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Chuck
Negron - Former Lead Singer for Three Dog Night |
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Chuck
Negron went from being a kid growing up in the Bronx of New York City, to along
with his twin sister, being placed in an orphanage at eight years old, to being
a white guy singing at the world famous African American venue The Apollo
Theater in Harlem, during the 1950s and eventually to becoming what most people
would say, was the most recognizable of the three singers to front the band
Three Dog Night. Three Dog Night which Negron co-founded in 1967 with singers
Danny Hutton and Cory Wells would, from 1968 to 1975 enjoy 21 Billboard top
forty hits. Seven of those songs became gold records. In total Three Dog Night
had 13 gold albums, 18 of the top forty hits would make it to the top twenty on
the charts, eight would be ranked in the top ten and four of them went to # 1.
After Three Dog Night disbanded in 1975, Chuck Negron would in time forge a
successful career as a solo artist with a repertoire comprised of a mix of Three
Dog Night hits and his own songs. He has authored two books about his life and
career, released two DVDs and a screenplay is being written based on one of his
books. Recently, Chuck Negron, during a two hour conversation talked about his
early years, his music career prior to, during and after Three Dog Night and how
on September 17th
of 2012 he will celebrate his 21st
anniversary free from the addiction to drugs that once threatened to claim his
life. “Growing up in the Bronx in the fifties was wonderful.
It was a time of rebirth for the country after the war. There were many, many
friends and a lot of children in the streets. There were people building their
lives and there were people prospering. It was a wonderful time and I loved it
there. We played in the streets and we played in the school yards. My mother (Elizabeth) and father had twins, my sister
Nancy who is five minutes older than me, and I. They (his parents) didn’t make
it. He left when we were around four. They were very young (when they got
married). They were nineteen and he went off to war and when he came back, they
were different people. My mother raised us, with help from my grandmother
(paternal).”
Amazingly, Chuck Negron did
not have any formal music education when he was growing up.
“There
was a lot of Doo Wop singing on the street, I mean literally urban Rock and Roll
was born at that time. I was a part of it in my neighborhood and then we formed
a vocal group. We sang all of the time, but I had no formal music training.
I loved the harmonies (of Doo
Wop) and the singers. There were some great singers, Jackie Wilson, Ben E. King,
Sam Cooke and even Johnny Mathis who was on the other side of the spectrum, had
a beautiful voice. The music and the arrangements that he did were very
inspiring to me, because it showed what you could do with any kind of music, not
just his, what great arrangements, orchestration and stuff could do. It was a
great exciting time.
Around age fifteen, we had The Rondells and we
started getting hired for college gigs, all different college parties. We would
go down to the Brill Building. That is where all of the writers were and the
recording studio. We found the man there who managed “I Wonder Why,” for Dion
and the Belmonts, so we ended up doing some records. Then we ended up doing the
show at the Apollo Theater when I was sixteen and that was in the 1950s. We were
the only white people within a mile of that place (he laughs). Our managers were
black, and one of them
brought our
records down there and got us booked. It
was an unbelievable experience, because we weren’t really welcome, as it was
really the black bastion of music and we were these sixteen and seventeen year
old white kids (he laughs) in green sweaters. They didn’t think we were so cute,
but when we got on stage and sang, there was silence and we won them over. It
was a wonderful experience and as I have said in my book (and at other times) it
really showed the power of music and how it transcends all cultural biases. It
went from (the audience) just staring at us to really getting into us and
enjoying us. We went from being in a frightened state to being a part of this
wonderful experience,” he says. One of the astounding things about Chuck Negron becoming
such an iconic singer or a performer of any note for that matter is the fact
that he was quite shy when he was younger. “When my sister and I were eight, my
mom put us in an orphanage, so it really changed me. I had to shut up and I went
into depression. I didn’t know it was depression, but I know now that it was. I
didn’t talk to anybody and I became very withdrawn. I had my friends and so in
that respect I was a normal kid, but outside of that life it was pretty hard. It
wasn’t easy for me and it is a miracle that I got through it. The support that
the band and that my friends gave me helped me through and it ended up being a
very magical moment in my life (at The Apollo Theater) and one that I will never
forget.” Chuck Negron’s teenage years
also led to another pivotal point in his life the high school basketball team,
which ultimately was responsible for leading him across the country to
California where his music career skyrocketed. The Rondells were all in school
and people were going home and doing their homework and we got together on
certain days. On the weekends our managers would get us a show or we would have
a recording or something, so it wasn’t like a job, like it is today. I played
ball all of the time.
