Two Major Pop Music Deaths Reported

Lamonte McLemore of the Fifth Dimension and Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night

Two chart-topping rock and soul acts with Long Beach ties passed away on consecutive days this February, both having once appeared at the Long Beach Arena after being turned down earlier in their careers.

After scoring a half-dozen hits, the Fifth Dimension were one song away from their era-defining #1 smash, “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” when they appeared at the Long Beach Arena in March 1968 alongside Motown’s Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and L.A. blues powerhouse Etta James.

Original bass singer Lamonte McLemore was born in St. Louis on September 17, 1935. A promising pitcher, he signed with the Dodgers organization, but after breaking his arm he was assigned to Long Beach’s Double-A club. Baseball ended, replaced by singing.

With three friends, “we got this rehearsal down; what’s going to happen now?” McLemore later recalled. “We went to Hollywood looking for recording companies, saw an open door. Inside, a guy was cleaning up. We asked, ‘Is this a recording studio? We’re a singing group – when do you have auditions?’ He said in a few days. We told him, ‘We’re from St. Louis – we can’t wait.’ So we grabbed the broom and helped him clean up. Finally, he said okay. He listened and said, ‘Wait a minute – these guys are good.’”

The result was the highly melodic “Here’s That Rainy Day,” credited to the Intervals. McLemore then joined another St. Louis aggregation, the Hi-Fis, which evolved into the Vocals for Ray Charles, and eventually the Versatiles, McLemore, Ron Townson, Florence LaRue, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. After recording the local hit “You’re Good Enough for Me” in April 1966, they stood at a crossroads.

Motown’s West Coast president invited them to audition. “He gave us some old Smokey songs, some rejects and had us record them so Motown president Berry Gordy Jr. could hear us,” McLemore said. The group pooled money to send him to Detroit.

“He wouldn’t see me,” McLemore recalled. “I told Berry, ‘I can’t go back without seeing you.’ I got there at seven in the morning and waited on the steps for him. He heard the songs and said, ‘You guys can really sing – but I don’t hear no hits.’”

Back in Los Angeles, Johnny Rivers heard hits. “If you come with me, you won’t get lost in the Motown shuffle.” As the Fifth Dimension, they broke through with “Up, Up and Away,” Jimmy Webb’s soaring anthem on Rivers’ Soul City label that reached No. 7 in 1967. They would go on to score two dozen Top 50 hits and define what manager Marc Gordon called “the West Coast sound.”

Years later, Gordy asked McLemore if “Up, Up and Away” had been one of the songs they’d pitched him. It hadn’t, but McLemore claimed it was.

In the mid-1980s, McLemore and LaRue performed at the downtown Long Beach Promenade amphitheater. With McLemore’s passing at age 90 on Feb. 3, 2026, only LaRue survives from the original lineup.

Just one day earlier, on Feb. 2, 2026, another Long Beach Arena veteran passed away. Born in New York City on June 8, 1942, Chuck Negron, one of the three lead singers of Three Dog Night, first appeared locally with the band on New Year’s Eve 1969 at the Long Beach Arena. Before fame, Negron recorded the teen ballad “I Dream of an Angel” as Chuck Rondell in 1963.

Irish-born Danny Hutton had scored a 1966 local Top Ten hit with the blue-eyed soul single “Roses and Rainbows,” then sang with Cory Wells as the short-lived Enemys. Hutton and Wells then befriended Negron, forming Three Dog Night, a name taken from Australian slang describing the coldest nights, when one needed three dogs for warmth.

In 1968, Hutton approached the owners of the Limit, a popular Bixby Knolls club, seeking a $700-a-week house-band slot. “They insisted on doing original music and had a funny name,” wrote Tim Grobaty, quoting an e-mail on the subject. The club passed on hiring the band.

Within weeks, the band had its first hit: a remake of Johnny “Guitar” Watson and Larry Williams’ “Nobody,” an early FM favorite at a time when AM still dominated rock radio. Three #1 hits followed, Randy Newman’s “Mama Told Me (Not to Come),” Hoyt Axton’s “Joy to the World,” and the anthem, “Black and White” in 1972.

Negron left the group in 1975, battled heroin addiction and was arrested for cocaine possession. The group disbanded in 1976. In his memoir Three Dog Nightmare, Negron described losing his fortune and descending from arena headliner to Skid Row addict.

After Negron’s recovery, Three Dog Night reunited for a nationally televised July 5, 1981 simulcast from the Queen Mary site, “The Spirit of America Spectacular” alongside the Beach Boys. Two years later, Interior Secretary James Watt barred the Beach Boys from the National Mall’s July 4 celebration, claiming they attracted “the wrong element,” prompting bipartisan backlash.

A 1993 reunion attempt dissolved into litigation over the band’s name. Wells died in 2015; Hutton later relocated to Ireland.

Before Negron’s passing at 83, after years of chronic lung disease, Hutton reconnected with him four decades after his departure. “In that moment,” Hutton reflected, “we realized how much time had been lost by not being in each other’s lives.”