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He is a keyboardist and songwriter born in Los Angeles
and raised in Beverly Hills, California, whose mother was the silent film
actress Mary O'Brien. He started
to learn to play the piano when he seven years old with the encouragement
of his mother and later studied at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music at
the suggestion of his teacher.
He started performing with various groups from his local area in the
1960s and co-founded the band The East Side Kids. He was also a co-founder of The Sound of the Seventh Son,
which was a house band at various venues such as Whisky A-Go-Go and
Stratford-on-Sunset where they backed Caesar & Cleo who were later to
become Sonny & Cher. He
was a member of The New Dimensions from 1963 with his friend Michael Lloyd,
who he attended the Hollywood Professional School with and who would later
win an Academy Award for production. Deciding to relocate in 1967 he went to Denver, Colorado
as a member of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and became a
founding member of Super Band.
A year or so later he returned to Los Angeles and became acquainted with
Cory Wells, Danny Hutton and Chuck Negron. He was asked to join them as a
musician for their new group Three
Dog Night
and this would turn out be his road to success. They achieved hit after hit from
1969 into the mid-1970s and became the top chart group of that time. He performed with them on countless
albums, on 21 consecutive hits in the Top 40 and
more Top 10 hits than any other group in that period. These hits include such well remembered songs such as "An Old
Fashioned Love Song", "Black and White", "Easy to be Hard", "Joy
to the World
", "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)", " Shambala" and many more that still
appear today on TV, radio and in movies. The group disbanded in the mid 1970s but in 1981 he and
some of the others put the group back together and began touring and
recording again. A decade
later he entered into the world of authorship when he was the co-writer of One
is the Loneliest Number: On the Road and Behind the Scenes With the
Legendary Band Three Dog Night. He didn't perform with Three
Dog Night exclusively though
and was often asked to perform and/or record with many other artists. These
artists include Carmine Appice, Jeff Beck, Tim Bogert, Shaun
Cassidy, Eric Clapton, Steve
Cropper, Duck
Dunn, Lowell
George, Chris Hillman, Bernie
Leadon, Harvey Mandel, Linda
Ronstadt
and many others. His
album output is extensive with titles such as American Pastime, Coming
Down Your Way, Cyan, Golden Bisquits, Hard Labor, Harmony, It Ain't Easy,
It's a Jungle, Joy to the World - Their Greatest Hits, Naturally, Seven
Separate Fools, Suitable for Faming by Three
Dog Night , 35th
Anniversary Hits Collection by Three
Dog Night with the London
Symphony Orchestra
, Beck, Bogert & Appice by Beck, Bogert & Appice, Am
I Still in Your Heart by Chuck Negron and Deuces and Eights by
The New Dimensions to name just a few. He also appeared with Three
Dog Night on the DVD Three
Dog Night: Live with the Tennessee Symphony Orchestra. Forty
years on from Three
Dog Night's
beginnings, he now resides in Maryland but can still be seen performing
with them on their still busy touring and concert schedule.
Joy to the
World (Hoyt Axton )
Old Gold OG-9795-B (UK 45)
Sources:
- http://www.threedognight.com/jimmy.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Greenspoon
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Dog_Night
- http://www.bobyeazel.com/Superband.htm
- http://archives.waiting-forthe-sun.net/Pages/Players/Personal/CantersAfterhours.html
- http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/23974511
- http://www.mtv.com/movies/person/283709/filmography.jhtml
- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2088723/
- http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:anfyxqq5ld6e~T3
- http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:anfyxqq5ld6e~T4
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