Songs of Remembrance: Their dad liked Three Dog Night's 'Joy To The World'

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

NPR is remembering some of the 1 million people lost to COVID in the U.S. And we're doing that through the music they loved. Our series Songs of Remembrance includes two sisters from Nashville who share stories about their father.

KATHERINE ALEXANDER: I'm Katherine Alexander.

DANIELLE HARDEE: I'm Danielle Hardee. And David Hardee was my father.

(SOUNDBITE OF THREE DOG NIGHT SONG, "JOY TO THE WORLD")

HARDEE: One of my father's favorite songs was "Joy To The World" by Three Dog Night.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOY TO THE WORLD")

DANNY HUTTON: (Singing) Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine.

HARDEE: That song always reminds me of him because he would just bebop around the house and love to sing, and so he would just belt out, Jeremiah was a bullfrog.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOY TO THE WORLD")

HUTTON: (Singing) Singin' joy to the world, all the boys and girls, now.

HARDEE: He was an attorney. He had a small practice that he built from the ground up. That's what he did his entire life. And he absolutely loved it.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOY TO THE WORLD")

HUTTON: (Singing) I'm a high night flier and a rainbow rider, a straight-shooting son of a gun.

ALEXANDER: My dad was just so much fun to be around - you know, worked hard and played hard. Somewhere along the line, he developed an affinity for kazoos, and so kazoos became a fun, wacky kind of tradition for our family, whether it was Christmas with the kazoos playing "Silent Night" or if we'd bring somebody home, like a fiancé, we - everybody would greet him with kazoos. So it kind of became this just running joke of the family.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DAVID HARDEE: (Vocalizing "Jimmy Crack Corn" on kazoo).

HARDEE: We loved our dad so much. And he could totally charm a room and was very, very charismatic and just kind of captured that spirit of happiness and life.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOY TO THE WORLD")

THREE DOG NIGHT: (Singing) Joy to the world, all the boys and girls.

FADEL: Danielle Hardee and Katherine Alexander. Their father, David Hardee, died of COVID in March of 2021.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOY TO THE WORLD")

THREE DOG NIGHT: (Singing) Joy to the world, all the boys and girls. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.