Chuck Negron, hitmaking singer with Three Dog Night, is dead at 83

A founding member of the pop-rock juggernaut Three Dog Night, Chuck Negron was known for his walrus mustache, playboy swagger and ringing tenor voice. (Facebook via Yacht Rock)

By ALEX WILLIAMS and ALI WATKINS

Chuck Negron, a founding member of the pop-rock juggernaut Three Dog Night who was known for his walrus mustache, playboy swagger and ringing tenor voice, which fueled indelible early 1970s singles like “One” and “Joy to the World,” died Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 83.

His publicist announced the death in a statement, which said that Negron had long been treated for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and that he had been diagnosed with heart failure in his final months.

A clean-cut scholarship basketball player turned paragon of rock ’n’ roll excess, including heroin addiction, Negron was one of three gifted vocalists who, along with Danny Hutton and Cory Wells, formed one of the entertainment world’s most bankable acts from 1969 to 1975.

Blending the dreamy sounds of 1960s San Francisco and the pop sheen of 1970s Los Angeles, where the group formed, Three Dog Night turned out 21 Billboard Top 40 singles, including 11 in the Top 10.

Negron sang lead on several, including the group’s 1969 cover of Harry Nilsson’s plaintive ballad “One,” which climbed to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.

One of the band’s most enduring songs, Hoyt Axton’s “Joy to the World,” was an anthem that sounded like a kid-friendly riff on the Beatles majestic “All You Need Is Love,” complete with daffy lyrics about a wine-quaffing bullfrog named Jeremiah.

Negron’s bandmates’ initially rejected “Joy to the World,” but he argued that the group needed a “silly song” to keep success rolling. His instincts proved correct, as the track shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971. That same year, his jaunty vocals on Paul Williams’ “An Old Fashioned Love Song” helped propel that song to No. 4.

Flouting the standard practice of top acts in that singer-songwriter-dominated era, Three Dog Night did not compose the bulk of its material. The lack of original pieces brought critical barbs, even unwelcome comparisons to the Monkees, the 1960s group that had been manufactured for TV. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice called Three Dog Night as “slick as Wesson Oil” and the “Kings of Oversing.”

Still, during the band’s heyday, its influence was undeniable. Its members were starmakers — or “discoverers,” as rock journalist Ben Fong-Torres deemed Three Dog Night in Rolling Stone in 1972 — simply by covering tunes by up-and-coming artists, including Nilsson, Randy Newman, Laura Nyro and even Elton John, who gave the group first crack at “Your Song.”

As a full-fledged rock star, Negron embraced the expectation of living the high life — in all its definitions. He indulged in women, cars, houses, private jets and drugs, all of which came as a package deal back then.

“When we’d come off the road, they’d lock us in the studio with guards at the door not letting us out, masseuses coming in, etc. What a life, right? But this worked us to death,” Negron told Forbes in 2022.

“It was terrible,” he added. “We were doing cocaine, then downers to sleep.”

Charles Negron II was born on June 8, 1942, to Charles Negron, a Puerto Rican nightclub performer, and Elizabeth (Rooke) Negron. Chuck spent much of his childhood in an orphanage in New York City’s Bronx borough after his mother could no longer care for him. It was there that he first dabbled in performance, trying out for choirs and eventually finding his voice with street groups in the South Bronx.

“When the doo-wop groups would sing on the corner, I’d join in from a distance,” Negron told Forbes. “Finally, they asked me to come over and sing with them. So I knew others liked what I did.”

He also turned heads as a 6-foot-1 high school basketball standout, winning scholarship offers. Hoping to continue hooping while pursuing a music career, he landed at Allan Hancock College, a community college in Santa Maria, California, that was at least in driving distance of Hollywood.

Negron shrunk that distance considerably when he transferred to California State College at Los Angeles (now California State University, Los Angeles), where he played for coach Bill Sharman, a former guard for the Boston Celtics who would later coach the Los Angeles Lakers.

Negron met Hutton at a party and, with Wells, formed Three Dog Night in 1967. They adopted the band’s unusual name from a custom, sometimes attributed to Indigenous Australians, of sleeping with dogs for warmth. (A three-dog night is an especially cold one.)

The band splintered in 1976, and Negron sank further into the abyss, in large part because of heroin addiction. His millions in savings vanished and, before long, he was living in a Skid Row drug den in Los Angeles. The police often raided crack dealer neighbors but “never bothered us,” he recalled in a 1998 interview with The Las Vegas Sun. “That’s how pathetic we were.”

He hit a particular low one day when he was zonked out on a curb and noticed people gawking. “It’s really embarrassing,” he remembered telling a companion next to him, “these people want an autograph.”

“Chuck, you just peed in the street,” the friend responded. “They don’t know who you are.”

Three Dog Night reunited in 1982 but broke up after another Negron relapse, leaving his bandmates to carry on for years under the group’s banner.

After 35 trips to rehab attempts in 13 years, Negron said he finally got clean in 1991, leading to an attempt to rekindle things with his bandmates. “They kind of went, ‘Get screwed,’” he told The Sun, “so I went, ‘OK, some things are too late — move on.’”

His survivors include his fourth wife, Ami Albea Negron, whom he married in 2020; four children, Shaunti Negron Levick, Charles Negron III, Charlotte Negron and Annabelle Negron; nine grandchildren, and a stepson, Berry Duane Oakley, the son of Allman Brothers bassist Berry Oakley, who died in 1972.

Wells died in 2015, but Negron and Hutton finally reconciled last year after decades of estrangement, according to the statement from his publicist.

Negron embarked on a solo career. In later years, as heart issues made singing more difficult, he performed with eyeglasses that fed oxygen into his nose through small tubes designed to look like guitar cables.

“People aren’t going to pay to see someone singing with an oxygen mask on, so I had to do something or it was all going to be over,” he told Rock Cellar, describing the device. “The audience can’t even tell. It changed my entire career.”