I
played after school and when I came home,” he says. While in high school, university and college basketball
recruiters began to take notice of Chuck Negron. “I was recruited for Utah
State, Yukon…Utah State won the NCAA championship two years later. I was also
recruited to California and I went there, because my father was there. Back
then, in that time, there weren’t that many people who were coming from New York
to California. It was big stuff when Lew Alcindor (Kareen Abdul-Jabbar) went to
California, because none of the ball players from the east left the east. It was
a big deal and it changed a lot of stuff. Also, racial barriers were being
knocked down. There was a basketball player who played for Theodore Roosevelt High School, Johnny Tamburrino (1959 – 60 Manhattan – Bronx – Staten Island All-Star team, Coach Roy Rubin) who was an all-city basketball player and he went to the (west) coast to Allan Hancock College. I knew the school was a good school, because he was good. I don’t know how many people make all-city, but it isn’t very many. The first five are the first five. He comes back, because he misses his girlfriend and his family and it was just too far away. When he was there they asked him, ‘Who’s coming out of school next year?’ They liked the way that he played. The New York game is really up-tempo and it is a smart game. You have to know how to pass. He mentioned my name and I got this letter and I was who the hell is Allan Hancock College (he says this as though he was reading the letter for the first time). They called me and the questions I found myself asking were how far are you from Monterey Park (in LA county). That’s where my father lived. They said, it’s like two and one-half hours. In California that’s a walk (he laughs). I called my father and I said I’ve got this school…and he said ‘I’ll drive up there,’ and he got back to me ‘It’s beautiful and it is in the rolling hills right by Santa Barbara. It is right by the ocean. He said, it would be wonderful to have you as a part of my life and that is the reason that I went was to be reunited with my father. My sister and I had gone to see our father in our whole young lives, I think twice. We spent two summers there and he came once and spent a couple of days with us, one other summer, but that was it. He was my father and I had great love for him. He was very kind to me. I made up my mind, to have a relationship with that part of the family, which I always loved. My grandmother was always there for me, my grandma Flora and my uncles. All of my Latino relatives were very, very good to me. I had the same name as my father. I wanted to become a part of that world. I went to California and my father didn’t disappoint, he came to every game and he drove me around to record companies when I had auditions and stuff. It was great.”
Bill Sharman who was the coach of Cal State played
and went to school with the Athletic Director (of Allan Hancock College) and
they would recruit people together and they would move them on to Cal State and
to various schools. This town (Santa Maria) was a breeding spot for athletes and
coaches It was called the
Biggest Little Sports Town in America.
When I got there, there were five high school All American players there (he
repeats that again as he weighs the significance of that statement). Back then,
you couldn’t play as a freshman, so they had developed their own recruiting and
their own program, to develop these players and put them in a situation where
they would play more ball and better ball than they would on the freshman team
(at university). Back then, you didn’t have ten or fifteen scholarships as a
freshman. You had to play your way onto the team, unless you were a big name. We
went undefeated in the league and the guys all went on to major schools, except
the guys who couldn’t make it emotionally or academically.
Just like in high school,
Chuck Negron continued to sing, while playing basketball, only this time it was
not quite so easy to balance his two passions. “When I left New York I was
hoping something would happen. I took this choir class and I found out they had
an ensemble, so I tried out for it. The next thing I knew I was in the ensemble
and the ensemble played around town. The man who built the school Allan Hancock
who was in his eighties at that time was married to a woman who was probably in
her fifties. She was a beautiful woman and she saw my talent, so she started
hiring me for the events that she ran. Somehow, at one of those events, a record
label person came up to me and said that he would like to record me on his
record label, Marlinda Records, so I made a record (a single) “Sharon Lee.” The
next year, 1962, I made another record (“I Dream Of An Angel”) with Heart Van
Records, which was a Surf Records label from Anaheim, California.” Negron started getting a
name for himself in California and he performed with The Sorenson Brothers
almost every week, when he wasn’t playing basketball. There were always major
touring acts that would perform in Santa Maria, such as Frankie Avalon and
Conway Twitty and along with those acts there were also plenty of people from
the business side of the music industry who were in and around the college town.
