We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
I never paid much attention to Three Dog Night outside of their radio hits. Never bought one of their albums and never dove too deep into the tunes they recorded. They seemed to me to be a bubble-gum radio band and not much more. I was wrong. I should of known this was not your run-of-the-mill pop band when they cut Randy Newman and Hoyt Axton songs. Also a band that had three distinct vocalists which was different as well.
In 1972 they released the album ‘Seven Seperate Fools”. It was their eighth studio album and the start of the downward trend for a band battling numerous drug problems.
The album includes two hits…”Black & White” which went to #1 and “Pieces of April” which made it to #19 along with becoming the theme of many proms around the country.
But I’m more interested in some of the other tracks on the LP. Once again the band chooses a variety of interesting tunes to cover and give them that Three Dog Night sound…Jimmy Greenspoon’s smooth keyboards, Michael Allsup’s tasty guitar and the solid rythmn section of Madison native Joe Schermie on bass and Floyd Sneed on drums. This would be the last album featuring the original group as Schermie would be fired shortly over his rampant drug use.
They pull out a Randy Newman tune again in “My Old Kentucky Home (which is a pimp on the old classic). They also get a bit raunchy with the Larry Collins/ Alex Harvey song “Tulsa Turnaround” which was record twice by Kenny Rogers (once with his band the First Edition and once as a country solo artist) They also dabble in prog-rock with a pretty solid cover of Argent’s “Chained”. And took on the socially conscious “Freedom For The Stallion” from songwriter Allen Toussaint.
Ive included the originals of these songs here so you can compare them to Three Dog Night’s cover versions on this album.
It’s an eclectic record and one step above the usual pop music of the day
There is one interesting side story about the intro to Pieces Of April. I’ll let another reviewer of the Lp tell the story
next, a short instrumental ‘prelude to morning’ serves as an appropriate intro to the mellow pop hit sung by chuck negron called ‘pieces of april’. the story goes like this: when the album was completed, keyboard player jimmy greenspoon decided to celebrate by dropping a bunch of acid and tripping at his home. he was still tripping in his backyard by the pool as he watched the sunrise. shortly after dawn, he got a phone call saying the piano track to pieces of april got ruined and needed to be rerecorded. so while still tripping and with no sleep, he rushed back to the studio to rerecord the track….and afterwards while still recording, he just kept playing…..improvising a piano theme that was inspired by watching the sunrise on acid. then, he figured the piece needed some organ and a touch of synth. afterward he pinned it to the beginning of POA as an intro. everyone loved it, so they kept it like that for the album.
A 70’s story if there ever was one…..
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