11 July 1980

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	6	Take That Look off Your Face	–	Marti Webb
2	2	10	Brass in Pocket	–	Pretenders
3	4	7	Crying	–	Don McLean
4	7	6	Day-O/Island in the Sun	–	Richard Jon Smith
5	3	14	Sun of Jamaica	–	Goombay Dance Band
6	5	9	Together We are Beautiful	–	Fern Kinney
7	6	12	Computer Games	–	MS
8	14	6	It’s My House	–	Diana Ross
9	10	4	It Hurts too Much	–	Eric Carmen
10	8	15	Fly too High	–	Janis Ian
11	13	4	Take Me Down	–	Exile
12	9	5	January, February	–	Barbara Dickson
13	12	13	American Dream	–	Dirt Band
14	19	2	Paradise Road	–	Joy
15	11	21	Please Don’t Go	–	KC & The Sunshine Band
16	15	7	Walking on the Moon	–	Police
17	17	2	Call Me	–	Blondie
18	New	1	More Than I Can Say	–	Leo Sayer
19	16	3	Buzz Buzz a Diddle It	–	Matchbox
20	New	1	Down the Mississippi	–	Barbara Ray

Marti Webb spent a second week at 1 with ‘Take That Look Off Your Face’ while the previous chart topper, The Pretenders’ ‘Brass In Pocket’ was unmoved at 2.

Diana Ross picked up her 3^rd biggest climber award and a second for her hit, ‘It’s My House’ which moved up 6 from 14 to 8. Joy’s ‘Paradise Road’ was the only other song to make a star rater 4 or more places climb this week as it moved up 5 from 19 to 14.

KC & The Sunshine Band’s ‘Please Don’t Go’ moved on to 21 weeks in the charts and enjoyed its 4^th week as the oldest. However it was not all sunshine and roses for them as the song picked up the biggest faller award, dropping 4 from 11 to 15. It was the song’s first time with the award, but KC & The Sunshine Band had picked up 1 biggest faller before with ‘(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Body’.

Burton Cummings saw his SA chart career come to an end as ‘I Will Always Wait For You’ dropped off the top 20 after a run of just 2 weeks, both of which were spent at 20. This was the 15^th song to have a total chart run of 2 weeks spent at position 20 and it would be the last song to do this in the top 20 era. In total Burton had seen 3 solo hits make our charts, spent 20 weeks in the top 20 and his best peak was 3 which his second hit, ‘Break It To Them Gently’ managed. If one adds in the hits he managed as a member of The Guess Who, then his hits total would be 6, his weeks total 32 and his best peak would still be the one ‘Break It To Them Gently’ managed.

The Police’s run with 2 in the charts came to an end as their ‘Message In A Bottle’ left the top 20 after a run of 14 weeks and a peak of 5. They still had ‘Walking On The Moon’ in the charts. It sat at 16 this week.

Leo Sayer became the 6^th act who had spent at least 1 week in the charts every year since 1977 (a run of 4 consecutive years). Of those, Boney M’s run extended back to 1976 (5 years) while Abba’s run went right back to 1973 (a record equalling 8 years). Sayer’s new one was ‘More Than I Can Say’ which was his 10^th hit to make our charts, he became the 18^th and 9^th British act to reach this total. There were 4 Americans and 4 local acts (Billy Forrest on 12, Barbara Ray on 11, Jody Wayne on 10 and Gene Rockwell on 10) on this list with Abba being the only act from the non-big 3 nations. ‘More Than I Can Say’ was a cover of a 1960 hit by The Crickets, a song they recorded after the death of Buddy Holly. Their version would make it to number 42 in the UK. The following year Bobby Vee would take a version to 4 in the UK and 61 in the US. Leo Sayer’s version has been by far the most successful, going to 2 in both the UK and the US. It would also top the Australian charts for 2 weeks before being dethroned by Barbra Streisand’s ‘Woman In Love’. Apparently The Beatles would perform this song live although there is no known recording of such a version.

