Joy to the World

Three Dog Night
My time wasting du jour (the online part of it, anyway) revealed that Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World", according to some readers of Spinner.com, has the 3rd best opening lyrics. This prompted me to do a bit of research on the first pop song I remember hearing. I was three and we'd gone to the lake. As we walked in to a waterfront café, the song was playing on a jukebox. I liked it. That day was cold and I also remember having an absolute hissy fit, wailing at the top of my lungs, because the beach was covered with dead fish - and no, the connection to the lyric "Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea" was not lost on me, even then. But, back to the findings. My first source revealed that Hoyt Axton wrote the song and a few seconds later I found this image on a very lovingly prepared website dedicated to Axton's music.


Seeing Axton's name occasioned another stop on memory lane. After Mom died, I was looking through her day planners (I found them back to 1994 or 1995 - tax reasons) and in one of the Address/Phone number sections I came across the almost surreal entry "Hoyt Axton" followed by a Bitterroot phone number (the 777). Yes, he did live in Victor at the time she lived in Missoula, but I'll probably never know why Mom had Hoyt Axton's phone number...