Chicago III is the third studio album by American rock band Chicago and was released in 1971. It was the band's third consecutive double album of new studio material in less than two years. In the wake of the enormous worldwide success of their second album, Chicago spent almost all of 1970 on the road, an exhausting undertaking. Former drummer Danny Seraphine, described the members of the band as "fatigued and road-weary" when they went into the studio to record the album. Released in January 1971, initially on Columbia Records, Chicago III — the band's first album to sport a Roman numeral in its title — sold well upon its release and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) a month later. It provided Chicago with its highest charting disc yet in the US, going to No. 2 on the Billboard 200. "Free", written by Robert Lamm, made it into the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and "Lowdown", co-written by Peter Cetera and Danny Seraphine, reached the top 40. Chicago III marked a dwindling in UK fortunes in comparison to the band's first two albums, Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago, reaching No. 9 in a brief chart run. In 1974, jazz bandleader Stan Kenton added a suite of songs from the album ("Canon", "Mother", "Once Upon a Time" and "Free") to his band's repertoire, releasing it on the album Stan Kenton Plays Chicago. The band had used up its storehouse of original material on its first two albums. It needed new material for Chicag