Jason’s Jukebox Volume 20

Jason Maloney reviews

JASON’S JUKEBOX
V o l u m e # 2 0 Chart Date: Week Ending 8th June 1967 Online Date: 03rd June 2004

Procol Harum:
Greatest Hits It was the original Summer Of Love, The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper album was brand new in the shops, and one of the great psychedelic pop songs, A Whiter Shade Of Pale by Procol Harum, was at #1. The track was based on Bach’s Suite No.3 in D Major, better known as Air On A G-String, and had moved swiftly to the top, having only debuted on the Top 40 a fortnight earlier at #21 before soaring to #4.

A Whiter Shade Of Pale returned to the UK charts in 1972, when a re-issue reached #13, but the band enjoyed only two other Top 40 hits, and never had much success on the album listings.

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The Best of
The Mamas and The Papas The outgoing #1 was Silence Is Golden by The Tremeloes, their cover of a Four Seasons B-side. Between 1963 and 1965, as Brain Poole & The Tremeloes, they notched up four major hit singles including the chart-topper Twist & Shout. Three decades later, Poole’s daughters would become chart stars themselves as Alisha’s Attic.

On a similar note, the offspring of The Beach Boys (at #5 with Then I Kissed Her) and The Mamas & The Papas (down from #3 to #7 with Dedicated To The One I Love) teamed up on hit records of their own in the early 1990s; Brian Wilson’s girls Carnie and Wendy were two-thirds of Wilson Phillips with Chynna Phillips, whose parents were John and Michelle of the California dreamers.

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The Kinks:
The Ultimate Collection Flower Power was revolutionising mainstream culture, but the Underground of a less trippy nature was referenced on a trio of charting singles. The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset was falling one place to #3, The New Vaudeville Band‘s Finchely Central climbed 5 to a peak of #11, and Petula Clark entered at #34 with Don’t Sleep In The Subway.

In the all-time lists of most consecutive weeks on the UK chart, Release Me by Engelbert Humperdink is still at the top with 56, just one week more than Mr. Acker Bilk‘s Stranger On The Shore. Release Me, the song which famously denied Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane from giving The Beatles‘ a 12th straight #1, was making the 20th appearance in that record-breaking run. Its follow-up, There Goes My Everything, was already at #4 but ultimately couldn’t find a way past Procol Harum.

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Traffic: Mr Fantasy The Jimi Hendrix Experience also had two hits on the Top 40; the onetime #3 hit Purple Haze dropped 10 places to #30 on its 12th week, while The Wind Cries Mary was down from #6 to #8, swapping places with The Supremes’ The Happening. Coincidentally, an act called The Happenings were at #31 with I Got Rhythm. The Supremes were Tamla Motown’s sole representatives on the chart, but Atlantic could boast a trio of classics; Arthur Conley‘s Sweet Soul Music was up 7 places to #9, Groovin’ by the Young Rascals moved from #36 to #23, and Eddie Floyd was coming to the end of a 13-week residency with Knock On Wood.

Plenty of major names were on the Top 40 of 37 years ago: The Whoe were down a notch to #10 with Pictures Of Lily, the debut hit for the Bee Gees – New York Mining Disaster 1941 – was still in the top 20, and The Hollies were the highest entry at #17 with their future Top 3 smash Carrie Anne. Dusty Springfield was up 8 to #24 with Give Me Time, while The Walker Brothers last hit for 9 years – Walking In The Rain – fell from its high of #26 to #33, and The Small Faces debuted at #37 with Here Comes The Nice. The only act making their inaugural appearance on the UK chart were Traffic, featuring ex-Spencer Davis vocalist Steve Winwood, whose Paper Sun was new at #26.

Page Content copyright © Jason Maloney, 2004.