Written and originally recorded by this guy, released on his great Alone Together album, just making it into the Top 40 in 1970: A little less blue-eyed soul, a little more rock.
Two hits in the Billboard Top 20, far more than that in various guises in the movies and on TV, "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues:
I couldn’t give a shit about those billboard stats, None of those other songs are “hits”. Heck , I would consider myself pretty well versed with music knowledge and I have only ever even heard of one of those other songs.
Many of these songs fall into the category of "yacht rock" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacht_rock). Some purveyors of this type of music were incredibly successful, as in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame successful (many songs from Fleetwood Mac, Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan), and much of it was released in the early-to-mid 1980s, but qualifiers for this thread (1-to-3 hit wonders from the 70s) not yet mentioned include these two:
interesting i knew this song from this movie , obviously they changed the title in Australia, and in fact there were alot of australians in and behind the camera