ROBERT JOHN, “SAD EYES”

Welcome to The Minute of Spin, a bite-sized music segment in which we explore a single song that came to define an entire band. Unfortunately, we can't afford the rights to the songs we spotlight, so you won't actually hear the song. But you're welcome to listen to it here.

Listening to certain hits of the 1970s, you really get a sense of how much tastes have changed over the years.  The same can be said for some of the artists that had those hits.  By today’s standards, they’d be seen as impossibly square.  But watching these folks in action, with their big hair, or no hair, wide collared blazers or frilly dresses, is to take a step backward in time, when these things were not only accepted, but cool.

Brooklyn-born Robert John started singing under his real name, as 12 year old sensation Bobby Pedrick, Jr., and hit the pop charts with a Doc Pomus-Mort Shuman tune, White Bucks and Saddle Shoes.  By the mid Sixties he’d changed his name and signed with a variety of labels, finally landing at A&M where, in 1972, he had a hit with a cover of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”  After that it was on to EMI where he released his third, self titled album, and the hit for which he’d be best remembered:  “Sad Eyes.”

On the basis of John’s falsetto. gushing melodies and a heartfelt lyric about a discreet infidelity, Sad Eyes went to #1 on the Hot 100, but it took a while to get there:  20 weeks exactly, after starting out at #85.  This tied the record set by Nick Gilder’s “Hot Child in the City” for a single taking the longest time to hit the top spot.  It’s not the only record in John’s book:  he also held the distinction of having the longest stretch between first entering the charts, in 1958, and having a number one single, 21 years later, a feat topped only by Tina Turner.

John released one more album, 1980’s Back on the Street, and five more singles, but none had the impact of Sad Eyes.  At this point, New Wave was coming into vogue, and John’s laid back crooner image, once de rigueur for guests on Solid Gold, became a thing of the past.  50s remakes had no place in a world becoming enthralled with hits like “Cars,” and “Video Killed the Radio Star.”  But Bobby Pedrick, Jr. had his moments in the sun – three in fact, and that’s a lot more than A Flock of Seagulls ever had.