Three Dog Night/Suitable for Framing

Personnel: Chuck Negron, Danny Hutton, Cory Wells, Mike Allsup (guitar); Jimmy Greenspoon (keyboards); Joe Schermie (bass instrument); Floyd Sneed (drums).
Audio Remasterer: Andrew Thompson .
Liner Note Author: John Tobler.
Photographer: Ed Caraeff.
Anyone waiting for MCA to upgrade the Three Dog Night album catalog -- and it needs doing, the American CD versions having been mastered two decades ago -- need look no further than this excellent two-LP-on-one-CD collection. From the opening piano on "One," it's like several layers of hiss have been removed, and the transfer has resolution sufficient so that the playing on everything from the rhythm section out forward is crystal clear, just like the nuances of the singing throughout come through in vivid detail -- and the volume has been pushed a lot harder as well. Not only does the sound make this CD truly "suitable for framing," but the annotation gives a pretty good account of the coalescing of the group and the making of the two albums, albeit from the British perspective, which is a little strange -- yes, Gott Discs is a British company, so it's not odd in that regard that they should tell the story that way, only in that, except for one brief moment in their history a little later than this, Three Dog Night wasn't a fraction as successful in England as they were in the United States, so their story is told here once-removed, so to speak. Still, the account is good and no one can argue about the merits of the music, or Gott Discs finally doing what MCA should have done a long time ago with these two albums. ~ Bruce Eder