“Columbia Records heard that I was selling records
and the next thing you know Columbia Records is calling me. I went up there for
an audition and they said, ‘We want you, you are great. We can’t believe that
you already have a following and you are selling records.’ Most artists didn’t
have that. I got signed with Columbia and I really didn’t like the direction
that they were going. The guy who really fought for me and who wanted me was a
new guy named Ed Kleban. Ed Kleban ended up writing (the lyrics for)
A Chorus Line
and he also produced
Igor Stravinsky,
so he knew nothing about Doo Wop and Soul Music and he really had me on this
white Pop thing. At that time I thought I guess he knows what he is doing, but
we cut songs and you knew it wasn’t good and I wouldn’t even do them in my show,
but you follow along. It was a big lesson for me, because each record that I
made, I never did a song that I wanted to do, because they all had publishing or
writing or some other angle to do the song. I learned a big lesson while I was
there, plus I got to meet all the publishers of all of those writers, that I
couldn’t get to while I was in The Rondells. I became good friends with Chuck
Kaye who became the head of Chappell Music (Among the artists signed by Chuck
Kaye to record labels were, Jerry Goffin, Carole King, Neil Sedaka, Steve
Winwood, Bob Marley, Bryan Adams, Jefferson Airplane, Peter Frampton,
Supertramp, and Billy Preston) I met some people, who when my time came with
Three Dog Night, they were all in very good positions and they all knew me. I
would ask if they had anybody new and boom all the songs came out. I was just
lucky. I had the ear,” Negron recalls.
It was
starting to become more difficult to juggle his basketball schedule, school and
his music career. Columbia Records called me and said ‘You need to come up this
week and we need to rehearse some songs.’ I told the coach and he said, ‘You
can’t go for a week, if you do, you’re not playing this weekend.’ They had a big
meeting in the school and the team said, ‘We understand, let him go. ‘ I went
and I was there for five days and I had one meeting and no rehearsals. It’s show
business (he chuckles). Other stuff came up. There was a lot of schmoozing and
lunch. I was like, I’m in school and they said, you are in show business and you
can’t do both. Finally, there was a session and I said I can’t be there this day
and this day, because I have a game. I got a call from the head of the A&R
department and he said ‘I am not getting this. Someone says that you are
cancelling a session. We have The Wrecking Crew, Hal Blaine, Glen Campbell, Leon
Russell and he went on with all of these people and I didn’t know who they were.
Every one of them became a star. He said, ‘Besides I am paying a lot of money
and there are people all over this city living in their cars waiting for a break
like this, so you either get your butt out of school and what is it…you play
ball (he imitates a condescending tone). ’I said I am a basketball player and he
said, ‘You are a musician.’ I realized there was no wiggle room and that my fun
days as far as being a kid were over. It was put up or shut up. I rolled with
things and I don’t know where it came from, because I was such an uptight kid
for a long time, because I didn’t trust anybody. I made a deal, but I did the
session. The team went to the national finals. We played against Jerry Tarkanian
for the championship. He was the coach at Riverside (Riverside City College,
1961 -66) and he beat us. (only four other men’s college basketball coaches ever
have a higher winning percentage than Jerry Tarkanian’s 78.4%. He also coached
at Long Beach State, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Fresno State and the NBA’s
San Antonio Spurs.) Then I moved into a little apartment, actually it was part
of a house, it wasn’t even an apartment. I had a foldout bed. I started my
career with Columbia (Records) and ended my college career. That would have been
about ’64.
Three
years later,in 1967 Chuck Negron was in Los Angeles hanging out with some
friends from New York City and as they were walking down Sunset Strip, two girls
pulled over in their car and invited Negron and his friends to a party for
Donovan Leitch (“Sunshine Superman,” “Mellow Yellow”) and the Mothers Of
Invention, which included Frank Zappa were playing at the party. “I had never seen anything like The Mothers of Invention
and I don’t mean musically, these people looked like homeless people (he laughs)
and there were some of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life with
people who in my neighborhood would get mugged (he laughs). Even in my college,
there were very few “hippyfieds.” I ran into this nice guy at the party and his
name was Danny Hutton. He was there with his girlfriend June. She goes, ‘Oh
you’re from New York (he mimics her in a snooty tone).’ She said I looked like a
narc and I said gee thanks. The girl who picked me up said let’s go to my place
and then come back.’ We went to her house where she was staying with some
friends. One of the friends was Tim Alvarado who produced Danny’s hit “Roses and
Rainbows.” It went to # 5 in LA and # 75 in the country, because there was no
distribution (making the point that he thinks the song would have charted better
otherwise). He was on Hanna-Barbera Records with his first record, and they
really didn’t have distribution for Pop records. Danny’s producer heard my
record and he said, ‘man you are a great singer, but these songs are terrible,’
and I said I know and I am embarrassed to play these songs. It is all I have.
