Spreading the ‘Joy’ – Danny Hutton and his band, Three Dog Night

By John Manley

When Kathleen Hutton and her three children — Vincent, 16, Patricia, 10, and Danny, 4 — left Buncrana in Inishowen, Co. Donegal for Boston in the late 1940s, there was nothing about them to suggest any extraordinary musical talent. Yet Vincent went on to play trumpet with legendary jazzman Chet Baker, and Patricia sang in Las Vegas. And then there was Danny.

By the mid-1970s, Danny Hutton had racked up nearly 50 million records sold, with three singles having topped the charts, 21 Top 40 hits, and 12 albums certified gold. When Hutton played Madison Square Garden in the early ’70s, Stevie Wonder, already an established star, was an opening act.

Yet the name Danny Hutton doesn’t provoke immediate recognition among the masses. More than 25 years have passed since he and his bandmates enjoyed their last trip up the charts as Three Dog Night, arguably the most popular band of the post-Beatles era.

Hutton hopes to emulate the likes of Tony Bennett, Carlos Santana and Steely Dan with the May 22 release of “Three Dog Night with the London Symphony Orchestra.” Coincident with that will be the release of a DVD, “Three Dog Night Live in Concert,” performed with the Tennessee Symphony.

Although he has few tangible memories of his early days in Buncrana, Hutton later moved among such Boston working-class neighborhoods as Auburndale, Jamaica Plain, the South End and the Back Bay before it catered to a more prosperous clientele.

“There were the typical big nights,” Hutton recalled recently. “Mom played the mandolin, Uncle Bill played about nine instruments, Uncle Eddie played the flute, Aunt Mary played the harmonica and sang and danced. Everybody got up and did something.”

When the Huttons moved to the Back Bay, their days in Boston, unbeknownst to them, were numbered.

“My mother ran a rooming house,” Hutton said. “My job was to answer the public telephone on the first floor. Well, a guy named Mr. Mahoney ended up arriving. He’d get these calls late at night and go out with his duffel bag. The police came to our house one night and took my mother down to the station to identify this guy, who was Mr. Mahoney. His real name turned out to be ‘Trigger’ Burke.”

Burke was arrested in 1956 for the attempted murder of “Specs” O’Keefe, one of the gang that had pulled off the Brink’s heist six years earlier, at the time the country’s largest theft.

“My mother identified him, he went to jail, and then he escaped, dressed as a woman,” Hutton said. “So we had police protection 24 hours a day for the next six months.”

Ma Hutton finally tired of the uniformed attention and uprooted the family for Hollywood, where Danny’s adolescence continued unremarkably through high school. He treated himself to a trip to Europe immediately after graduating in 1961, which is when his future career began to come into focus. He bought a guitar in Belfast, before bicycling over the Sperrin Mountains to Buncrana.

“I stayed in my hometown for maybe a month,” Hutton said. “I had a great time. They had the showbands then. They wore pastels, all different colored coats. I was surprised at how good they were.”

Hutton learned a few chords on his guitar and started putting groups together back in L.A. He eventually came to the attention of Hanna-Barbera, which was looking to branch out with a pop and rock records division.

“I was hired as the hip, young guy on the street who knows where all of the action is,” Hutton said. “My job was to find talent and record. I ended up doing a lot of the recording myself. I did this one song, ‘Roses and Rainbows,’ and after I did it, wrote it, recorded it and produced it, they said, ‘You know what? We’re going to send you out as an artist.’ And I had never really performed. I was shocked. They sent me out on tour with Sonny and Cher.”

“Roses and Rainbows” reached the Top 10 in Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago. Hanna-Barbera’s inadequate distribution pipeline failed to get the song much, if any play, in other vital markets, such as New York, but Hutton was having other problems with them.

“I left the label because I got completely screwed by them, moneywise,” said Hutton, who followed his manager, David Anderle, to Brother Records, a Beach Boys entity, where he became good friends with Brian Wilson. A great experimentalist, Wilson cajoled Hutton into finding two other singers with whom he could record some songs he had written. Hutton enlisted Chuck Negron and Cory Wells to become the group that Wilson informally dubbed Redwood. They began recording “Darlin’ ” and “Time to Get Alone” until the other Beach Boys got wind of this side project and put a stop to it. Undaunted, Hutton and company found their own musicians, became the house band at the Whisky A Go Go and were on their way.

Three Dog Night’s version of “Try a Little Tenderness,” released in January 1969, rose to No. 29 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Three months later they came out with “One,” which reached No. 5. Later that year, they had Top 10 hits with “Easy To Be Hard” and “Eli’s Coming.” The next year saw them reach the top spot with “Mama Told Me [Not To Come],” a position they revisited in 1971 with “Joy to the World” and in 1972 with “Black & White.” Their other hits to waft across the airwaves included “One Man Band,” “Liar,” “An Old Fashioned Love Song,” “Never Been to Spain,” “Shambala,” and “The Family of Man.”

