Chuck Negron

Charles Negron was born on June 8, 1942 in Manhattan, New York to Carlos Negron (a native of Corozal, Puerto Rico) and a British mother. At 5 years old, his father, a nightclub singer, and his mother divorced. Negron and his twin sister, Nancy, were placed in an orphanage by their mother. Two years later she took them back.  Negron grew up in The Bronx, where he sang in local doo-wop groups and played basketball both in schoolyard pick-up games and at William Howard Taft High School. The latter talent led to his being recruited to play basketball at Allan Hancock College, a small community college in Santa Maria, California; later, he played at California State University, Los Angeles.

In 1967, singer Danny Hutton invited Negron to join him and Cory Wells; they founded the band Three Dog Night. The group became one of the most successful bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s, having sold approximately 60 million records and earned gold records for such songs as "One", "Easy to be Hard", and "Joy to the World".  The rock and roll lifestyle took its toll on Negron, and by the time Three Dog Night disbanded in 1976, Negron had 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.  Chuck became sober in September of 1991.