Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor Chuck Negron, who sang lead on Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World,” the second of the pop group’s three No. 1 hits.
“Jeremiah was a bullfrog” is one of the silliest opening lines ever in a pop song. It’s also memorable and intriguing, what they call a grabber. It certainly did the job as the opening line of Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World,” Billboard’s year-end No. 1 hit of 1971, and the only song that year to top the weekly Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks. Chuck Negron, who sang lead on that song and such other Three Dog hits as “One,” “Easy to Be Hard,” “An Old Fashioned Love Song” and “The Show Must Go On,” died on Monday (Feb. 2) at his home in Studio City, California. He was 83.
Three Dog Night was a reliable pop-rock hit machine, landing at least one top five hit on the Hot 100 in every calendar year from 1969 to 1974. They were the only act to reach No. 1 on that chart in each of the first three years of the 1970s, with “Mama Told Me (Not to Come),” “Joy to the World” and “Black & White,” respectively.
The Los Angeles-based group was unique for two reasons. First, they didn’t have one lead singer, but three. Each of their No. 1 hits was sung by a different member – Cory Wells, Negron and Danny Hutton, respectively. And second, they didn’t write any of their hits, at a time when writing your own material was becoming essential to having credibility. (That’s one reason they were never a critics favorite.) But they had a knack for finding songs by writers who were on their way up, including Harry Nilsson (“One”), Laura Nyro (“Eli’s Coming”), Randy Newman (“Mama Told Me”), Hoyt Axton (“Joy to the World” and “Never Been to Spain”) and David Courtney & Leo Sayer (“The Show Must Go On”).
Legend has it that Axton hadn’t completed the lyrics to “Joy to the World” — that, keen to demonstrate the melody he’d written, he just put in some nonsensical placeholder lyrics: “Jeremiah was a bullfrog/Was a good friend of mine.” Three Dog Night went ahead and recorded the song with Axton’s temp words intact.
Three Dog Night wasn’t at all sure about “Joy to the World.” Hutton and Wells wanted to pass on the song, but Negron heard its potential. Even so, the song was positioned as the closing track on the band’s fourth studio album Naturally, which was released in November 1970. It was bypassed as the album’s lead single in favor of “One Man Band,” a bluesy pop/rock song that blended into the FM album rock sound of the time. But “blending in” isn’t going to make a song a hit. “One Man Band” peaked at No. 19, which had to be a big disappointment for the group. The lead singles to their two previous studio albums, “Easy to Be Hard” (from Suitable for Framing) and “Mama Told Me” (from It Ain’t Easy) had both been top five smashes, reaching No. 4 and No. 1, respectively. No. 19 wasn’t going to cut it.
“Joy to the World” was selected as the album’s second single. It entered the Hot 100 for the week ending March 13, 1971 at No. 58. It was that week’s third-highest new entry, behind tracks by Glen Campbell and Stephen Stills (neither of which made the top 30). “Joy to the World,” by contrast, flew up the chart, reaching No. 1 in its sixth week, April 17, replacing The Temptations’ sublime “Just My Imagination” (Running Away With Me).” It stayed on top for six consecutive weeks, the longest run since Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” the previous year.
It held off stiff competition, too. Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” a classy and soulful rumination on the state of the world, was No. 2 for the first two of those six weeks, followed by Ocean’s folky Christian pop hit “Put Your Hand in the Hand” (for one week) and The Jackson 5’s midtempo pop/R&B ballad “Never Can Say Goodbye” (for the last three weeks). None of those records made it to the top spot, a real shame in the case of “What’s Going On,” one of the classic singles of the era.
The Rolling Stones finally ended Three Dog Night’s reign with the undeniable rock classic “Brown Sugar,” which rose to the top in the issue dated May 29. But “Joy to the World” didn’t fall far. It was No. 2 the two weeks that “Brown Sugar” was No. 1. (So, were it not for the Stones, “Joy to the World” would have had eight weeks on top, something no single had accomplished since The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” led for nine consecutive weeks in 1968.)
Why was “Joy to the World” such a monster hit? It’s catchy and ebullient, a joybomb when we needed one amid tumultuous times, which included the never-ending war in Vietnam. It’s fun to sing along to. In fact, it’s hard not to sing along to it.
The passion with which Negron sings the song gives it some necessary heat. The song is kinda dippy, but he sings the hell out it, coming in hot from the opening line. He sings it with a cocky strut that gives it at least some heft. Axton included lines about wine-drinking and lovemaking that give the song at least a little bit of an adult sensibility and kept it from seeming too dippy.
