What Happened To These '70s One Hit Wonders?

While the music industry of the 1970s was certainly a messed-up place, it gave the world a staggering amount of great music. From soft rock to funk to disco to singer-songwriter confessionals to arena rock, it was a creatively diverse and bountiful period, both artistically and economically. There was so much music coming out from so many different spaces, in fact, that the '70s seemed to generate more than its fair share of flashes in the pan. As a result, numerous intriguing stars who deserved more than 15 minutes of fame broke out with an undeniably classic song, and then couldn't figure out how to repeat the formula or build a lasting career. Furthermore, there are moments that destroyed the careers of one-hit wonders, while tragedy has befallen many other one-time musical stars.

Maybe the 1970s were so competitive that a few initially successful musicians were bound to get squeezed out. Seeking to avoid the fate of those one-hit wonders who became surprisingly poor, some musicians pivoted and were lucky enough to find happiness and enrichment in their second acts. Here are some of the biggest and most memorable '70s musicians who scored just one hit, and what they did in the many decades after their brief and notable musical triumphs.

Since the 1970s, Donnie Iris has been a homegrown superstar of the Rust Belt, in an area that stretches from his hometown of Pittsburgh over to Cleveland. To the rest of the world, he's a singer-songwriter who mixes radio-friendly hooks with gritty guitar rock. His first successful band was a Pittsburgh outfit called the Jaggerz, which in 1970 released a single called "The Rapper." (Long before the arrival of hip-hop, a rapper in this sense was a smooth-talking man often seen using cheesy pick-up lines on women.) The song rocketed up the charts, and it peaked at No. 2. Iris alone wrote "The Rapper," as well as another two failed Jaggerz singles, "I Call My Baby Candy" and "What a Bummer."

The Jaggerz broke up in 1975, and Iris pursued other interests until 1978, when he joined the lineup of another one-hit wonder. Wild Cherry, known for its 1976 No. 1 hit "Play That Funky Music." After one unsuccessful album, Iris and Wild Cherry's Mark Avsec formed a new band, Donnie Iris and the Cruisers. Adopting a throwback rock n' roll meets New Wave sound, that permutation scored a string of moderate hits in the early '80s, including "Love is Like a Rock," "My Girl," and "Ah! Leah!"

David Naughton's face and voice became familiar to millions of Americans in the late 1970s when he starred in Dr Pepper's "I'm a Pepper" TV advertising campaign. Naughton danced down the street while he sang "I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?" That exposure  led to his casting in "Makin' It," a 1979 sitcom that riffed on the massively popular movie "Saturday Night Fever." Naughton portrayed Billy Manucci, the equivalent of John Travolta's role of fame-hungry disco dancer Tony Manero. Producers also enlisted Naughton to sing the show's disco opening credits song. A full-length recording was released as a single, and it peaked at No. 5 on the pop chart, one of the few TV theme songs to become a huge pop hit.

By the time the song "Makin' It" fell off the Hot 100, "Makin' It" the show had been canceled, a flop that lasted for just nine episodes. Fortunately, Naughton had his Dr Pepper gig to fall back on, and he kept making soda commercials until the early 1980s when, itching to try other creative endeavors, he walked away from the campaign for a role in "An American Werewolf in London." That horror-comedy became a cult classic and one of the top-grossing films of 1981. Naughton never recorded another single, but he worked steadily as an actor for decades, including main cast roles on the '80s sitcoms "At Ease" and "My Sister Sam."

For most of the 1970s, Alan O'Day was a major force behind the scenes, writing songs for a disparate collection of artists. O'Day composed hits like the 5th Dimension's "Flashback," Cher's "Train of Thought," Helen Reddy's No. 1 hit "Angie Baby," and the Righteous Brothers' histrionic comeback smash "Rock and Roll Heaven." A singer and guitarist, O'Day dutifully recorded a few albums in the '70s that went unnoticed, until 1977 when his single "Undercover Angel" broke out and went all the way to No. 1.

O'Day's next song, "Started Out Dancing, Ended Up Making Love," wasn't embraced nearly as much, so he returned to songwriting, although now for television. He wrote the theme for the 1979 teen drama "California Fever" and songs for "Enos" — a spinoff of "The Dukes of Hazzard" — before being approached by The Jim Henson Company. From 1984 to 1991, whenever the popular Saturday morning cartoon "Muppet Babies" used an original song, it was written at least in part by O'Day. The musician also composed material for other Henson projects like "Little Muppet Monsters" and "Sesame Street." O'Day died in 2013.