The very alert amongst you may have noticed a few lines back that I said Barabra Ray had managed 11 hits on our charts and realised that our second new entry this week was the 11^th one. ‘Down The Mississippi’ arrived in our charts 133 weeks after her last one, ‘After The Fire Is Gone’ (a duet with Lance James) left. She was the 28^th local act to see a gap of 100 weeks or more between hits with Judy Page, Peter Lotis, Lance James and Gene Rockwell being 4 of those 28 who had managed this twice. ‘Down The Mississippi’ was written by Terry Dempsey and Doug Faraday. It was Faraday’s first hit as a song writer while Dempsey increased his lead at the top of the list of number of hits by a song writer, this being the 27^th to feature him in the song writer slot on the label. It put Barbara Ray just 1 hit behind the local leader for number of hits, Billy Forrest. We now had 3 local hits in the top 20.

With Leo Sayer scoring his 10^th hit and Barbara Ray getting to 11, this was the second time where we had 2 new entries where the hits count for the 2 acts was 21 which was 1 off the record to date 22 we had seen on 3 previous occasions. The first time the total for the 2 acts was 22 was when Tom Jones and The Hollies saw their 10 and 12^th hits chart on 30 May 1969. The second time was when The Hollies hit 13 and Engelbert Humperdinck reached 9 on 19 May 1972 and then on 21 March 1980 we saw Cliff Richard get to 21 while J.D. Souther was seeing his first hit chart.

Richard Jon Smith caught up with Tommy Dell for number of weeks in the charts. Both acts were on 66 and shared 11^th place on the local weeks count list.

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4 July 1980

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	2	5	Take That Look off Your Face	–	Marti Webb
2	1	9	Brass in Pocket	–	Pretenders
3	3	13	Sun of Jamaica	–	Goombay Dance Band
4	7	6	Crying	–	Don McLean
5	5	8	Together We are Beautiful	–	Fern Kinney
6	4	11	Computer Games	–	MS
7	9	5	Day-O/Island in the Sun	–	Richard Jon Smith
8	6	14	Fly too High	–	Janis Ian
9	15	4	January, February	–	Barbara Dickson
10	14	3	It Hurts too Much	–	Eric Carmen
11	8	20	Please Don’t Go	–	KC & The Sunshine Band
12	10	12	American Dream	–	Dirt Band
13	13	3	Take Me Down	–	Exile
14	12	5	It’s My House	–	Diana Ross
15	11	6	Walking on the Moon	–	Police
16	19	2	Buzz Buzz a Diddle It	–	Matchbox
17	New	1	Call Me	–	Blondie
18	16	14	Message in a Bottle	–	Police
19	New	1	Paradise Road	–	Joy
20	20	2	I Will Always Wait for You	–	Burton Cummings

After just 2 weeks at 1, The Pretenders’ ‘Brass In Pocket’ was replaced at the top of our charts by Marti Webb’s ‘Take That Look Off Your Face’. This gave the Brits their 270^th week at 1, but they were still behind the Americans who were on 272 and who had moved ahead of the Brits 7 weeks earlier.

Barbara Dickson had spent a total of 15 weeks in the charts so far, 9 with ‘Caravan Song’ and now 6 so far with ‘January February’. This week she picked up her fist biggest climber award as the latter jumped 6 from 15 to 9 and those 3 numbers (how many places it jumped, where the song jumped from and where jumped to) bizarrely matched the number of weeks that ‘January February’ had been in the charts, how many weeks in total Dickson had seen in the charts and how many weeks ‘Caravan Song’ had managed. Eric Carman’s ‘It Hurt’s Too Much’ was the only other star rater this week with a 4 place climb from 14 to 10.

The Police picked up their first biggest faller award as ‘Walking on The Moon’ dropped 4 from 11 to 15 to scoop up the award.