In his Stereogum series “The Number Ones,” Tom Breihan wrote, “Considering that they never expected anything to happen with ‘Joy to the World,’ maybe it’s admirable that Three Dog Night completely committed to the song. Negron, in particular, completely throws himself into it, rasping and howling and wailing out ad-libs. This was the right approach. If Negron had sung the song with even the tiniest trace of wink, if he’d acted like he was in any way above it, ‘Joy to the World’ would’ve been a total flatline.”
“Joy to the World” kicked off a run of four consecutive top 10 hits, the longest such run of the group’s career. They followed it with Russ Ballard’s “Liar” (No. 7), Paul Williams’ Carpenters-style “An Old-Fashioned Love Song” (No. 4) and another Axton song, “Never Been to Spain” (No. 5).
“Joy to the World” received two Grammy nods – record of the year (it lost to Carole King’s “It’s Too Late”) and best pop vocal performance by a duo, group or chorus (it lost to Carpenters’ hit-laden album, Carpenters). The group performed the song on both of the first two live Grammy telecasts. They performed it in 1971 as a hot new single, and on the 1972 telecast as a record of the year nominee.
Axton (who died in 1999) was the son of Estelle Axton, who had co-written Elvis Presley’s breakthrough smash “Heartbreak Hotel,” which topped a pre-Hot 100 songs chart in Billboard in 1956. When “Joy to the World” also summited, they became the first mother and son to each have written a No. 1 hit in the rock era (which is generally defined as starting in 1955).
Axton was audacious in giving this secular song the same title as one of the most famous religious Christmas songs. Mariah Carey, who knows a thing or two about Christmas music, used the refrain from the Axton song in her 1994 recording of the hymn on her best-selling Merry Christmas. (It’s a “Joy to the World” mash-up!)
“Joy to the World” has been often featured in film and TV shows. The song is sung by the son of one of the main characters in The Big Chill (1983) and the group’s recording was featured on the multiplatinum soundtrack. The song was included in the 1994 film Forrest Gump and its multiplatinum soundtrack. The song experienced a particular boost of nostalgic affection during the 1990s: It was featured on Friends (Chandler sings the song at karaoke), Sex and the City (Carrie and her friend Jeremiah sing the song while drunk) and The X-Files (Scully sings the song to a wounded Mulder in the forest at night).
As noted above, Three Dog Night returned to No. 1 in September 1972 with “Black & White,” a call for racial harmony set in the framework of a children’s song. The song seems to borrow that basic idea from Sly & the Family Stone’s far superior 1969 smash “Everyday People.”
For a few weeks in the summer of 1973, the group seemed to be headed for a No. 1 hit in a fourth consecutive year. But “Shambala” ultimately peaked at No. 3. That was the group’s last great single. They had one more big hit in 1974, “The Show Must Go On,” cowritten by Leo Sayer and David Courtney, but to anyone who knew prime Three Dog (“Eli’s Coming”), this was clearly sub-prime. It was their last appearance in the top 10. They had one more top 20 hit, a John Hiatt song, “Sure as I’m Sittin’ Here,” then a couple more top 40 hits, then that was it. They made their final appearance on the Hot 100 in September 1975.
Axton co-wrote one more big hit, Ringo Starr’s “No No Song,” a genial song about swearing off drugs and alcohol that rose to No. 3 on the Hot 100 in April 1975.
Richard Podolor produced Three Dog’s long string of hits. Fun Fact: The very week “Mama Told Me” rose to No. 1, Blues Image’s psychedelic pop smash “Ride Captain Ride” – another Podolor production – reached its No. 4 peak.
True pop nerds know that Three Dog Night was No. 1 (with “Mama Told Me”) on the very first episode of American Top 40 in July 1970, so it’s appropriate that the group gave host Casey Kasem one of his all-time best anecdotes, which he told more than once on the show. In his authoritative but friendly tone, Casey would tell his rapt listeners (including me) how the group came to get that odd name.
To quote our trusted countdown guide: “From Hollywood, this is Casey Kasem with American Top 40. And now the case of the strange name of the great group with the No. 1 song in the nation. They took the name from a very practical custom of a primitive people, the aborigines of Australia, who live out in the bush and don’t have blankets, so they use their pet dogs to keep warm at night. Usually, one or two dogs will do the trick, but occasionally it gets cold enough to be a three dog night, and they’re the hottest act on the charts at the moment.”
Below, you can listen to Casey tell the story during the week of May 1, 1971 – the third week that “Joy to the World” was No. 1.
RIP, Casey, and now Chuck Negron, too.
