Sugarloaf – "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" (1974)

 

He said, “Hello,” and put me on hold

To say the least, the cat was cold

He said, “Don't call us, we'll call you”

“Green-Eyed Lady,” which was featured in the last 2 or 3 lines, was a big hit for Sugarloaf in 1970. 

Unfortunately, the group’s follow-ups singles were flops, and the band broke up in 1972.

Frontman Jerry Corbetta had the rights to the band’s name.  He recruited a group of replacement musicians and went on tour in 1973, opening for Rare Earth and Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show.

One of the stops on that tour was Joplin, Missouri – my hometown.  The venue for that performance was high school football stadium, which had an open-ended design that allowed my friends and I to stand outside and hear the music for free instead of shelling out $4.50 for ducats.

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That same year, Corbetta started work on a solo album for Brut Records – a new label that had been created for the Fabergé company, the manufacturer of Brut aftershave.  (I was an English Leather man myself – I was a particular fan of English Leather lime and their soap-on-a-rope.)

Corbetta talked Bob Webber and Sugarloaf’s original bass player, Bob Raymond, into rejoining him, and the planned solo effort was released as a Sugarloaf album instead.  It tanked, but their next album included a top ten single, “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You,” which was a very clever song about the difficulty the band had getting a record contract.

“Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You” includes the sound of a phone number being dialed on a touch-tone telephone.  If you listened to the tones and worked backwards, you ended with an unlisted phone number for CBS Records – which had turned toe band down when it sought a record deal.  In addition, the recording includes brief snippets of the Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”

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Corbetta had an interesting post-Sugarloaf career, to say the least.  

In 1974, he played on the Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes disco hit, “Get Dancin’.”  That group’s outrageous frontman, former celebrity hairdresser Sir Monti Rock III, was a regular on The Tonight Show when I was in high school – I had no clue what to make of him.

Monti Rock with Johnny Carson

Click here to see a brief documentary about Monti Rock that includes excerpts from one of his Tonight Show appearances.

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The brains behind Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes was the legendary record producer Bob Crewe, who is best known as the co-writer of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ biggest hits – including “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Rag Doll,” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.”  (Crewe also produced Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, whose musical style couldn’t have been more different from that of the Four Seasons.  The man was versatile!) 

Crewe recruited Corbetta to perform with the Four Seasons in the early eighties.  Later he toured with former members of Iron Butterfly, Rare Earth, Cannibal & the Headhunters, and other sixties groups as “The Classic Rock All-Stars.”

Corbetta died in 2016 from Pick’s disease, which is a type of early-onset dementia that is somewhat similar to Alzheimer’s.

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Click here to listen to “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You,” which made it all the way to #9 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in February 1975.

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:

Richard and the Young Lions -- "Open Up Your Door" (1966)

An hour can be . . . such a long, long time

When your lips ain't . . . stuck on mine

I think the Decemberists' The Hazards of Love is a wonderful album -- that's why 2 or 3 lines is doing a six-part series on it.

But you may need a break after the first three installments of that series.  Because it's ponderous, man, f*cking ponderous, to paraphrase the great Casey Kasem.

The Casey Kasems

So before we continue on with the final three installments in The Hazards of Love series, let's take a wee break and listen to a song that is anything but ponderous.

But first, let's hop in the WABAC machine and set the controls for Newark, New Jersey, circa 1966, where we will meet the Original Kounts.

Speaking of the WABAC machine:

(That movie looks really lame, doesn't it?  What a shame.)

The Original Kounts were a group of long-haired Newark teenagers who played British Invasion hits.  Lead singer Richard Tepp and a couple of his fellow band members were hanging out at a local pizzeria one night, where they struck up a conversation with Ray Bloodworth and Larry Brown, who just happened to be songwriters for Bob Crewe. 

(Crewe is best-known as the producer and co-writer of a whole bunch of the Four Seasons' hits -- including "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Rag Doll," "Dawn," and "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You."  Crewe also produced several Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels hits and Labelle's "Lady Marmalade.")

Richard Tepp

Tepp and his pals invited Bloodworth and Brown to an Original Kounts rehearsal.  The two songwriters decided that the Kounts would be a good fit for a new song they were working on, and persuaded Crewe to sign them to a recording contract.

Crewe thought the long-haired Tepp was a dead ringer for King Richard I of England -- "Richard the Lionheart" -- and renamed the band Richard and the Young Lions.  (Crewe was definitely on to something.  Look at any photograph of the young Richard the Lionheart -- the resemblance is uncanny!)

Richard I ("Lionheart")

Tepp and his fellow Young Lions went into the recording studio to work on "Open Up Your Door," but the producers weren't happy with the way things went.  They kept Tepp's lead vocal, but replaced the instrumental tracks with other ones recorded by studio musicians.

According to Allmusic, "the group felt so betrayed by Crewe's studio bait and switch" that on the eve of an appearance on "The Clay Cole Show" (a popular New York City television dance program), all but Tepp and guitarist Bob Freedman quit the band.  Tepp quickly recruited several members of the Orphans, another Newark band, and the show went on.

"Open Up Your Door" barely cracked the Billboard "Hot 100," but reportedly reached #1 in Cleveland, Detroit, and Salt Lake City, and #2 in Seattle and Vancouver.

A couple of follow-up singles went nowhere, and the band broke up shortly thereafter.  But in 2000, two former Young Lions members independently tracked down Richard Tepp's e-mail address and the band reunited to give music one more go. 

The group eventually came to the attention of "Little Steven" Van Zandt, the E Street Band guitarist and Sopranos regular who hosts the syndicated radio show, Little Steven's Underground Garage.  The Young Lions appeared at three of Van Zandt's "Cavestomp!" shows, sharing the bill with ? and the Mysterians, the Zombies, the Troggs, and others.

Sadly, lead singer Richard Tepp died of leukemia in 2004.

I don't know how I missed "Open Up Your Door" until now, but better late than never.  It is a real kick in the you-know-what, and it's proof of the poor musical judgment of Americans as a whole -- as if we needed any more proof of that -- that this song barely made it into the top 100 back in 1966.  

Here's some priceless prose from the single's jacket.  (Yes, kids -- your grandparents really did talk that way back in the sixties.)

The haircut is strictly Anglo-Saxon -- sort of late Beowulf, or early Prince Valiant.  For an outfit with the name Richard and the Young Lions, it fits. . . .

Richard [Tepp] is interested in today's "scene," not only musically "but whatever's happening," wherever it may take him.

He (and the others) take life "as it comes, without any worry."  Doing so, they and their music reflect the restlessness of contemporary teens, their desire for the offbeat, the different.

For instance, listen closely and you'll hear an African hair drum in this recording; it was utilized to achieve a distinct sound the boys wanted.

(You've never heard of an African hair drum?  That's a drum made with the hair left on the goatskin or cowskin.)

"Open Up Your Door" has been covered by numerous bands, most notably the Romantics (whose biggest hits were "That's What I Like About You" and "Talking in Your Sleep").  But my favorite cover version of the song is the one by the Flakes:

Here's "Open Up Your Door" by Richard and the Young Lions:

I'm sorry, but this song isn't available from Amazon.