Ha! Ha! Said The Clown (#18), as the circus comes to town with its sideshows and fairground attractions. We have a Puppet On A String at #2, Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear are #7 and those well-known trapeze artistes, the Montanas swing up all the way from #31 to #9. While The Mindbenders are performing their three-card-trick at #15, acrobat Dion is a Movin' Man movin' up to #17 and the Four (Big) Tops are #19. Unsuccessful knife-thrower Cat Stevens says I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun and at #25, Jonathan King goes Round Round the (With This) Ring (#40) on his unicycle, carrying a Yellow Balloon (#39).

Performing animals are Tiger and (big) Cat Stevens, with Monkees spinning Platters on sticks. Then there's a parrot that hums tunes. Yes, it's a Humming Bird! As always, there are Ups And Downs on the trampoline and Roger Bloom's Hammer is always in demand for banging-in the tent pegs!

The Peddlers are selling Magic Lanterns and Auntie Grizelda is telling fortunes with her Crystal Ball. Always on the Move, Travelin' Man Stevie Wonder is Here Today And Gone Tomorrow.

Like Goin' Out of My Head (last week's Fab Forty #39 for the Zombies) Gonna Fix You Good was another Little Anthony cover. The b-side, I Really Really Care was written by band leader Alan Bown (d 2015) and band member Jeff Bannister and published by Radio London's Pall Mall publishing company.

Alan Bown was a well-established musician, having played the Star Club, Hamburg, alongside the likes of the Silver Beetles. Alan was to form his 'Set' after leaving the John Barry Seven. The Alan Bown Set had already appeared in the Fab with Headline News, in August '66 and Emergency 999, in November '66. The band went through several line-ups, but the members who joined the Knees Club at the Marquee on April 9th 1966 were Alan Bown (#172), trumpet, Vic Sweeney (#168) drms, John Anthony (#169), sax, Stan Haldane (#170), bs, vcls, Peter Burgess (#171), gtr, Jess Roden (#173), vcls and Jeff Bannister (#192) keyboards, vcls. Later in 1967, as they took a turn away from psoul to psychedelia the word 'Set' was dropped from the band name.

Vic Sweeney had 'bean' with George Bean and the Runners (see Fab 12th June 1966).

John Anthony was John Anthony Helliwell, who later joined Supertramp. After leaving the Set, Jess Roden teamed up with ex-Doors John Densmore and Robbie Krieger to form The Butts Band.

The Alan Bown website reported that:

Stan Haldene went to work in the music industry for Polydor, before dropping out, and now runs a sports goods store in Western-Super-Mare. Jeff Bannister is still a working musician. Vic Sweeney still plays a little and also runs a successful coach business, and Alan Bown, after a spell in a band called Jonesy became an A&R man and helped sign Sailor and Mott The Hoople to CBS. In recent years he has run a music company and studio with lifelong friend and successful composer Keith Mansfield.

On April 20th, 1967, the last day of the school Easter holidays, Club Official and schoolfriend Mozz (#2) and I, walked all the way from Wycombe to Slough (a distance of about 15 miles). The reason for the trek was to visit Alan Bown at the home address he had scribbled in the Knees Club book and to deliver the latest copy of Knees Monthly by hand. When we finally got there after walking all day, (accompankneed by the trannie and Big L, of course) we could scarcely think of anything to say to Alan. I believe the feeling was mutual!

Aboard the Galaxy this week

March 31st
The station was promoting the Stax-Volt tour, which this week was playing an additional Radio London promotion at the Roundhouse. Additions to the bill were Felder's Orioles, The Nite People and Ebony Keyes (currently #26 with Cupid's House). The following week (02/04/67) Alan Keen would introduce another Radio London playlist addition, 'The Soul Set'. Five of the seven titles on the list were by artists on the current Stax/Volt tour, which was retitled 'The Otis Redding Show'. (See posters below).

Ashore
Also on March 31st, Mark Roman hosted the Hitchin Young Conservatives' Spring Ball, with live band The Group Five.

April 1st
The date of Big L's famous April Fool hoax. A new, and somewhat dire, 'easy-listening' station calling itself 'Radio East Anglia' suddenly began swamping the Radio London transmissions, during the Keith Skues Show. The broadcast originated from the Galaxy and chief pranksters were Ed Stewpot and Cardboard Shoes himself, and the joke included a spoof news bulletin, during which Programme Director, Alan Keen's home phone number was broadcast. The Curzon Street office staff were amongst those successfully fooled into thinking Radio London's future was threatened by a powerful new station. The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame has a full feature about the hoax., as does Soundscapes.

