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:

Sugarloaf – "Green-Eyed Lady" (1970)

Green-eyed lady feels life I never see

Setting suns and lonely lovers free

(Say what?)

In a recent 2 or 3 lines, I noted that there are a lot of songs about blue eyes but only a few about green eyes – which are the kind that yours truly has.

An old friend of mine promptly took me to task for overlooking what is without a doubt the greatest of all green-eyed songs – to wit, Sugarloaf’s 1970 hit single, “Green-Eyed Lady.”

I can’t imagine how I could have forgotten “Green-Eyed Lady” – it was released the same month I started college, and I vividly remember hearing it many times on the radio that fall.

The other two songs I associate with the first days of college are Free’s “All Right now,” and Grand Funk Railroad’s “I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home),” both of which have been featured on 2 or 3 lines.

Now it’s Sugarloaf’s turn to have its day in the 2 or 3 lines sun.

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In 1968, keyboardist Jerry Corbetta and guitarist Bob Webber formed a band called Chocolate Hair.  Just before the release of their first album, the suits at their record label asked them to choose a new name – they were afraid that Chocolate Hair might be interpreted as racist.

I don’t know if the name Chocolate Hair was racist, but I do know that it is BY FAR the worst name for a band I’ve ever heard.

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“Green-Eyed Lady” made it all the way to #3 on the Billboard “Hot 100,” while the group’s eponymous debut album eventually climbed to the #24 spot on the album charts:

Sugarloaf was (briefly) kind of a big deal.  The group opened for the Who, Deep Purple, and Eric Burdon & War (among others) in 1970-71.  In March 1971, they performed at the Grammy Awards “after” party along with Aretha Franklin and Three Dog Night.

But the band’s second album failed to make the crack the top 100, and the two singles from that album flopped.  

Eventually everyone except Jerry Corbetta left the band by the end of 1972.

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The following summer, Corbetta cobbled together a bunch of hirelings and went on tour as Sugarloaf.  He opened for Rare Earth on July 2, 1973, in my hometown – Joplin, Missouri.  (The truly awful Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show – best known for  “Sylvia’s Mother” and “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” – was also on the bill.)

Rare Earth – which was the first successful all-white band that Motown Records signed – had three top ten hits between 1969 and 1971, but was on its way down by the time the band played in Joplin . . . which explains why it played in Joplin in 1973.

The concert was held outdoors at Joplin’s 1934-vintage Junge Stadium, which seated about 3500 people.  (I saw many high school football games there.)

Junge Stadium

But rather than shelling out the $4.50 ticket price, my friends and I stood outside and listened to the concert from behind the chain-link fence that circled the stadium.

Sure, we were a long way from the stage, so we couldn’t see a lot.  Also, we were positioned at a 90-degree angle to the direction the speakers were pointing, so we couldn’t hear much either.  But $4.50 would pay for a whole week’s worth of 3.2% beer at the bars in Galena, Kansas, where it was legal for 18-year-olds to drink.  (Beer went for 25 or 35 cents a quart in Galena in 1973.)

I don’t remember much about the Junge Stadium show.  But I’m pretty sure we hung around long enough to hear “Green-Eyed Lady” before heading to Galena that night.  

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Click here to listen to the album version of “Green-Eyed Lady” – I love it to death, despite the incoherent lyrics.

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