Songfacts®:

• A very iconic instrumental, this piano solo piece, which has since seeped into mass culture to the extent that you hear it played on ice-cream trucks, was the only charting hit for Frank Mills.
  
  Mills is a Baby Boomer Canadian who hails from Quebec, started his career as keyboard artist for a band called The Bells. The Bells had two hits - "White Dove" and "Stay Awhile" - the latter making it to #7 on the Hot 100 as well as charting #1 in Canada. Mills split from The Bells that same year, in 1971, to pursue his own solo work. Mills also worked as a studio session pianist for the CBC-TV network, while recording albums on his own time in between. As this website shows, Frank Mills has produced a wide body of work most people have never heard of.
• Because of a mistake, a single of "Music Box Dancer" found its way into the hands of a pop station in Ottawa - the single was only supposed to go out to adult contemporary stations. The station's program director liked what he heard anyway and aired it in rotation. Next thing you know, the album's gone gold in Canada.
• The song was apparently everywhere for a brief period in the late '70s. Some shows on both radio and television even adopted it as their opening or closing theme. "Music Box Dancer" has also been part of the soundtrack for the film Kill Bill and an episode of The Simpsons.