Though he’s approaching his seventh decade of living, Three Dog Night’s Danny Hutton is not slowing down. The 66-year-old rock singer/musician was in the middle of recording a new album when he took a break earlier in the week to talk to the Times Free Press.

“Times are changing,” he said. “Our parents went into retirement homes and listened to Lawrence Welk and big-band music. For us baby boomers, it’s going to be rock ’n’ roll.”

From 1969 to 1974, no group achieved more Top 10 hits than Three Dog Night, according to a news release. Hutton credited the success to good songs.

“I don’t think our songs were overtly political. All the songs we did were about emotion — it doesn’t have a shelf life. It goes on and on.” And the band didn’t record songs they didn’t like, he said.

“We liked melodies, and we didn’t like the songs that dragged on and on. It got to be that some bands in the late 1960s and early ’70s thought it was cool to make three- or four-minute songs, and the sadder the song the better. You weren’t hip if your songs were happy.”

Hutton cited folk music and the Beatles as his early music influences.

“I was working in a pipe factory making flexible hoses on an assembly line when a friend and I started working at Disney in Los Angeles,” he said.

He worked in the warehouse for Disney’s record company, Buena Vista, loading and unloading boxes of LPs.

“That’s when I started reading the trade papers and learned about the Beatles long before they came to America. I followed them throughout their career.”

Hutton also was influenced by the beatnik/coffeehouse music scenes, he said.

“Folk groups started playing, and that’s when it started for me. I got into the Beach Boys. I loved the harmony. Little did I know then that Brian Wilson (of the Beach Boys) would be one of my best friends. In fact, he and his wife, Melinda, just adopted a baby boy and named it after my son Dash.”

Married and settled, Hutton said he has come a long way since the early days of Three Dog Night, who disbanded from 1975 to 1981.

“I partied very hard back then, but I cleaned up, got healthy and realized that financially I didn’t have to work anymore. But I went nuts. I wanted to work. I ended up becoming a manager for the punk band Fear. One day I got a call from Cory Wells (of Three Dog Night) saying there was a bogus group calling themselves Three Dog Night. We had a meeting to figure out how to put a stop to the band.”

It was at the meeting that the original Three Dog Night decided to get back together.

“The main thing we decided was that we’d do it as long as it was fun,” Hutton said.

Twenty-eight years later, Three Dog Night is still having fun traveling across the country performing, recording and having the time of their lives, Hutton said.

“We’ve always been considered a live act, not studio,” he said. “So when people hear us sing live, that’s the sound they’re used to, so they’re shocked that we sound just like we sound on the records.”

Most of the today’s group are original members of Three Dog Night, he said.

“We’ve been together for 40 years. It’s the real deal. If you liked Three Dog Night then, you’ll like us now.”