Knock Three Times

About Knock Three Times

"Knock Three Times" is a popular song credited simply to "Dawn". Tony Orlando was not named on the record. 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, which hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1971 and eventually sold six million copies. The song registered well at Adult Contemporary stations, reaching #2 on Billboard's "Easy Listening" survey. Outside the US, "Knock Three Times" also claimed 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, about tenement living. In the song, the singer has fallen in love with a woman who lives in the apartment directly below him but has no clue as to her interest, so he asks her to respond by either knocking three times on the ceiling (yes) or banging twice on the pipe (no), and the chorus includes sound effects of the two choices. more »