Jonathan Edwards

"We had been burning the candle in every direction that you could imagine," said Edwards, recalling the late-night recording session that resulted in the unexpected hit. "The engineer inadvertently taped over or erased a song after we had spent hours recording it. The band had already left to go home."

Alarmed by what he had done, the engineer pleaded with Edwards for a song that could replace the lost tune. "I had just written 'Sunshine'," said Edwards, "so I picked up the guitar and played it. Stuart [Schulman] had left his bass in the corner. So I put a little bass on it. The next day, we overdubbed the drums, played by Buddy Rich Edelman. That was it -- just the two of us."

When it debuted on a Boston radio station, the song's popularity spread quickly. "It was timing," said Edwards. "['Sunshine'] contained lyrics that people were saying out loud to each other. I just put them together in a song. Nixon shouldn't have been president. He wasn't the leader that we needed or wanted. But, here he was, making our policies and rules when he couldn't even run his own life."

"Sunshine" remains his best-selling release, but, as he's shown in the nearly four decades since, Edwards is no one-hit wonder. His 15 albums -- 11 in the studio and four live -- include a collaboration with bluegrass band the Seldom Scene (Blue Ridge) and a National Library Association award-winning album aimed at young listeners (Little Hands). His repertoire includes such now-classic tunes as "Athens County," "Don't Cry Blue," "Emma," "Everybody Knows Her," "One Day Closer," "Honky Tonk Stardust Cowboy," "Sometimes," and "Shanty," his ode to "putting a good buzz on."