Song of the Day 3/9: Sugarloaf, “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You”

As Americans face rising gas prices with their usual calm equanimity, a couple of slapdicks in the Middle East have decided they’re going to leverage their oil supply to issue ultimatums to the Biden administration. Biden has tried to call Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan to discuss pumping more oil to offset a boycott of Russian petroleum. Both have made their position clear — they’re unavailable unless Biden knuckles in to their demands, a sentiment perhaps best expressed by Denver-based band Sugarloaf in 1974.

This was the band’s second-biggest hit, reaching No. 9 four years after “Green-Eyed Lady” hit No. 3. By that point singer and keyboard player Jerry Corbetta, who co-wrote both songs, was the only original member left. He wrote “Don’t Call Us” about his experience trying to get CBS Records to distribute the album that included that now-classic tune. To underline his pique, the touch-tone number dialed at the beginning of the song was an unlisted number at the company’s New York headquarters.

Though “Don’t Call Us” had a lower peak, it stayed on the charts for an impressive 21 weeks. Corbetta, who died in 2016, acknowledged that it’s essentially a musical mashup of the Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition,” both of which it briefly quotes.