Rich here. Has there ever been a record that was played on TV or the radio, and as soon as you heard it for the first time, you knew it would be a big hit? For example, the first time I ever heard "Cherish" (The Association), "Rhiannon" (Fleetwood Mac), "Uptown Girl" (Billy Joel), and "Billie Jean" (Michael Jackson), I knew they'd be big hit songs even before they were halfway through.
Back in the waning days of Summer, 1970, about a week before I started college, I heard a song that touched all my buttons -- "Green-Eyed Lady" by a band I'd never heard of, Sugarloaf.
After the song's introduction featuring a bass run leading into a guitar's stinging notes, the band settled into in an unorthodox groove defined by a catchy bass & guitar riff playing a syncopated hook in unison against the steady backbeat of the drums while a Hammond organ laid a thick sensual blanket over the top. Taken together, the instruments provided silky accompaniment for the seductive melody of a sexy woman with green eyes. That in itself was enough to draw me in to the song's charms, but then there was the jazzy solo that showed off the organ player's considerable skills. (The shorter single version of the song is far superior to the album version, which drives the guitar and organ solos into a meandering mess.)
As I said, as soon as I heard "Green-Eyed Lady," I was hooked. It's still one of the most identifiable One-Hit-Wonders of the Seventies. (Although to be fair, Sugarloaf did have a follow-up single that briefly appeared on the lower reaches of the Top Forty before disappearing, giving the band the distinction, I guess, of being One-and-a-Half Hit Wonders.) And here it is, "Green-Eyed Lady," which still grabs me more than 50 years later.
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