My main memory of this group is thinking they were the same people responsible for the dismal dirge If You Leave Me Now. But they weren’t.

That was Chicago and they came from (you guessed…) Chicago.

This lot were the Chicago Climax Blues Band and they came from (a prize if you guessed) the Midlands town of Stafford.
Both bands had their roots, and their hearts – initially at least – in the blues of the Windy City, but there the similarity ended.

The Chicago Climax Blues Band paid their dues in the British blues boom of the late Sixties, before dropping the word Chicago (to avoid the very confusion to which I fell victim).

This was their only hit. I’m not sure why. They’d been going long enough when this song, taken from their eighth album, reached no.10 in 1976.

The story goes that it was their first ever attempt at a crowd-pleasing number after their manager – Miles Copeland – finally lost patience and demanded that they write a hit.

So they did. And it was.

It’s about being on the road in America, which they knew plenty about, having spent six or seven years criss-crossing the country in a vain bid to make a name for themselves.

It’s specifically about scouring the freeways for a Holiday Inn so they could get some kip – hence the chorus “Kept on looking for a sign in the middle of the night.”

I have to admit I wouldn’t be able to name a single member of the group, which is odd as I find their main man shares a name with me.

They were frontd by Colin Cooper, who played sax and harmonica and shared the lead vocals with Pete Haycock, a talented guitarist who deserves far more recognition, and bassist Derek Holt.

After this, their solitary hit, their latent rise to prominence was dashed by the arrival of punk later that same year. Not that it killed the band who are, remarkably, still going today, albeit with no original members.