One thing led to another and he invites me and Judy, who he knows, because she
lives there, to live in his guest house and without him I wouldn’t have made it,
because I was living in my car. Danny came by and he said that he had heard I
was a great singer. He asked me if I wanted to do a background thing for him. He
said that he had tried Stephen Stills and Neil Young and none of them could hit
the notes. All of those guys were just starting to rehearse for Buffalo
Springfield and they were just looking for work. I went in and I nailed it,
because I had a really high range and he said wow. We went out that night and it
just so happened that the band that was touring this club in Hollywood, I had
worked with before, so they said ladies and gentlemen we have a great singer in
the audience and they called me up. It blew Danny’s mind. He said you have been
on stage and stuff and I said I had been singing for years,” Negron recalls the
events as though it happened yesterday. Danny Hutton also knew a singer by the name of Cory
Wells, who at the time had a regular gig with the house band at Whisky A Go Go
on Sunset Boulevard. It was at a time when it was the place to be seen, whether
you were an artist or band hoping to get noticed or a fan or a groupie wanting
to be in the center of the action. Wells’ gig at Whisky A Go Go was pretty heady
stuff, as Johnny Rivers previously had the gig. As Negron remembers it the club
was packed with celebrities and movie stars every day of the week.
Negron says that when the three of them had difficulty
agreeing on what songs they should sing, he suggested that each of them bring a
song the next day when they got together. It was time for Chuck Negron to make
contact with some people he had met along the way. “I phoned Chuck Kaye (music publisher) and he said that
he had some new writers and that I should come over. I just got lucky. He said
that he knew Danny Hutton, “he’s hot,” and I told him about Cory Wells and he
said, ‘I used to love to go see Cory at the Whisky. That’s a great idea. You
guys are going to make some nice money on the club circuit and if you get a
break who knows. I’ve got this one guy, who has a hit right now a song in
Midnight Cowboy, “Everybody’s
Talkin’,” but they aren’t even approaching him as a writer and that’s what he
is. He’s a square looking guy, Harry Nilsson.’ Chuck played some songs for me
and I said, this guy is really good and is voice is totally unique. I heard the
song “One (Is The Loneliest Number),” and it was very melancholy. He played it
to the tempo of a busy signal. I heard it and I heard it as a Rock and Roll song
with three-part harmonies being sung. It is not just a mellow love song. The
next day we got together and Cory pulled a song from The Rascals “If You Knew,”
and he sings a line from the song, “If you knew how I feel,” it is a three-part
harmony. Danny brought a Beatles song, actually Cilla Black had recorded it, a
waltz called “It’s For You.” He said he wanted to change it around, to take the
waltz and to find another tempo for it. At the end of the day when they heard
“One,” they could see that it really was different than all of this other stuff
and that it was going to be a record. They asked if I had anymore songs and I
said I did. I called Chuck and he sent me to another A&R guy who
played for me some Randy Newman stuff from his first album (songs) that didn’t
get played. I was whoa, this is unbelievable and I brought it (to Cory and
Danny) and Cory said I know him, I have a record. He wrote a record for The
Animals that I think is great (“Mama Told Me (Not To Come)” -1966),” he says. Someone also brought to Negron a song by a fellow in
England who was just starting out. The song was “Lady Samantha,” which Three Dog
Night recorded on their Suitable For
Framing album and the songwriter was Elton John. One day, Chuck Negron happened to be in the recording studio and he noticed two guys who were singing and who sounded pretty good. “When they’re done the session, one guy gets off the chair (he was standing on) and he is this little guy and the other guy is about six foot five. It’s Paul Williams and Jack Conrad (he laughs). I thought this is an act. It ends up that Paul is one of the guys that Chuck Kaye has, so I said Chuck send me what you have of Paul Williams (music). This is amazing. He sends me over “Family Of Man,” “Out In The Country,” and “We’ve Only Just Begun.” He was sitting on this. They didn’t know. They asked what I thought of the songs and if I liked them and I said yes. “Out In The Country,” could show a whole side of us that would really make us more than a Rock and Roll band and we could be one of the most eclectic bands out there. We could really find an audience beyond what most bands do. I didn’t know that eventually that will hurt you with someone and it did with the hipsters (who said) ‘these guys are too commercial.’ At any rate, you can’t please all of the people and everyone is a critic. Anyway, when “We’ve Only Just Begun,” plays they (Danny and Cory) go oh no, no that’s a commercial. Originally, Paul and Jack had written that for a bank commercial and Sandy Duncan was the actress. She was the teller. The commercial was of these young couples and the song was “We’ve Only Just Begun, to live, white lace and promises,” (he sings the words). It was a great commercial. The guys go ‘We’ll get creamed if we do a TV commercial. It’s a local bank. This bank isn’t even in Santa Barbara.’ They convinced me. There are so many things they said why take a chance. We don’t want to miss. I said okay. The people who beat us in the Grammy Awards for the New Artist of the Year were The Carpenters, with “We’ve Only Just Begun,” (he laughs). Isn’t that ironic? I will never forget those guys (Danny and Cory) not looking me in the eye, backstage, while we were waiting to go on and they called The Carpenters. We got two hits “Family Of Man,” and “Out Of The Country,” out of that. Paul (Williams) was trying to expand. You have to
understand these guys were not stars yet and he and Jack Conrad were writing.
