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109 of 110 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The SINGLE versions are the best!, December 14, 2004
Three Dog Night did one very smart thing back in their time...they went back in and reworked several of their songs for the radio...sometimes strikingly different versions of the tunes from their album counterparts...but the results were always very radio-friendly, punched-up versions that took what were all great songs to begin with and catapulted them to a whole new level...the added guitar break in Joy to the World, the tighter and shorter version of Liar, the extra vocal bridge near the end of Old Fashioned Love Song, even the few seconds of added piano at the end of Eli's Coming...al very noticeable touches that made these songs just explode out of the radio back in their day. The fact that they all STILL sound fresh today speaks volumes and shows that this was not only a very excellent live band (the harmonies are STILL razor sharp, if you don't believe me, go see them when they come to your area) but a very smart band (and production team) that knew what would make these songs hits, and there's absolutely not a thing in the world wrong with that...they picked great songs from great writers and did great arrangements of them all (kind of sounds to me like someone else's master plan back in 1966 when that group got their own TV series, and their stable of writers was no B-list either). If you have the 14-track Best of Three Dog Night with the album versions of all the hits, then you need to hear this collection, compare and contrast. I guarantee you this one will be the collection that sticks in your ears!
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68 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MONO FOR A REASON!, June 1, 2004
Ok, the mono versions of these songs, and I say VERSIONS not mixes because vocals and instrument tracks were often re-recorded for the singles, are great to have on one CD. The mono singles included on this disc are way superior to the LP versions, which were often rather muddy stereo mixes. Chuck Negron himself told me that, like The Beatles, the group was present and involved with the mono mixes, leaving the stereo versions to the engineers. So, these are the singles, as the group intended, and the way we heard them on AM radio in the 70's. And come on, the LP version of "The Show Must Go On" has that vomit inducing ending that NEVER ENDS! I can do without that, thank you. Don't knock MONO. Every pre-1970 Motown single is definitive in mono, as are all the Beatles and Stones singles. "Pet Sounds?" 'Nuff said!! - Vinny
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complete collection of hits from the best band of the early 70's, June 9, 2006
After the break-up of the Beatles and before the disco era, no act ruled the airwaves of FM radio quite like Three Dog Night. I remember while growing up in Dallas that they were commonly referred to as "America's Number One Super Group", and when they played the Cotton Bowl there in 1971, it actually was the top story on the ten o'clock local news! Thus, it does seem odd then that younger people often are not at all acquainted with their work, and in many cases have never even heard of them.
This collection features all 21 of their top 40 hits, eleven of which made the top ten. The group's accomplishments seem especially notable when you consider that Chuck Negron, Danny Hutton, and Cory Wells were talented vocalists that had a penchant for parlaying the work of successful songwriters into huge hits for themselves. This ran counter to the trend of that era that began with the Beatles in which successful ensembles usually wrote and performed their own works and saw songwriting as what distinguished them as artists rather than "just" performers. However, you can't argue with the outcome, whether it be Wells' gritty "Eli's Coming", Hutton's echo chamber-like "Liar", Negron's anguished tenor performance of "One", or when they shared the vocals equally in performances such as 1970's "Out in the Country", one of the original ballads of the environmentalist movement. On top of producing quality work, the trio managed to consistently come up with hits that were quite distinct from one another, thus preventing themselves from being pidgeon-holed into one particular sound.
I think that you'll find that this CD has the distinction of all 21 tracks being quality material. Although it will take you back to the early 70's, Three Dog Night's music does not seem "timestamped" into that era, versus songs from the disco years such as "Ring My Bell" by Anita Ward that make us laugh at ourselves for having ever even listened to such stuff.
If you enjoy this CD you might want to also check out the remastered original recording CD's of Three Dog Night's albums "Naturally", "Harmony", and "Seven Separate Fools" where you'll experience Three Dog Night's tradition of putting out albums that were always full of good music rather than what you often see from many of today's artists - 1 or 2 good tracks and the rest mediocre.
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by Three Dog Night 
