for Sunday 7th May 1967
(the week Big L got the Sgt Pepper's exclusive
)

Last
This
Presented by Tony Blackburn
Week
Week
2
1
Pictures Of Lily Who
12
2
Then I Kissed Her Beach Boys
3
3
Silence Is Golden Tremeloes
5
4
New York Mining Disaster 1941 Bee Gees
6
5
The First Cut Is The Deepest P P Arnold
11
6
Little Games Yardbirds
19
7
Shake A Tail Feather James & Bobby Purify
8
Waterloo Sunset Kinks
31
9
24 Sycamore Wayne Fontana
4
10
Birds And Bees Warm Sounds
20
11
Say You Don't Mind Denny Laine
26
12
Get Me To The World On Time Electric Prunes
25
13
The Wind Cries Mary Jimi Hendrix Experience
17
14
Children Pretty Things
7
15
Show Me Joe Tex
16
You Gotta Stop / The Love Machine Elvis Presley
29
17
Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me Gladys Knight & the Pips
1
18
The Boat That I Row Lulu
8
19
Gonna Give Her All The Love I've Got Jimmy Ruffin
10
20
I Got Rhythm Happenings
27
21
Tears Tears Tears Ben E King
22
Finchley Central New Vaudeville Band
23
My Old Car Lee Dorsey
13
24
Peanuts And Chewy Macs Cymbaline
25
The Happening Supremes
16
26
Girl I Need You Artistics
40
27
The Moving Finger Writes Len Barry
35
28
A Certain Misunderstanding David Garrick
39
29
Funny 'Cos Neither Could I Shotgun Express
30
Two Streets Val Doonican
38
31
Bowling Green Everly Brothers
37
32
Jonathan Wotsit Vic Richards
14
33
I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You) Aretha Franklin
30
34
Bless My Soul (I've Been And Gone And Done It) Studio Six
35
Groovin' Young Rascals
36
Roll With The Punches Garnet Mimms
37
Yesterday's Papers Chris Farlowe
38
I Can't Turn Back Time Vince Edwards
39
Day Time, Night Time Simon Dupree & the Big Sound
40
Fly Me High Moody Blues

DJ Climbers:    
My Babe Ronnie Dove Tony Blackburn
It's All In The Game James Royal Chuck Blair
Too Fast, Too Slow Unit 4 + 2 Tony Brandon
My Back Pages Byrds Pete Drummond
Let Me Be Turtles Paul Kaye
My Lady Troggs Lorne King
Somebody To Love Jefferson Airplane John Peel
Love Eyes Nancy Sinatra Mark Roman
Tabatha Twitchit Dave Clark Five Keith Skues
Walking In The Rain Walker Brothers Ed Stewart
Use Me Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers John Yorke


My Lady Troggs POF 022

Alan Field points out:
The Troggs' record, My Lady, (b/w Girl in Black) was immediately withdrawn by Page One and replaced by Night Of The Long Grass, with the same B-side and exactly the same catalogue number. The replacement became a climber for the following two weeks, 14th and 21st May.

Webmaster note: Both A-sides were penned by Reg Presley. Copies of My Lady are naturally scarce and therefore highly collectable; they can change hands for £100 or more. Jat Harris released a cover of the song in July, which was picked as John Peel's climber and appeared in the Fab Forty

Aboard the Galaxy this week
Although the exact date is uncertain, May was the month when John Peel realised that nobody in Radlon management listened to his late-night shows, so he abandoned the Fab Forty playlist and transformed the show into the sort of music he wanted to play, creating the Perfumed Garden. It was supposedly the unusually large amount of mail attracted by the show, that alerted Big L management to its existence.

Mike Terry kindly informed us about a Peel interview, conducted by Yugoslavia's B92 Internet, Radio and TV Station in 2002, in which John talks about his experience in US radio, return to the UK and job aboard Radio London followed by the unheralded birth of the Perfumed Garden.
This week's Peel climber also looks as if it's a track he may well have picked for himself.

Friday, May 12th
Radio London's biggest scoop ever! The station was the first in the UK (and everywhere else in the world) to play the eagerly-awaited Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP in full. Big L beat the BBC Light Programme by eight days – and the Beatles were reported to have been very pleased about it. The story of how this exclusive came about and how it moved John Peel to tears, is here.

Ashore
Sunday, May 7th
A concert at the Saville theatre compared by Caroline's Rick Dane, featured The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Garnet Mimms and Denny Laine.

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.

Climbers:  
My One Chance To Make It Beatstalkers
The Wedding Of Ramona Blair Mirage
On My Life Bob & Carol
Day After Day After Day Jeannie Lambe
I Love Everything About You Bobby Hebb
Cuttin' In Timi Yuro
Samantha's Mine Spectrum
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat Bob Dylan
Don't Come Back To Me Bunch (*)
Take The Time Shangri-Las
Baby I'm Your Man Dickie Rock
Just One More Chance Outer Limits
Gypsy Fred Koobas
Disc of the Week:  
Okay! Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich
Album of the Week:  
Puppet On A String Sandie Shaw

A French picture sleeve of Don't Come Back To Me by 'Les Bunch' and an advert promoting the Koobas' Gypsy Fred.

