Classic rock band Three Dog Night will perform live Friday at the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center. (Submitted photo)

When I commandeered my parents’ record collection in the mid-1990s, I suddenly became the proud owner of a bunch of dog-eared LPs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Young and Crosby, Stills & Nash, among others.

Oh and Three Dog Night. My parents had a lot of Three Dog Night’s music.

They weren’t alone. Between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, the Los Angeles rock ‘n’ soul band strung together 21 consecutive hits on Billboard’s Top 40 chart, including 7 million-selling singles and 12 straight albums certified gold — which means they sold half a million copies — by the Recording Industry Association of America.

These dudes were major league hitmakers, often by adding their own spin to tunes by up-and-coming songwriter such as Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, Laura Nyro and Hoyt Axton.

Too many numbers can make your head swim, however. The best way to appreciate Three Dog Night is probably to remember how they made you feel, and to notice just how many of these songs you can hum, even five decades after they were hits: “One” (“… is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do”) and “An Old Fashioned Love Song” and “Mama Told Me Not To Come” and “Shambala” and “Black And White” and “Joy To The World” — the one that goes “joy to the fishies in the deep blue sea,” not the Christmas song.

And they’re still out there doing it live. On Friday, Three Dog Night will perform inside the First Interstate Bank Center at the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center, and you can bet they’ll play more than a few songs you know by heart. If you see my parents there, tell ‘em hi for me!

Three Dog Night, with Ambrosia and John Ford Coley: 7 p.m. Friday, $44-$129, Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center, 3800 SW Airport Way, Redmond, expo.deschutes.org.