For most of the 1970s, Walter Egan was adjacent to stardom, a sought-after sideman and songwriter who helped other musicians realize their creative vision. Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris recorded Egan's "Hearts on Fire" for the acclaimed 1973 album "Grievous Angel," and the guitarist joined Jackson Browne's backing band. After he was discovered by a record label executive while playing a club show, Egan quickly cut two albums, including 1978's "Not Shy," which generated the No. 8 hit "Magnet and Steel." Nothing else from that album, nor Egan's next three LPs, caught on with the record-buying public, and in 1983 he walked away from being a name-brand musician.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Egan still toured and played with other musicians, and he independently recorded the album "Walternative" in 1999. Clearly a smart person, Egan made quite a bit of money on the TV game show circuit, competing on three separate programs in the 1980s. For more than 20 years, he supported his family by working as a substitute teacher in Williamson County, Tennessee.

Rick Derringer was most outwardly successful when he was in a group. In 1965, his garage band the McCoys went to No. 1 with "Hang On Sloopy." In the 1970s, Derringer joined arena rock act the Edgar Winter Group as a guitarist and producer (he oversaw the 1972 No. 1 hit "Frankenstein"). He capitalized on that band's fame to go solo, and in 1974, Derringer's "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo" made it up to No. 23 on the pop chart. That would also mark the hard rock singer-guitarist's final Top 40 placement.

In the years that followed, Derringer became a prolific session musician and producer, contributing to works by Todd Rundgren, Kiss, and Steely Dan. After playing in Cyndi Lauper's touring band at a time when the pop star was associating with the World Wrestling Federation, Derringer found a niche making music for wrestlers. Hulk Hogan's ring entry and de facto theme song, "Real American," was a Derringer original. 

Perhaps Derringer's most prominent credit was his production of musical comedian "Weird Al" Yankovic's first six albums. And that was something Derringer came to regret. "He's done very well. But here's the bottom line: I thought that it would help my production career ..." he told Guitar Player. "... suddenly I became known as a novelty producer. As much as I love Weird Al — he's a good guy, very talented, and a hard worker — he single-handedly ruined my production career."

The early 1970s was lousy with wide-eyed songs about space, with exploring the cosmos a metaphor for journeying through life, with or without the aid of illicit substances. Among the most memorable of that mini-genre was "Ride Captain Ride," a No. 4 hit for Blues Image in the summer of 1970. The band's single "Gas, Lamps, and Clay" made it as far as No. 81, but by then Blues Image was wrapping up a four-year run, and its last album was thrown together by its label, being made up of unreleased recorded ephemera.

Most of its members made a mark in music in their own way. Michael Pinera became a journeyman guitarist and played with several big acts, including Iron Butterfly and Alice Cooper, and he led the Classic Rock All-Stars touring show. Keyboardist Skip Konte joined Three Dog Night from 1973 to 1976, just after the group's prime commercial period. Drummer Joe Lala moved into session work, contributing to recordings by Jackson Browne, the Eagles, the Bee Gees, Chicago, and Rod Stewart. Denny Correll, who joined briefly after the release of "Ride Captain Ride," was instrumental in the creation of the genre that came to be known as Christian rock, or contemporary Christmas music, both with the bands Love Song and Manna and as a solo act.

The first half of 1970 was a very busy and successful time for U.K.-based pop singer Tony Burrows. Hired by producers to be a session vocalist for quickly churned out bubblegum pop directed at young audiences, Burrows sang lead for three different bands, some of which only existed in the studio. In succession, tracks by all three acts became hits, giving Burrows the rare and improbable status of multi-time one-hit wonder. Credited to Edison Lighthouse, "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" peaked at No. 5, followed by "My Baby Loves Lovin'" by White Plains (an actual band of which Burrows was a member) at No. 13, and then "Gimme Dat Ding" by the Pipkins, which snuck into the Top 10. By June, after the public in the U.K. and the U.S. had become very used to Burrows' voice on the radio, he released "Melanie Makes Me Smile" under his own name. Almost inexplicably, it tanked, reaching only No. 87 on the American pop chart.

Burrows returned to session and studio work, and his voice can be heard on Elton John's first few records, among others. In 1974, he became a one-hit wonder one more time, performing the No. 4 hit for the prefabricated band the First Class.

Disco wasn't just a style of dance music, it was a group activity. The late '70s provided discotheque denizens with numerous dance routines, and the Hustle is probably the most famous of all of those. The fad really ramped up with the 1975 single "The Hustle," a No. 1 smash in 1975 for its creator, Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony. McCoy was a songwriter, arranger, producer, and performer, and he'd been active in the music industry since the late 1950s. While he wrote songs for superstars like Gladys Knight, Jackie Wilson, and Betty Everett, he didn't have a hit of his own until the mostly instrumental, flute-powered "The Hustle."