Samantha's Mine Spectrum RCA 1589 (Released 28/04/67)

According to various sources, Spectrum was a group created as a tie-in with Gerry & Sylvia Anderson's 1967 Supermarionation series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons – the follow-up to his fantastically-successful Thunderbirds. 'Spectrum' was the name of the Earth's security organisation, i.e. 'the goodies' who fought the Martian Mysterons i.e. 'the baddies' from their Cloudbase HQ. Not surprisingly for an outfit called Spectrum, the agents were all named after colours and the indestructible Captain Scarlet was the hottest of the hues.

A now-defunct site called 'Scarlet Fever – everything you ever wanted to know about Captain Scarlet', said:

"Composer Barry Gray's original version of the Captain Scarlet theme tune was replaced by a version [with lyrics] performed by The Spectrum, a five-piece London-based group who had been manufactured by RCA Victor to compete with the success of the American manufactured band The Monkees. Gerry Anderson signed them to a £100,000 contract and promoted them in tandem with the launch of Captain Scarlet."

On stage, the band wore uniforms like those worn by the Spectrum puppets, but despite the puppets becoming cult TV heroes, there is no sign of the band ever having enjoyed any anticipated Monkee-type adulation. Something must have gone wrong with the deal, because it appears that the vocal version of the Captain Scarlet theme never achieved release as a single.

Spectrum members were Tony Atkins (ld gtr), Colin Forsey (vocals), Bill Chambers (kbds), Tony Judd (bs) and Keith Forsey (drms). Keith remained with the band through three line-ups and went on to became a producer for Billy Idol. He produced film soundtracks for Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop II and The Breakfast Club and co-wrote the Simple Minds track Don't You Forget About Me.

It is unclear how the group's Captain Scarlet connection ties in with what seems to have been a completely separate and already-established pop career. Spectrum released either two or three singles* – including this one – well before the Anderson's TV programme premiered in September 1967. Which begs the question, was this really a manufactured band, or did an existing outfit called Spectrum sign a contract with Gerry Anderson?

Career-wise Spectrum was yet another British group that became more popular abroad than at home. They enjoyed #1 hits in Spain with Samantha's Mine and Headin' For A Heatwave (their third 1967 UK release), and hit the top spot in Germany, with their cover of the Beatles' Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (their second 1968 UK release).

Their follow-up to Samantha's Mine, Portobello Road, became a great Radio London favourite and proved popular when revived during recent offshore recreations. As happened with many 'might have been hits', unfortunate timing meant that the single lost out on vital airplay by being released during Big L's final weeks.

* With Samantha's Mine generally regarded as the band's first single, it may be that Little Girl – the first of the releases on the Record Collector Rare Record Price Guide Spectrum list – may have been recorded by a completely different band of the same name. A possible clue is that Little Girl (1965) was on the Columbia label, whereas all the other Spectrum singles up until 1969, were on RCA.

Surprisingly, the Spectrum's recording of the Captain Scarlet theme tune is omitted from the Price Guide list of their recordings, which would indicate that it was never released by RCA. This was a strange decision, considering the intended promotion of the band alongside the TV series and the alleged £100,000 contract. Moreover, another incentive for release was that the theme to an earlier Anderson creation, Fireball XL5, had already become a minor hit for Don Spencer in 1963.

Was there more than one Spectrum and why wasn't the Scarlet theme released? It's what you might call a 'Mysteron mystery'.

Spectrum's vocal version of the Scarlet theme song was heard on the end credits of episodes 7, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 and 22-32 of the popular series.

Scarlet fans can visit Spectrum HeadquartersChris Bishop's unofficial Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons website – where there's a photo of the band wearing their colourful uniforms alongside their puppet counterparts. The Beeb also has pages devoted to the cult series.

Another version of the theme tune was recorded by Manfred Mann's Mike Vickers.

In 2005, a new Gerry Anderson computer-generated series appeared, called New Captain Scarlet.



There is currently no Soul Set or Ballad Box information available for this week


Green additions to the climbers indicate singles sourced from 'Monty's Diary'. (See Fab Forty for 010167). In addition to the two new climbers, Just One More Chance and Gypsy Fred, Monty has noted that Take The Time, and Baby I'm Your Mancontinue to be on the list for a second week.
Alan Field did not hear the records sourced from Monty's Diary played or announced as climbers.


(*) Brian Long does not have a comprehensive climber list for 7th May. Alan's list doesn't include the record by the Bunch,
but Wolfgang Buchholz notes hearing it played as a climber this week, as does Monty.

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

Tune in next week for another Field's Fab Forty


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