‘Please Don’t Go’ by KC & The Sunshine Band became the 55^th song to reach 20 weeks in the charts. It was the first to manage 20 weeks in the charts fully in the 80’s. Suzi Quatro’s ‘She’s In Love With You’ and Michael Jackson’s ‘Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough’ both reaching 20 weeks in the 80’s but started their runs in the 70’s. ‘Please Don’t Go’ was also enjoying it 5^th weeks as the oldest on the top 20. There had been 70 song now that had held the title ‘oldest in the chart’ for 5 or more weeks.

Suzi Quatro’s ‘Mama’s Boy’ did not fare as well as her previous 4 hits as it failed to make the top 10, stumbling at 12, and it also failed to reach double figures for weeks, spending just 6 weeks in the charts. All her previous ones had gone top 10 and spent at least 10 weeks in the charts. She still had 1 more hit to come.

Also going was The Nolans’ ‘I’m In The Mood For Dancing’. They had no previous hits to compare the peak of 1 (spending 1 week there) and 13 week run with. They would have a further hit which would be hard pressed to outdo their first one.

Blondie saw their 4^th SA chart hit enter the top 20 this week. ‘Call Me’ was the theme music to the film ‘American Gigolo’ which starred Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton. It spent 6 weeks at the top of the US Hot 100 and was the 100^th song there to spend at least 6 weeks at 1 (using the charts that stretched back to 1940) shifting over 1 million units in the process. The song was written by Giorgio Moroder (his 6^th hit on our charts as a song writer) and Debbie Harry (her 3^rd as a song writer). Moroder had been asked to write a song for the film and initially approached Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks for help, but due to her record contract at the time she couldn’t so Moroder turned to Debbie Harry and the rest, as they say, is history. Moroder also produced the track and this was his 8^th producer credit on our charts (as always, the caveat is that producer’s names were not always noted). ‘Call Me’ would also top the charts in Canada for 6 weeks. It was Blondie’s 4^th UK chart topper, spending just 1 week at 1.

The second new entry was a song that has gone on to become a South Africa classic, Joy’s ‘Paradise Road’. As with their only other SA chart hit to date, ‘Ain’t Gonna Stop (Till I Get To The Top)’, ‘Paradise Road’ was written by Patric van Blerk and Fransula Ros giving them their 9^th and 3^rd hits as song writers respectively. Joy were the only all black local group to make our charts being made up of Felicia Marian, Thoko Ndlozi and Anneline Malebo. Anneline Malebo who performed the lead vocals on the tracks sadly died in 2002. She contracted Aids after being raped at a party and was found living in Guguletu in abject poverty. Other local musicians rallied round and raised money for her to at least die in comfort in hospital, which again highlighted the plight of some of our local musicians. We had seen a run of 20 weeks with just 1 local song in the top 20, then 2 weeks with none followed by a further 4 with just 1. This week was the first time since 7 December 1979 that we had more than 1 as Joy joined Richard Jon Smith.

Don McLean was seeing new highs in the charts as ‘Crying’ moved 2 places higher than his previous best peak of 6 which ‘Vincent’ had managed. Marti Webb and Matchbox were both at new highest positions, but both of them were still on their 1^st hits.

The Police and Burton Cummings both reached the 20 weeks in the charts milestones (the former needing just 2 songs to get there while the latter needed 3) and Blondie saw their total reach the 30 weeks milestone. The Police had now seen 6 consecutive weeks with 2 in the charts and were the 23^rd act to manage a run of this long with more than 1 in the top 20.

Richard Jon Smith’s 65 weeks put him 1 ahead of Bobby Angel and he now had 12^th position on the local weeks count list to himself while Angel dropped to 13^th.

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RIP Les Reed

Songwriter Les Reed died on 15 April 2019. He was responsible for writing 18 songs that made our charts in the 60’s and early 70’s.

