Cory Wells 10/2015

Cory Wells (74) – Three Dog Night – was born Emil Lewandowski in Buffalo, New York on Feb 2, 1941.

His family counted several polka musicians among his relatives. He was brought up in a rough area and suffered an abusive step-father, but while still in school he formed a band called The Enemies, before joining the US Air Force directly after high school. 

While enlisted in the Air Force, he formed a band of interracial musical performers, inspired by his boyhood love of a similar popular band called The Del-Vikings.  Following his military tour of duty, he returned to Buffalo and joined a band named the Vibratos. He travelled to California with the band, where they changed their name to “The Enemys”. After the band had been house band at the Whisky a Go Go for a year and appearing in several movies and TV shows including The Beverly Hillbillies, Burke’s Law, Riot on Sunset Strip, Harper with Paul Newman and Shelley Winters, Cory was asked by celebrity  singer Cher if the band would tour with Sonny and Cher. 

While on tour he met up with Danny Hutton for the first time. Wells moved to Phoenix in 1967 where he formed The Cory Wells Blues Band, whose bass player was future Three Dog Night bass player, Joe Schermetzler (stage name Joe Schermie). In 1968, Wells returned to Hollywood where he “couch-surfed” while Danny Hutton worked to convince him of the feasibility of forming a group with three lead singers and a back-up band. Cory, Danny Hutton and Chuck Negron formed a vocal trio; the three recorded demos under the name “Redwood” with Brian Wilson as producer. Having perfected their 3-part harmony sound within Redwood, they, along with the addition of a four piece backing group made up of friends, guitarist Mike Allsup, Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards, Joe Schermie on bass, and drummer Floyd Sneed, they began performing as Three Dog Night in 1968. 

The band became one of the most successful bands of the late 1960s and mid 1970s. They scored 12 gold albums and recorded 21 consecutive Billboard Top 40 hits, which include three chart toppers and seven of which went gold. Cory sang the lead vocal on Three Dog Night’s No.1 hit song “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)”. 

He said that Randy Newman, who wrote the song, later called him and said: “I just want to thank you for putting my kids through college.”

Their particular vocal style, drawing heavily from the expansive sound of gospel, led Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau to dub them the “Kings of Oversing”.

After Three Dog Night broke up in 1976, Cory launched a solo career, recording the album “Touch Me”, in 1978 and “Ahead of the Storm” in 1979. Unlike many other rock musicians of the day, Wells had managed to abstain from alcohol and other drugs. Also, he didn’t squander his earnings on the lavish lifestyles of many other successful rock stars; rather, he chose to live a somewhat more moderate existence.

Cory re-launched Three Dog Night and in the mid-1980s they recorded an EP, “It’s a Jungle.” A falling out with Negron left Cory and Wells with the name “Three Dog Night” as an entity, under which Cory performed successfully until his death.

The pair, along with original member Mike Allsup, toured regularly each year, original member Jimmy Greenspoon also toured with Three Dog Night until his diagnosis of metastatic melanoma in late 2014. 

In the middle of 2015 Cory Wells suffered acute back pain and died suddenly in his sleep on October 20, 2015 at his Dunkirk, New York home. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma. He was 74.

Three Dog Night was inducted into The Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2000.