'Here's Stax/Volt from America, with hot soul discs' – Record Mirror The musicians on the 'hot soul' tour were surprised and delighted by their enthusiastic welcome to the UK. One of their problems with live appearances in America had been that the Stax/Volt house-bands, the Mar-keys and the MGs, were mixed-race outfits. This was not considered unusual in Memphis, where musicians were simply musicians, but was still regarded as unacceptable in many other parts of the States. Record Mirror asked the Mar-keys' Wayne Jackson whether the Stax-Volt label had an individual sound and if so, how did it differ from the music of Tamla Motown. Wayne commented that whilst the Tamla sound was a good one, it was like computerised music in that everything was worked out prior to a recording session and that a lot of over-dubbing was used. "We control our stuff; are 'live' on a session and feel a session and therefore, believe that our particular sound has got more 'heart' and more 'soul' than the music that Tamla produces." Reporting on the renamed Otis Redding Show, the RM reviewer remarked that he felt Otis had somewhat overworked the phrase, "Lord have mercy"! Memorabilia courtesy of Kerry Lewis

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.

Record Mirror review by Peter Jones, 25/03/67

Perky Welsh lass Mia Lewis stabs again with No Time For Lovin', which is either very commercial or not commercial at all – that sort of all-round production – and I liked her show here.

Fab Forty Notes:
This week sees the first listing of the Ballad Box, courtesy of Brian Long's book The London Sound. The companion Soul Set appears for the first time next week.

In order to expand the Radio London playlist, Programme Director Alan Keen introduced the Ballad Box to the programming segments aimed at housewives. One Ballad Box song was to be included hourly, around the top of the hour, between 0900 and 1500. On the whole, this was the type of music that most of we trendy 17-year-olds loathed, but teenagers were deemed to be locked away safely in schools during those hours and were obviously not the target audience! The Soul Set, introduced the following week, was for the hours between 0530 and 0900 and 1500 to midnight. Radlon management had decided that teens would appreciate soul, but housewives were unlikely to share their enthusiasm.

Fab Alan Field:

# "In this first Ballad Box list, Ed Ames' version of My Cup Runneth Over and Sweet Maria by the Dalys had been climbers the previous week, but never entered the chart. That, however, is where the similarity ends. While Ed Ames undoubtedly moved to the Ballad Box to join Max Bygraves with another version of My Cup..., the fate or fortune of the Dalys is not so clear. According to the Curzon Street list, printed in Brian Long's The London Sound, Sweet Maria was to move to the Ballad Box this week, however Monty's notes indicate that it was played as a climber for a second week. A decision to keep the record in the climber list may easily have been taken aboard the Galaxy, but it's possible – in this, the first week of the Ballad Box - the dj may have mis-announced the record or Monty may have misunderstood. We're not drawing a firm conclusion in this instance.

Harry Secombe's This Is My Song and Vince Hill's Edelweiss were riding high in the nationals – both in the Top 10 – but neither record made the Fab 40. The second Vince Hill song listed, If You Knew, was a re-release by Vince's former record company, of a track issued without success in 1964."

Ballad Box:
This Is My Song	Harry Secombe
My Cup Runneth Over	Ed Ames
My Cup Runneth Over	Max Bygraves
Sweet Maria (# see note above)	Dalys
You Came Along (From Out Of Nowhere)	Frank Ifield
Edelweiss	Vince Hill
Oh How I Miss You	Bachelors
Turn The World Around The Other Way	Donald Peers
How Long Does It Take	Bernie Winters
If You Knew	Vince Hill
Somewhere There's Love	Maureen Evans (*)

(*) The blue addition to the Ballad Box indicates additional information from personal listings, courtesy of Wolfgang Buchholz.
Green additions to the climbers indicate singles sourced from 'Monty's Diary'. (See Fab Forty for 010167). Monty has noted that three climbers from last week, Morning Dew, Magic Book and Sweet Maria were retained for a second week. See Alan Field's note above regarding Sweet Maria.
Monty has also listed Seven Drunken Nights, which does not appear in the Fab Forty till 16/04/67, but arrives in the Caroline chart on 01/04/67.

Alan Field did not hear the records listed green or blue played or announced as climbers.

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

Tune in next week for another Field's Fab Forty