Entry Date	Song	Artist Name	Peak	Weeks
11-Jun-65	It’s Not Unusual	Tom Jones	1	13
17-Dec-65	Here It Comes Again	Fortunes	8	10
03-Mar-67	There’s A Kind Of Hush	Herman’s Hermits	9	9
03-Mar-67	There’s A Kind Of Hush	New Vaudeville Band	2	13
19-May-67	Just Like A Man	June Muscat	16	3
29-Sep-67	Tabatha Twitchit	Dominos	3	10
06-Oct-67	The Last Waltz	Engelbert Humperdinck	1	16
15-Dec-67	I’m Coming Home	Tom Jones	5	13
05-Jan-68	Everybody Knows	Dave Clark Five	7	8
19-Jan-68	Everybody Knows	Engelbert Humperdinck	11	6
05-Apr-68	Delilah	Tom Jones	1	14
14-Jun-68	Silver And Blue	Johnny Gibson	12	6
01-Nov-68	Les Bicyclettes De Belsize	Engelbert Humperdinck	12	4
18-Jul-69	Turn Around	Ken J. Larkin	5	14
12-Dec-69	Does Anybody Miss Me	Ken J. Larkin	13	7
08-May-70	She’s Gone	Ken J. Larkin	16	4
22-May-70	Daughter Of Darkness	Tom Jones	1	10
02-Jul-71	Sally Sunshine	Clive Bruce	11	8

Here are the songs that made our top 20 where Les had a song writing credit.

 

RIP Les, thanks for the memories.

27 June 1980

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	8	Brass in Pocket	–	Pretenders
2	4	4	Take That Look off Your Face	–	Marti Webb
3	2	12	Sun of Jamaica	–	Goombay Dance Band
4	3	10	Computer Games	–	MS
5	5	7	Together We are Beautiful	–	Fern Kinney
6	6	13	Fly too High	–	Janis Ian
7	9	5	Crying	–	Don McLean
8	7	19	Please Don’t Go	–	KC & The Sunshine Band
9	11	4	Day-O/Island in the Sun	–	Richard Jon Smith
10	8	11	American Dream	–	Dirt Band
11	10	5	Walking on the Moon	–	Police
12	12	4	It’s My House	–	Diana Ross
13	16	2	Take Me Down	–	Exile
14	19	2	It Hurts too Much	–	Eric Carmen
15	15	3	January, February	–	Barbara Dickson
16	14	13	Message in a Bottle	–	Police
17	13	13	I’m in the Mood for Dancing	–	Nolans
18	17	6	Mama’s Boy	–	Suzi Quatro
19	New	1	Buzz Buzz a Diddle It	–	Matchbox
20	New	1	I Will Always Wait for You	–	Burton Cummings

‘Brass In Pocket’ by The Pretenders spent a second week at 1, but was coming under pressure from Marti Webb’s ‘Take That Look Off Your Face’ which moved up 2 from 4 to 2.

Eric Carmen took the biggest climber award as his ‘It Hurts Too Much’ climbed 5 from 19 to 14. This was his second time with the award, having picked up 1 with ‘All By Myself’. There were no other star raters this week.

Falling honours went to The Nolans’ ‘I’m In The Mood For Dancing’ which fell 4 from 13 to 17. This was the 14^th time an Irish act had taken the award and we were exactly halfway through the number of times we would see an Irish act take the biggest faller award as there were 14 more times to come.

KC & The Sunshine Band’s ‘Please Don’t Go’ was still in the charts and it was enjoying its 19^th week in the top 20 and its 4^th as the oldest.

Blondie’s ‘Atomic’ became the first of their 3 hits to date not to make the top 10, only managing to peak at 16 during a 5 week run. It was also the worst of their weeks counts to date. They would return to the charts.

We also bid farewell to Steve Forbert’s ‘Romeo’s Theme’ which had lasted 8 weeks in the charts and peaked at 10. This would be his only SA chart hit.

