"Knock Three Times" is a popular song credited to Tony Orlando and Dawn. The actual singers were Tony Orlando, Toni Wine, and Linda November, prior to the creation of "Dawn" with Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson. The song was released as a single in November 1970, paired with Orlando's other hit song, "Candida" (also written by Toni Wine). The single hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1971 and eventually sold nine million copies, also claiming the number-one spot on the UK Singles Chart.
The composers of this song, L. Russell Brown and Irwin Levine, were thinking of the song Up on the Roof and they wanted to write a song with that kind of lyrical flavor, tenement living. Knock Three Times actually sold more than 100,000 records a day in New York City alone for ten straight days. The song appears in several motion pictures including Now and Then.
The song was covered by Billy "Crash" Craddock in 1971 and became a number three country hit.
Famous quotes containing the words knock and/or times:
“‘Who knocks?’ ‘I, who was beautiful,
Beyond all dreams to restore,
I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither,
And knock on the door.’”
—Walter De La Mare (1873–1956)
“The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)