Chuck Negron, the naturally gifted singer who co-founded 1970s hitmakers Three Dog Night, has died. He was 83.
Negron died from heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at his home in Los Angeles’ Studio City neighborhood, according to his publicist, Zach Farnum.
Three Dog Night — Negron, Cory Wells and Danny Hutton — produced nearly two dozen top 40 hits in the early 1970s. Three of their songs, “Joy to the World,” “Mama Told Me” and “Black & White,” went No. 1.
“We were really on a roll and very prolific,” Negron said in a 2013 interview. “We were in the zone so to speak and really putting it out there. Back then, I don’t think it hurt us.”
Though Negron, Wells and Hutton wrote none of their own material, their vocal talents were enough to make them one of the biggest acts in the country. They hosted and performed at the inaugural edition of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in 1972 and performed “Joy to the World” at back-to-back Grammy ceremonies.
But by the end of the 1970s, the group had burned out and split on bad terms. Negron later blamed his heroin addiction in part for the falling out. In a 1998 memoir, “Three Dog Nightmare,” Negron wrote about how addiction upended his superstar life. At his lowest moment, he recalled sleeping in the crawlspace under a crack house in Los Angeles. He got sober in 1991.
“I wake up in the morning with my wife and thank God that I don’t have to go on the streets with the junkies and the cops,” he told the Daily News in 1995. “Getting there is not so long a journey as one might think. Getting back is what takes so long.”
Wells predeceased Negron in 2015. He and Hutton remained at odds until last year, when they spoke for a documentary.
“We hugged. And made up. It was wonderful. It was a great relief to get that burden [off],” Hutton said in an interview. “It’s not healthy to keep that anger.”
With News Wire Services