McCoy's next songs didn't pack the discos like "The Hustle" could, not even the wannabe trendsetter and "Hustle" clone, "The Shuffle." The musician ultimately wouldn't get a chance to make a post-disco comeback. In June 1979, McCoy had a heart attack, lapsed into a coma, and died days later at the age of 39. The disco star's family believes that the deadly medical episode may have been triggered by grief and stress. After McCoy's mother and grandmother died in a short period in the early 1970s, the musician reportedly allowed his work to consume him.

Ace is a British band that fared better in the U.S. than in the U.K. Its dreary, accusatory, harmony-laded 1974 single "How Long" peaked at No. 3 in the U.S., but couldn't get past No. 20 in the U.K. Understood by listeners at the time as a song about a cheating partner, singer and keyboardist Paul Carrack actually wrote it about guitarist Terry Comer, who'd been secretly playing in a couple of other bands in Ace's early days.

After three albums that produced no hits and some lineup changes, Ace called it quits in 1977. Most of its members left the music industry, but not Carrack. After a brief stint in Scottish soul singer Frankie Miller's band, Carrack signed on with the art rock band Roxy Music in its waning days. He then jumped to Squeeze for a while and sang on the group's best-known single, "Tempted." After that, he played in Eric Clapton's band and joined the successful Genesis side project Mike + the Mechanics, which put out the hits "The Living Years" and "All I Need Is a Miracle." And in 1987, after many tries, Carrack scored his first (and only) solo Top 10 hit, "Don't Shed a Tear."

One of the most emblematic and genre-defining soft rock hits of the 1970s was "Wham Bam (Shang-A-Lang)" by Silver. The verses are smooth and the lyrics are moony and lovey-dovey, only to give way to a wall of country-influenced guitar noise and harmonies on the choruses. That song, a top-20 hit, was a highlight of Silver's one-and-only album, also called Silver, with a sleeve designed by future comedy legend Phil Hartman.

About two years after it landed its sole hit, Silver split up. That band was but a brief stop in the career of guitarist Tom Leadon, who prior to Silver had played in Tom Petty's pre-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch and had been the primary guitarist in Linda Ronstadt's onstage entourage. After leaving Los Angeles behind to teach guitar in Nashville, Leadon reunited with the rest of Mudcrutch, which recorded a few albums in the 21st century. As for keyboardist Brent Mydland, he became an official member of the Grateful Dead in 1979, and played the legendary jam band's albums and at hundreds of live shows until his death in 1990.

Woozy, echoey, and aggressively bittersweet, the 1974 single "Seasons in the Sun" was an unlikely No. 1 hit. Sung from the point of view of a dying man looking back on his life, "Seasons in the Sun" was based on a piece by French songwriter Jacques Brel that had been translated into English by 1960s pop poet Rod McKuen. Beach Boys associate Terry Jacks suggested the band have a go at it, but when they passed, he recorded and released it himself. Jacks' follow-up was another tune based on a Brel work, the flop "If You Go Away."

Jacks may never have enjoyed another hit on par with "Seasons in the Sun," but he worked to ensure that other people had their own seasons in the sun. He became an environmental activist, started the group Environmental Watch, and went after companies accused of polluting and causing ecological harm. In 1985, he started a drive to limit what mills could dump into the waters near Vancouver, and he later sued the British Columbia Environment Ministry for allegedly allowing Howe Sound Pulp and Paper to exceed pollution limits.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a bunch of bands from the Netherlands found receptive audiences in the U.K. and the U.S, and probably the most successful of these "Nederbeat" bands was Shocking Blue. Guitarist Robbie van Leeuwen wrote the words and music (in English) for "Venus," sung by Shocking Blue lead singer Mariska Veres, an instant star in the making with a unique voice and aloof stage persona. That song, a paean to an ideal, dream woman, hit No. 3 in the Netherlands, and after it topped the charts in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, and West Germany, American producer Jerry Ross bought the American rights. It hit No. 1 in the U.S. in February 1970.

While Shocking Blue landed numerous chart-toppers in the Netherlands, it couldn't even hit the Top 40 in the U.S. again. Deeply frustrated and sad, Van Leeuwen broke up the band in 1974 and formed the praised jazz group Galaxy Linn, before producing a few ultimately failed singles for Veres. Shocking Blue's singer also chased the jazz muse, fronting the Shocking Jazz Quintet. Veres died of cancer in 2006.