Humble soul

The 1960s-1970s hit machine Three Dog Night grazed the charts for the last time 40 years ago with a delicately arranged Dave Loggins composition called “Til the World Ends.” On Oct. 20, the world ended for one of the band’s lead singers, Cory Wells.

Wells, 74, died in his sleep, the victim of a plasma-cell cancer that he’d been stoically and secretly battling. As recently as September, he’d performed with his fellow Three Dog Night co-founder Danny Hutton as part of the seemingly indefatigable version of the band he and Hutton had kept going as a high-quality, oldies-circuit live attraction in the 30 years since they’d parted ways with Chuck Negron—who’d sung lead on “Joy to the World,” “One,” and “The Show Must Go On”—when it seemed as if he would never kick his heroin addiction. (He eventually did.)

Wells sang lead on the Top 10 “Never Been to Spain,” “Eli’s Coming,” and “Shambala” and the lower-charting “Sure As I’m Sittin’ Here,” “Let Me Serenade You,” and “Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues).” He also sang “I Can’t Help It,” the catchiest song on the It’s a Jungle EP that the briefly reunited Three Dog Night released in 1985.

Most significantly, Wells took the lead on Three Dog Night’s first No. 1 hit, Randy Newman’s “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)” (and in so doing, according to rock lore, put Newman’s kids through college). The “blackest”-sounding of the group’s singers, Wells guaranteed that, even at its most pop sounding, the band would always have at least one foot in soul.

Unlike many classic-rock-era personalities, Wells survived his youthful excesses, remaining married for 50 years to his only wife, becoming an avid fisherman, and gladly checking his ego at whatever doors that opportunity opened. “He was one of the nicest and most humble people I ever had the opportunity to share the stage with,” wrote Wells’ fellow hit-machine alumnus John Ford Coley on Facebook. “I am very impressed with genuine people, and Cory was one of the best.”

The critic Robert Christgau once referred to Wells, Hutton, and Negron as the “kings of oversing,” and, sure enough, they were inclined to belt. But they had precedents, most notably in the Welsh superstar Tom Jones, who at 75 is still carrying the torch for big-voiced vocalists everywhere.

His latest album, Long Lost Suitcase (Virgin/EMI), is the concluding third of a career-rejuvenating trilogy that Jones began in 2010 with the all-gospel Praise and Blame and continued in 2012 with the semi-gospel Spirit in the Room.

Unlike its predecessors, Long Lost Suitcase contains no gospel at all. Like its predecessors, it finds Jones freeing himself of his Vegas-stud trappings, the better to seek out compositions that allow him to redeem his remaining time by mining the musical roots that first inspired him.

Beginning with Willie Nelson’s “Opportunity to Cry,” concluding with Jesse Fuller’s “Raise a Ruckus,” and meanwhile making hay of the Rolling Stones (“Factory Girl”), Los Lobos (“Everybody Loves a Train”), Sonny Boy Williamson (“Bring It On Home”), and Gillian Welch (“Elvis Presley Blues”), Jones comes on like a one-man chitlin’-circuit jukebox.

Long Lost Suitcase isn’t flawless. The folk chestnut “He Was a Friend of Mine” feels forced. But compensation comes with Billy Boy Arnold’s “I Wish You Would,” in which Jones cruises for a bruising and arrives in one piece. Its elbow-throwing fierceness is a tonic in these oversensitive times.