Today’s organ-heavy classic song of the day is “Green-Eyed Lady” by Sugarloaf. Released in August of 1970, this single peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Canadian charts.
“Green-Eyed Lady” was written by Jerry Corbetta, J.C. Phillips, and David Riordan. It was Sugarloaf’s first single; Corbetta said he wrote it about his girlfriend at the time, a lady with green eyes named Kathy.
Sugarloaf’s vocalist and keyboardist Jerry Corbetta (he played the organ on “Green Eyed Lady”) met guitarist Bob Webber when they were both playing with a Denver-based group called the Moonrakers in the mid-60s. In 1968, Corbetta and Weber left that group to form another band called Chocolate Hair, which included bass player Bob Raymond and drummer Bob MacVittie. They recorded their first album in early 1970 but their label, Liberty Records, thought their name might be a little racist. So they adopted the moniker Sugarloaf instead, after the mountain just outside Colorado Springs, and released the album, also titled Sugarloaf.
Webber, Raymond, and MacVittie left the band in 1972 amidst a raft of personal conflicts; Corbetta continued recording and performing as Jerry Corbetta and Sugarloaf. The group’s 1974 hit, “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You” employed a battery of studio musicians instead of actual bandmembers. Corbetta dropped the Sugarloaf name in 1978 to pursue a solo career, which consisted of exactly one album and zero hits.
After leaving the music business, Bob Webber became an aerospace engineer, and Bob MacVittie went into restaurant management. Bob Raymond and Jerry Corbetta both passed away in 2016, Raymond of lung cancer and Corbetta of Pick’s disease.
And here’s your daily bonus video of the day, Sugarloaf performing “Green-Eyed Lady” live on the March 1, 1975, episode of The Midnight Special. Lots of organ!
