Chuck Negron

Charles Negron II (June 8, 1942 – February 2, 2026) was an American singer-songwriter. He was best known as a founding member and lead vocalist of the rock band Three Dog Night.

Chuck Negron was born in Manhattan, New York City, on June 8, 1942, to Charles Negron, a Puerto Rican nightclub singer, and Elizabeth Rooke. When Negron was five years old, his parents divorced. Negron and his twin sister, Nancy, were raised by their mother, who placed them in a daycare facility while she supported her young children. Though Negron referred to this facility as an orphanage, it was a mansion in the Bronx that contained a swimming pool, gymnasium, arts and crafts, and more. The facility did house some long-term residents, though this did not include Negron and his sister.

He grew up in the Bronx, where he sang in local doo-wop groups and played basketball both in schoolyard pickup games and at William Howard Taft High School. He was recruited to play basketball at Allan Hancock College, a small community college in Santa Maria, California and played later at California State University, Los Angeles.

In 1967, singer Danny Hutton invited Negron to join him and Cory Wells to found the band Three Dog Night. The group became one of the most successful bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s, selling approximately 60 million records and earning gold records for singles that featured Negron as lead vocalist, including "One", "Easy to Be Hard", "Joy to the World", "An Old Fashioned Love Song", "Pieces of April", "The Show Must Go On", and "Til the World Ends".

Negron developed a serious heroin addiction, which began in the early 1970s. In July 1975, the British music magazine NME reported that Negron had been arrested for cocaine possession in Kentucky. Three Dog Night disbanded in 1976.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.