Our first new entry was English band Matchbox with their hit ‘Buzz Buzz A Diddle It’. The band formed in Middlesex and had their first chart success in the UK with ‘Rockabilly Rebel’ which went to 18. ‘Buzz Buzz A Diddle It’ was a cover of a 1961 hit for Freddy Cannon which made number 51 in the US and it would give Matchbox a number 22 hit in the UK. It would also get to 6 in the Netherlands, 7 in Belgium, 17 in Austria, 37 in New Zealand and 45 in Germany. The song was written by Bob Crewe and Frank C. Slay and was a 7^th hit as song writer for Bob Crewe who had brought us hits like The Tremeloes ‘Silence Is Golden’, The Bay City Rollers’ ‘Bye Bye Baby’ and ‘The Sun Ain’t Going To Shine Anymore’ which had been a hit for the Walker Brothers, but the version that made our charts was by local lad Roy Bulkin.

The other new entry was Burton Cummings 3^rd SA chart hit, ‘I Will Always Wait For You’. Cummings was now the 4^th act who would see chart action in 1980 and had spent at least 1 week in the charts for at least 4 consecutive years. The others to do this were Kelly Marie and Electric Light Orchestra who had seen 4 consecutive years, Boney M 5 and Abba a record to date 8. ‘I Will Always Wait For You’ was written for the soundtrack to a film called ‘Voices’ which starred Michael Ontkean and Amy Irving. Ontkean would also play Sheriff Harry S. Truman in the television series ‘Twin Peaks’. Cummings, who had been a member of The Guess Who, penned the track and had now 6 song writing credits on SA chart hits, 3 being for Guess Who tracks and the other 3 for his solo hits.

Acts from Ireland saw their weeks count reach the 200 mark with The Nolans’ ‘I’m In The Mood For Dancing’ being the one to see them to this milestone. They were the 8^th highest nation for weeks count and were 19 behind 7^th placed Sweden.

Last week we saw a record equalling run for no change to the top 20 of the local weeks count list. This week we were denied seeing a new outright record as Richard Jon Smith caught up with Bobby Angel and the 2 now sat tied in 12^th place on 64 weeks each.

The Police became the 27^th act to see at least 5 consecutive weeks with 2 or more in the charts. There had been 4 acts who had seen 5 consecutive weeks on 2 different occasions and the record for consecutive weeks with more than 1 in the charts was 16 which The Bee Gees managed.

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20 June 1980

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	2	7	Brass in Pocket	–	Pretenders
2	1	11	Sun of Jamaica	–	Goombay Dance Band
3	3	9	Computer Games	–	MS
4	5	3	Take That Look off Your Face	–	Marti Webb
5	8	6	Together We are Beautiful	–	Fern Kinney
6	4	12	Fly too High	–	Janis Ian
7	6	18	Please Don’t Go	–	KC & The Sunshine Band
8	7	10	American Dream	–	Dirt Band
9	9	4	Crying	–	Don McLean
10	14	4	Walking on the Moon	–	Police
11	13	3	Day-O/Island in the Sun	–	Richard Jon Smith
12	17	3	It’s My House	–	Diana Ross
13	10	12	I’m in the Mood for Dancing	–	Nolans
14	11	12	Message in a Bottle	–	Police
15	18	2	January, February	–	Barbara Dickson
16	New	1	Take Me Down	–	Exile
17	12	5	Mama’s Boy	–	Suzi Quatro
18	16	8	Romeo’s Tune	–	Steve Forbert
19	New	1	It Hurts too Much	–	Eric Carmen
20	19	5	Atomic	–	Blondie

We had a new number 1 this week in the form of The Pretenders’ ‘Brass In Pocket’ which moved up 1 from 2 to take the top spot from The Goombay Dance Band’s ‘Sun Of Jamaica’. The latter had been at 1 for 4 weeks and it dropped to 2. MS’s ‘Computer Games’ spent a 3^rd straight week at 3.

