It Ain’t Easy

Notes on Three Dog Night Singer Cory Wells

This is an ongoing series of my raw, unpolished thoughts about the biography book project I’m working on about Cory Wells, founding member of the hugely popular classic rock band, Three Dog Night.

As one of the most prominent and visible members of Three Dog Night, Cory Wells was also the most private. Almost to the point of secretive. He was the voice of arguably the band’s best and biggest hit, Mama Told Me, and that voice was about as soulful as soul got in those days (for a white boy from Buffalo, anyway). But who was he? What was his story? Did his fans ever get to know?

Five years after Cory’s sudden death in 2015, I took on the project of writing his biography — actually co-writing with his daughter, Dawn Wells. In truth, she’s not a writer and I’m doing the heavy lifting. And in truth, it’s the most daunting project I’ve undertaken up to this point. I’ve published two novellas (fiction) and one collection of poetry. I also served as music editor for Janky Smooth for three years, an indie L.A. publication that covers the underground music scene, and I’ve been a contributing writer for Flaunt Magazine since 2015. This, however, is my first attempt at nonfiction of this scale, and the research is staggering to me. The era of 1965–1975 is so heavy in its magnitude, and to write about such a big…