for Sunday 11th December 1966

Alan Field comments on the three singles placed jointly at #31

It's unique to have three unrelated records in the same position in the same week, but I heard and listed all three. Call Her Your Sweetheart by Frank Ifield was definitely played at 31 on the Fab 40 show. I've got it listed first and so had (past tense) chart contributor Hans Peters. Contributor Wolfgang Buchholz also has it listed, but Brian Long hasn't. Hans Peters later crossed out Call Her Your Sweetheart and replaced it with the third record Missy Missy, which Brian and I have both listed, but Wolfgang hasn't. The Frank Ifield record was actually in the Family Forty which debuted on 11th December 1966 to cover the whole of the Christmas period, so it may have been played on the Fab 40 show by mistake, or as an example from the Family Forty. Call Her Your Sweetheart wasn't in the Fab 40 the following week, but it appeared (either as an entry or a re-entry) at #33 on 25th December. The Zoot Money record appears at #31 in all three lists.

36

35

Sitting In A Ring

Ebony Keyes

Piccadilly 35378

Ebony Keyes, whose real name is Kenrick Des-Etages, has a full feature in the Fab Forty for April 2nd 1967, where his follow-up single Cupid's House reached #17. There's a video clip of Ebony miming to Sitting in a Ring from a German show called Beat Beat Beat here – although the song is mistitled Sitting in the Rain.

Help Me – full title Help Me (Get Myself Back Together Again), just scraped into the US Hot Hundred at #100. The band returned to the Big L playlist on March 12th 1967 with Paul Kaye's climber Chain Reaction.

Besides climbers that were played at the time of the broadcast of the Sunday Fab Forty, Alan kept a note of others he heard later in the week and incorporated them into his list.

DJ Climbers:
Listen To My Heart	Bats	Tony Blackburn
Listen To The River Roll Along	Wee Willie Harris	Chuck Blair
Tick Tock	Corduroys	Pete Drummond
My Girl, The Month Of May	Dion & the Belmonts	Kenny Everett
A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues	Clyde McPhatter	Paul Kaye
Baby Do The Philly Dog	Olympics	Mike Lennox
Sugar Town	Nancy Sinatra	Mark Roman
Lookin' For Love	Ray Conniff	Keith Skues
Bad Misunderstanding	Critters	Ed Stewart
Single Girl	Sandy Posey	Norman St John
Baby Tomorrow	Paul Jones	Tony Windsor

Climbers:
Oh What A Fool	Peter Lee Stirling
Make Believe	Jason Deane
Sitting In The Park	Georgie Fame
Too Many Fish In The Sea	Young Rascals
Can't Stop Around	Human Instinct
Progress	Pretty Things
You Better Run	Listen /'N Betweens
Disc of the Week:
Behind The Door	Cher
Album of the Week: (courtesy of Brian Long)
A Quick One	The Who

You Better Run

Listen

CBS 202456

A climber for two weeks running, You Better Run had been a summer Top Twenty hit in the USA for the Young Rascals - who coincidentally have their own Big L climber this week. Last week's Fab revealed that because of the connection between the 'N Betweens and Slade, mint condition copies of their version can fetch £225. Pristine copies of the other version by a second Brummie band, Listen are also pretty collectable, exchanging hands for £165. The group line-up reveals all: Roger Beamer, (bass), John Crutchley, (lead), Geoff Thompson (drums) with one Robert Plant on vocals. Robert also released solo singles in 1966, but was to find his fame a far cry from the Young Rascals with Led Zeppelin.

The Caroline 'Countdown Sixty' chart (south ship) for this week is here

Tune in next week for another Field's Fab Forty!