article describing how Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a "three-dog night."

Three Dog Night collected no fewer than fourteen gold albums and recorded twenty-one Billboard Top 40 hits, nine of which went gold. Dunhill, their record company, claimed 40 million units sold by them.

Their use of songs by Randy Newman ("Mama Told Me Not to Come", their sole British hit), Laura Nyro ("Eli's Coming"), Hoyt Axton ("Joy to the World"), Elton John & Bernie Taupin ("Lady Samantha"), the late John Lennon and Paul McCartney ("It's For You"), and Harry Nilsson ("One") were the first major hits for songs by these singer/songwriters.

Joe Schermie quit in 1973 and was replaced by Jack Ryland. The band then became an eight-piece with the induction of another keyboards player, Skip Konte. However, by this time, the band had stopped recording and broke up not long afterwards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Dog...