Diana Ross picked up her 2^nd biggest climber award with a 5 place climb by ‘It’s My House’. It moved up from 17 to 12. Her previous climber award had come with ‘Someday We’ll be Together’ which was accredited to Diana Ross & The Supremes. This gap of 540 weeks was the 4^th biggest gap between biggest climbers that we had seen so far. Dionne Warwick had the biggest gap so far (623 weeks) with Carike Keuzenkamp second on 560 weeks. The only act that was not female in the top 4 was Gene Rockwell who had seen a gap of 544 weeks between biggest climbers.

The Police’s ‘Walking On The Moon’ was the only other star rater. It moved up 4 from 14 to 10.

Suzi Quatro’s ‘Mama’s Boy’ gave her her 5^th biggest faller award as it dropped 5 from 12 to 17. So far 46 acts had seen 5 or more biggest fallers, 6 of which were female acts.

One of the 2 songs that were the oldest on last week’s charts, The Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’, left the top 20 this week. It had seen a run of 17 weeks and a peak of 3. This would be their only SA chart hit. It left KC & The Sunshine Band’s ‘Please Don’t Go’ as the oldest on the charts on its own. It sat on 18 weeks and this was its 3^rd week as the oldest.

Also going was Ellen Folley’s ‘We Belong To The Night’ which managed 10 weeks and a peak of 7. Like The Sugarhill Gang, Ellen would only see 1 hit make our charts.

Exile’s ‘Take Me Down’ became their 4^th SA chart hit as it entered the top 20 at 16 this week. Written by band members JP Pennington and Mark Gray, the song did not garner much success for the band and I have not come across any other chart action for it other than in South Africa. However, in 1982 country band Alabama took a cover of the song to number 18 on the main US Hot 100 charts and topped the Country Singles charts there. That version also topped the Canadian Country Singles charts. Johnny Bristol covered the track but failed to chart with it.

Eric Carmen became the 46^th act to see a gap of 200 weeks or more between hits. His previous one, ‘All By Myself’, had last been on the charts 210 weeks back, but he returned this week with his second SA chart hit, ‘It Hurts Too Much’. While ‘All By Myself’ had gone to number 2 in the States, ‘It Hurts Too Much’ did not fare as well, only managing to get to 75.

The gap at the top of the list of number of hits by a nation increased to a new record high of 51 with the American acts having brought us 571 to the Brits’ 520. While in the weeks by a nation front, we saw Ireland pull 1 ahead of Australia. Ireland were on 199 and held 8^th place while Australia on 198 dropped into 9^th spot.

‘Please Don’t Go’ by KC & The Sunshine Band became the 44^th song to reach 300 points. It ticked over to 308.

There had been no movement in positions on the top 20 of local weeks count list for 37 weeks and this equalled the record to date for this list to remain unchanged in terms of the positions the acts held (individual weeks count may have changed but they did not result in an act changing places).

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13 June 1980

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	10	Sun of Jamaica	–	Goombay Dance Band
2	4	6	Brass in Pocket	–	Pretenders
3	3	8	Computer Games	–	MS
4	2	11	Fly too High	–	Janis Ian
5	11	2	Take That Look off Your Face	–	Marti Webb
6	5	17	Please Don’t Go	–	KC & The Sunshine Band
7	6	9	American Dream	–	Dirt Band
8	7	5	Together We are Beautiful	–	Fern Kinney
9	16	3	Crying	–	Don McLean
10	8	11	I’m in the Mood for Dancing	–	Nolans
11	9	11	Message in a Bottle	–	Police
12	13	4	Mama’s Boy	–	Suzi Quatro
13	19	2	Day-O/Island in the Sun	–	Richard Jon Smith
14	15	3	Walking on the Moon	–	Police
15	10	10	We Belong to the Night	–	Ellen Foley
16	14	7	Romeo’s Tune	–	Steve Forbert
17	18	2	It’s My House	–	Diana Ross
18	New	1	January, February	–	Barbara Dickson
19	17	4	Atomic	–	Blondie
20	12	17	Rapper’s Delight	–	Sugarhill Gang

‘Sun Of Jamaica’ by The Goombay Dance Band ticked over to 4 weeks at 1. It had spent the past 3 weeks with the previous number 1, Janis Ian’s ‘Fly Too High’ at 2 but this week it had a new challenger in the form of The Pretenders’ ‘Brass In Pocket’ which climbed 2 from 4 to 2.