Pair of albatrosses

Despite the statistics that scream of Three Dog Night’s success, their legacy has been burdened by not one, but two, albatrosses. First, is the fact that Three Dog Night recorded songs written by others, and second, they are remembered mostly for their monster hit, “Joy to the World.” Hutton is passionate in fending off these slings and arrows.

“The funny thing is I started as a writer,” Hutton said. “In the beginning, we more or less had back sides of records, songs that should have been hits but weren’t. These were songs that fell through the cracks, that didn’t have any distribution or whatever, just didn’t happen. Once we chose a song, we’d take a verse out and move a chorus to the front, and completely chop them up and move them around. We revived the song and made it a hit. So, I have a feeling some people may say, ‘Oh, they just ripped off the original guys.’ Well, the original guys put out the record and didn’t have it.

“What people are not aware of with our group is that we didn’t have some genius guy behind the boards who sat there on all the tracks and marched us in and said, ‘You sing and you do this.’ We got in there and did all the arrangements, did everything with Rich Podolor, our producer, and Bill Cooper, the engineer, in this studio that they owned.

“I think with the exception of Ray Charles, we are one of the few acts that have been on every chart,” Hutton continued. “Obviously, there wasn’t any kind of hiphop chart, but we were No. 1 on the country chart, the pop chart, the R&B chart — at the time every chart there was except for classical.”

Released in February 1971, “Joy to the World” spent months atop the charts due to its appeal to a wide cross-section of the public. Written by Hoyt Axton, who died last year, the song remains popular more than three decades after its release, but often serves to diminish Three Dog Night as serious artists among those passing judgment on their era.

“I love Hoyt Axton, but ‘Joy to the World’ is this freak, hit song about a cartoon,” Hutton said. “On one level, musically, it’s very simple, and it brings back memories, so I do enjoy singing it because I enjoy everybody getting off singing it, but it wouldn’t be my first choice. And everyone says, ‘Oh, Three Dog Night? You mean that Jeremiah was a bullfrog group?’ We had 20 other hits, from heavy R&B. . . . We could do any kind of music, you name it, we could do it, and it’s a mixed blessing, it’s a typecast thing, you know?”

The glory days ground to a halt for Three Dog Night around 1976.

“We did a typical band burnout,” Hutton said. “We weren’t paying attention to business. I was partying very hard. I had the party house in Laurel Canyon. I mean I had a house where there’s a knock on the door and there’s John Lennon and Ringo going, ‘Where’s the party?'”

After straightening himself out, Hutton stayed off the stage and busied himself scouting new talent that he could manage. One particular new talent that entered his life was a young woman from North County, Calif., who became his wife.

Eventually, the idea of reforming Three Dog Night came to fruition during the early ’80s. There have been the typical comings and goings among the personnel, but four of the original seven members remain — Hutton and Wells on vocals and occasional guitars, along with Michael Allsup on lead guitar and Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards.

The band’s new CD, recorded in London at the Abbey Road Studios, will consist mainly of their hits, with some refashioned to include an overture and interludes, although some new material will be included.

“Our arranger/conductor wrote some incredible charts,” Hutton said. “This has been a three-year process from the time we thought of it to getting hold of him and recording everything.”

Closer to home, he plays the proud father, and indulges a taste for carpentry (“I’m a really bad, amateur carpenter and I am really good at fixing mistakes.”) His wife, Laurie, had a son, Ty, now 25, from a previous marriage. Together, they are the parents of Timothy Vincent, 19, and Dash, 16, with whom they travel periodically to Buncrana, where they stay at the Lake of Shadows Hotel.

“I’m stunned by my kids,” Hutton exclaimed. “The 16-year-old plays drums and pushes a 24-piece jazz band at Hamilton High. They played on the Sunset Strip when they were 13. Brian Wilson comes over and jams with them. I think they’re incredible.”

Although tastes have changed over the last three decades, Hutton still finds a lot to like among the talent coming to the fore, although he decries what he calls “that Pearl Jam kind of lockjaw.”

Yet, he cited a Billboard survey that showed that the majority of the CD-buying public is over 30 years old and will go to great lengths to find music that speaks to them.

“I think we can pick up that age group,” Hutton said. “Plus our music is diverse enough that maybe we can make that one chart we never made before, the classical. And did I say that my dream is to play in Ireland, in Dublin, with the Symphony Orchestra?”

Well, Dublin, it won’t be Eli coming, but it may be Danny Hutton. But you needn’t hide your hearts, because although he may steal them, he only wants to bring joy to your world.