A ‘Joy’ ride: Three Dog Night’s Danny Hutton reflects on his ‘very lucky’ life ahead of Kiva Auditorium performance

Who is Danny Hutton?

As a child, he shared a home with the notorious bankrobber Joseph “Specs” O’Keefe. At age 18, he hung out with silent film star Stan Laurel.

He appeared as a cartoon version of himself on the animated television show, “The Flintstones.” He supported the comic duo Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong in the early days of their career. In the 1980s, he managed the hardcore punk band Fear. He bought a house from shock-rocker Alice Cooper.

Hutton’s life story, as he recounts it, sounds stranger than fiction.

But what most people know Hutton for is Three Dog Night, the chart-topping rock band he co-founded with fellow singers Chuck Negron and Cory Wells in the late 1960s. The group had 21 consecutive Billboard top 40 hits between the years 1969 and 1975, including three No. 1s: “Mama Told Me (Not to Come),” “Joy to the World” and “Black and White.”

Fans can experience Three Dog Night live in Albuquerque at Kiva Auditorium on Friday, Feb. 20.

Rock bands with three lead singers were almost unheard-of when Three Dog Night started.

“I’d always had this idea in my head — and it doesn’t sound novel now, but I thought, ‘What if you got three lead singers together?’

“Later on, you had (Luciano) Pavarotti with The Three Tenors and all of these three singer (groups), but we were kind of the first guys.”

Hutton appreciated the soulful vocal harmonies of Motown, but he always wondered why only one of the singers got to be out in front.

“I mean, I love Motown, but Motown would have a lead singer who was great. And three guys who were equally great would kind of stand in the back and dance,” Hutton said.

So, Hutton looked around for two great singers to start a band with. He already knew Wells, because they had toured together with Sonny and Cher, and he met Negron, he said, at a party hosted by “Season of the Witch” singer Donovan. Hutton thought Wells and Negron were both better singers than himself.

“I was a studio rat. … I sang the least, because I was the studio guy. But I formed the group ... I did the whole thing. I’m one of those guys, who — that’s what I do,” Hutton said. “I always think, if you’re going to start a project, hire people better than you. I think ‘B’ people hire ‘C’ people. ‘A’ people hire ‘A-plus’ people. You want to surround yourself with the best.”

After playing together for just a few months, Hutton called up his friend Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys.

“I phoned Brian. I said, ‘Brian, I want you to hear the guys that I’m with.’ And he said, ‘Well, come up in a few days. I’ll write something.’ So, we went up, and he played two songs, and we loved them. He said, ‘I’m gonna call you Redwood.’ Well, OK, call us Redwood,” Hutton said.

They recorded the two songs with Wilson, thinking he was going to be their producer.

“Then, The Beach Boys came back from touring, and they were hollering and saying that one of those songs is a hit, what are you giving it to these guys for? And they were completely right. I would have done what they did,” Hutton said. “So, we stopped working with Brian (Wilson).”

Redwood added some instrumentalists to their lineup and became Three Dog Night. And even though Wilson didn’t become their producer, he remained a close friend. Hutton also credits the famously perfectionistic Beach Boy, whom he calls a genius, with making him a better audio engineer.

“The main thing I learned from Brian was how good something has to sound in the studio,” Hutton said. “In those days, you’d have these big, big speakers. And when I first started, I would record stuff, then come home and say, ‘What happened to all the bottom on it? It doesn’t sound that big.’ But in the studio, your clothes have to flap around from the percussiveness of the sound. That’s how big it’s got to sound.”

Most of Three Dog Night’s songs were written by other musicians, but unlike bands that piggybacked off other people’s hits, Three Dog Night took relatively obscure songs and turned them into hits.

“We’re always getting nailed as a cover band. We were never a cover band,” Hutton said. “We resurrected songs that weren’t hits.”

With the death of Negron on Feb. 2, Hutton is now the last surviving original member of the band. Hutton and Negron had not spoken to each other in decades prior to last year.

“Chuck had not been in the band for 41 years. … In his book, he mentions that he was on heroin, and there was a certain point when he couldn’t function,” Hutton said. “Way later on, in the ’80s or ’90s, we tried to get back together again.”

When Hutton learned how ill Negron had become with emphysema, he decided to visit him and try to reconcile.

“I knocked on the door. We saw each other and smiled and cried. All that stuff. We just had a great day, and we talked about all the years we missed from each other over stupid stuff,” Hutton said. “So, I’m just very glad I got to say goodbye.”

As a young musician, just starting out, Hutton didn’t consider himself a great performer. But he said he’s gotten much better over the years, and he has come to value the unpredictability of live performances.

“One of the hardest things is appearing natural onstage … because it’s the most unnatural place in the world to be — on a stage and having all these people in the dark, looking at you, and that microphone is like a bomb if you say the wrong thing,” Hutton said. “You’re on a tightrope when you’re onstage. … It’s like Evel Knievel jumping over the Grand Canyon. If you see it live, there’s a bit of that danger that you can only get live.”

Three Dog Night’s set list includes songs from their entire catalog, culminating with “Joy to the World.”

“The audience goes nuts,” Hutton said. “It’s got to be the closing song, and everybody stands and starts screaming.”

Thinking back on his remarkable life, Hutton said he’s been very lucky.

“I met about everybody I wanted to meet, and I’m still here at 83 — knock on wood — doing 50 push-ups a day, unless I get lazy and talk myself out of it,” he said.

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the Albuquerque Journal. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at @loganroycebeitmen.