Paul wanted to write his own music and to do the music too and they were no, no
Paul and you know the saying, if it’s not broke don’t fix it. Paul contacts me
and he says, ‘I have a song that I did all of the music for and they don’t want
Jack to hear it. They don’t want to break up the combo,’ so I said, I’d like to
hear it. It’s “Old Fashioned Love Song.” I went Oh My God, I’ll kill this. I
asked Paul to let me do the song and he (agreed). There was “Old Fashioned Love
Song,” and “Eli’s Coming,” (written by Laura Nyro). Laura Nyro was from my
neighborhood (the Bronx), not far from where I grew up. She was very, very
talented. She was one of my favs.” Three Dog Night was now recording two albums per year
and continually touring. Friction set in between the band members and Negron
characterizes it as stemming from his popularity and being the one who was
receiving the most media attention. Drugs also became a significant problem with
Three Dog Night. “I realized
they really liked me better when I was (he pauses) stoned.” Negron recalls a time
shortly after he had been in a car accident and he suffered a broken arm, broken
wrist, shattered nose and his eyes were closed, when he says that the management
of the Three Dog Night signed him out of the hospital, put him on a jet, despite
the fact he also had a concussion. He was performing that that night on stage in
Dallas, Texas. “I looked like I had just
gone twelve rounds with Mohammed Ali. My
eyes were closed, I had a broken cheekbone. They (the rest of the band) stayed
away from me and they didn’t even come to my room to see how I was. I met (Danny
and Cory) walking to the stage and there was no, ‘are you okay,’ (instead they
said) ‘What numbers can’t you do?’ I really thought in my heart that nobody
would do this to another human being. I
would have said, I don’t care what you say, this man isn’t working. I know I
would have. I said the only one I couldn’t sing was “Good Feelin; 1957,” because
I sing two octaves higher than Frankie Valli. I could barely stand up.
I have footage of that by the way. It was terrible,” he says. Three Dog Night split up
in 1976 and when they did some of the same issues of drug addiction that
contributed to their demise, also continued to haunt Chuck Negron. When the band
separated, I was out there on my own with nothing to do, so I got into real
trouble, real addiction trouble. I moved in with a girl who was a heroin addict
and we both had money. I got up to using a quarter of an ounce of heroin a day.
You wouldn’t think that the human body could even take that much, but it can.
After two or three years of ordering food from all of the restaurants and having
it brought up to us, having Bob Tomasso and his girlfriend shop for us and
finally with the house in disrepair and the deck falling apart, we had to let
everyone go. I looked at myself and I was a junkie and a terrible father. We had
two kids and our two kids were being raised by our maid. I really grew to hate
myself, because I had my issues concerning my upbringing and I came to the
revelation that I was worse than my mother could ever have been. My mother never
put me into jeopardy like this. I got sick one day and I went to the doctor and
he quarantined the whole office. I had hepatitis, active hepatitis, so I was
immediately put into a hospital and they didn’t think that I was going to live.
I was also on probation, so this was a real red flag for them, because the only
association with hepatitis for them was intravenous needles. The guy knows I am
using and he was ready to send me to prison. I’m in the hospital and my father
comes by and he is really happy. I’m going, what’s up dad? He says ‘You are out
of quarantine and that is why I am allowed in the room, but I’ve got good news,
Danny and Cory called me and they want to reunite the band. The only thing is
you have to be there at a meeting tomorrow and they have some papers they would
like you to sign.’ My dad couldn’t face the fact that I was a junkie and I
couldn’t tell him dad look at me. Cory and Danny knew it. Danny had got himself
back together. I said I can’t make
it. My father leaves and then he comes back and he says, ‘I am taking you
tomorrow, because they will not see you ever again if you don’t come to this
meeting.’ I went for my father and I could barely walk, because I was so weak.
