Not long before Bob Marley and the Wailers charted for the first time in the U.S. with their 1973 album Catch a Fire, reggae was starting to make some inroads on U.S. pop radio. Even in the early 1970s, reggae was a largely unknown genre to American listeners. Then in 1972, Three Dog Night took “Black and White”—a song with a distinctive reggae feel—all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
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Other artists played a role in bringing reggae to Top-40 radio in the first half of the ‘70s. Paul Simon scored a Top-10 hit with “Mother and Child Reunion,” which he recorded in Jamaica, while Eric Clapton took a cover of Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” to No. 1. Johnny Nash, who frequently covered Marley, had a hit with the Marleyesque “I Can See Clearly Now.” However, “Black and White” was a song written in the ‘50s by a pair of Americans. The version that most clearly influenced Three Dog Night’s cover was not performed by a group from Jamaica, but by one from the UK.
As improbable as it might have seemed, Three Dog Night played a role in popularizing reggae in the U.S. With “Black and White,” they also brought attention to an 18-year-old song that had historical significance when it was first written and recorded. Here’s how Three Dog Night wound up introducing the song to a new generation while presenting it in an altogether different style.
The Origins of “Black and White”
As performed by Three Dog Night on their album Seven Separate Fools, “Black and White” comes across as both a celebration of the achievements of the civil rights movement and a general call for racial unity. Yet the songwriters who created “Black and White” were commenting on a specific—and monumental—victory of the civil rights movement. David Arkin and Earl Robinson wrote “Black and White” in response to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine that undergirded racial segregation in public schools. (Arkin, incidentally, was the father of the late actor Alan Arkin.)
Absent from the Three Dog Night version are a verse and a pre-chorus that make the meaning of the original abundantly clear.
Their robes were black, their heads were white
The schoolroom doors were closed so tight
Wеre closed up tight
Nine judgеs all, set down their names
To end the years and years of shame
Years of shame
Legendary folk artist Pete Seeger was the first musical act to record “Black and White,” and it appeared on his 1956 album Love Songs for Friends and Foes. Robinson would release a version of the song he co-wrote in 1957, and Sammy Davis Jr. would cover it in the same year.
A Little Bit Reggae, A Little Bit Seeger
In 1970, the Jamaican reggae duo The Maytones released a cover version of “Black and White,” but it’s not the version that inspired Three Dog Night to give the song a try. A British reggae band called Greyhound released their cover of “Black and White” in 1971, and the members of Three Dog Night heard it on a radio station in the Netherlands while they were touring Europe. According to Fred Bronson’s The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, members of Three Dog Night would eventually meet Robinson and tell him, “’We knew this was going to be a hit immediately.”
It’s not clear if Greyhound knew of The Maytones’ cover when they recorded their version of “Black and White,” but both versions omitted the lyrics that alluded to Brown vs. Board of Education. Three Dog Night, having learned the song through Greyhound’s version, followed their lead. For the most part, the Three Dog Night version is a cover of Greyhound’s version, both musically and lyrically.
However, Three Dog Night appeared to have been aware of Seeger’s original before they recorded their version, as they incorporated an element from it tat was absent from Greyhound’s rendition. On Seeger’s version, a group of children sing along with him during the chorus. Three Dog Night included child vocalists in their choruses as well.
The Impact of Three Dog Night’s Cover
While Greyhound’s version of “Black and White” did well in the UK, reaching No. 6 on the Official Singles chart, it was Three Dog Night’s version that popularized the song in the U.S. It was the last of Three Dog Night’s No. 1 songs on the Hot 100 (following “Mama Told Me Not to Come” and “Joy to the World”) and one of seven singles they released that would become Gold-certified. Seven Separate Fools was also Gold-certified, and it became Three Dog Night’s highest-charting album with a peak position of No. 6.
In the span of less than two decades, “Black and White” went from its origins as a folk song about a historic event to the reggae-tinged hit that many of us still know all these years later. Like in an old-fashioned game of Telephone, some critical details in the song’s message were lost along the way. Still, its general theme of unity comes through loud and clear.
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Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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