We talked with the head of Concerts West Mr. Tom Hulett about doing a tour. He
had just successfully brought back The Beach Boys. The Beach Boys were making a
fortune doing these shows and they were making millions of dollars on their
iconic name. He said we can do this with you. We will make a record, but we
don’t even need it. You have done so much. You need to sign this agreement that
if you continue to do the drugs you will lose all of your rights. I said I’m not
going to sign that, there’s not even a lawyer here. They said, we have a lawyer
for you. I said, he’s not my lawyer and I don’t even know him. I said that the
only way that I will sign is if it is put in that if I need to go into rehab, I
cannot be fired while I am in rehab. They reluctantly went okay. The lawyer was
oh he wants help, so he put it in there.
I made another record (1981) with the band called
It’s A Jungle Out There.
It was terrible. I was sick and they knew I
was sick. I was in rehab during the week and on the weekends I was doing shows.
They had a nurse taking care of me and they were dispensing drugs to me. They
were giving me drugs to get through the shows and then I would go back to rehab
and detox. This went on for a year, until I was down to 126 pounds. I had
pneumonia and the road manager was taking me to the hospital to the emergency
room and every night they were saying, this man is dying. He has pneumonia and
he needs to be admitted and he needs medication. They (management) said no!
Until this day, my right lung is black, it barely works, because I had pneumonia
for six months and I was working. The only thing that saved me was when I got
home I went into the hospital and they hydrated me and they gave me antibiotics.
It’s a miracle that I didn’t die. We had this gig in San Diego and the head
doctor called me in and he said, ‘Listen I have just told your management that
they had better bring an ambulance this time, because I do not know how you are
going to make it. With the oxygen and the intravenous you are starting to heal,
but I just cannot picture you getting through these shows. He said you’re dying.
(Management) said, don’t worry about it, I will take care of it. (The doctor)
said Chuck they are not going to do anything for you.” Negron says that in 1991,
a covert action was hatched in conjunction with Alcoholics Anonymous and he was
admitted to a hospital other than the one that the band and the band’s
management was told about. After a couple of months of Negron being sober and
clean, they finally located him and served him with legal documents, while he
was in rehab. He had been terminated by the band and he lost any rights that he
had to Three Dog Night music. Rather than take up the legal battle he continued
in rehab. In a subsequent lawsuit
between Three Dog Night and Chuck Negron over different issues, Negron says, a
judge ruled that he could not have been legally terminated from the band,
because of the rehab clause in his contract. In 1996 Chuck Negron
released his first solo album, Am I Still
In Your Heart, with the somewhat autobiographical missive “Soul To Soul.”
In 1996 he released a Christmas record
Joy To The World, in 1999 the album
Long Road Back and the double album
Chuck Negron Live In Concert (2001).
He then penned the book Three Dog
Nightmare, for which he retains all the rights. The book became a hit with
LA Times critics and it found its way onto the newspaper’s Best Sellers list. He
says that originally New Line Cinema was interested in doing a film based on his
book, but when an initial legal dispute arose concerning the rights, New Line
Cinema dropped out of the picture. A new screenplay is now being written by
another party. He also wrote a second book
Three Dog Nightmare: The Continuing Chuck
Negron Story (2005). He has two DVDs,
The Chuck Negron Story: Biography Of An Entertainer (2005) and
Chuck Negron: Live and In Concert. In
the live concert video one of his daughters, Charlotte, then ten years old
performs with him. She was recently accepted into the California Institute of
the Arts. In the live concert video Negron’s stepson Barry Oakley (Jr.) plays
electric bass guitar. Chuck Negron also has two other daughters Annabelle and
Shaunti Ann and a son Chuckie. Chuck Negron has been drug
free for the past twenty-one years (as of 2012) and he would tell you that is his greatest
accomplishment. Please check the
Chuck Negron website for the latest news on where and when
he is appearing in concert.
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Negron makes the point that accepting that kind of
responsibility at an early age came easier for him, because as younger children
he and his sister Nancy were what he refers to as the original latchkey kids. He
says that their mother had already left home before they got up in the morning
and she did not come home to make dinner for them. He spent a lot of his time in
the park with older guys. 