Last week’s biggest climber, Don McLean’s ‘Crying’ repeated the feat by picking up the award again with a 7 place climb from 16 to 9. Marti Webb’s ‘Take That Look Off Your Face’ made a star rater climb of 6 jumping from 11 to 5 while Richard Jon Smith picked up his 6^th star rater as his ‘Day-O/Island In The Sun’ moved up 6 from 19 to 13. He was the 14^th local act to see at least 6 star rater climbs. There would only be 1 more local act to manage this many, but they would only do so in the top 30 era.

Falling honours went to The Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ which dropped 8 from 12 to 20. It still shared the oldest on the charts title with KC & The Sunshine Band’s ‘Please Don’t Go’. The 2 songs were on 17 weeks and this was their second as the oldest in the charts.

Tomita’s ‘Bolero’ was the only song to leave the charts this week. It managed just 4 weeks and peaked at 12. This would not only be Tomita’s only SA chart hit, but would be the only chart action that any Japanese act would see. We did come close to having a second Japanese act on the charts when Yoko Ono’s ‘Walking On Thin Ice’ was featured on the show ‘Bubbling Under’ which played the songs that were sitting just outside the top 20. Had we had a top 30 at that stage, we may well have seen at least 1 other Japanese act on our charts.

The new entry was Barbara Dickson’s 2^nd SA chart hit, ‘January, February’. It was the 4^th, and would be the last hit on our charts to have a month name in the title of the song. The other 3 ‘month’ songs we had seen were The Bee Gee’s ‘First Of May’, The Four Seasons’ ‘December ’63 (Oh What A Night)’ and Earth Wind & Fire’s ‘September’. This excludes songs where ‘May’ is in the title, but is it not referring to the month (as in Vicky Leandros’ ‘Come What May’). ‘January, February’ was written by Alan Tarney who had recently brought us Cliff Richard’s ‘We Don’t Talk Anymore’. This was his 5^th hit as a song writer and he was the 102^nd song writer to reach this total. ‘January, February’ would go to 7 in Switzerland, 9 in New Zealand, 11 in the UK, 13 in Belgium, 14 in Zimbabwe, 16 in The Netherlands and 22 in Germany.

On the weeks by acts from a nation list, we saw Ireland catch up with Australia. The 2 nations were on 198 weeks each and sat tied 8^th overall.

Suzi Quatro became the 48^th act to see their weeks total reach the 60 mark. She was the 5^th woman to get to this milestone.

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6 June 1980

Pos	LW	Weeks	Song		Artist
1	1	9	Sun of Jamaica	–	Goombay Dance Band
2	2	10	Fly too High	–	Janis Ian
3	4	7	Computer Games	–	MS
4	5	5	Brass in Pocket	–	Pretenders
5	3	16	Please Don’t Go	–	KC & The Sunshine Band
6	8	8	American Dream	–	Dirt Band
7	10	4	Together We are Beautiful	–	Fern Kinney
8	6	10	I’m in the Mood for Dancing	–	Nolans
9	7	10	Message in a Bottle	–	Police
10	9	9	We Belong to the Night	–	Ellen Foley
11	New	1	Take That Look off Your Face	–	Marti Webb
12	11	16	Rapper’s Delight	–	Sugarhill Gang
13	13	3	Mama’s Boy	–	Suzi Quatro
14	15	6	Romeo’s Tune	–	Steve Forbert
15	18	2	Walking on the Moon	–	Police
16	20	2	Crying	–	Don McLean
17	16	3	Atomic	–	Blondie
18	New	1	It’s My House	–	Diana Ross
19	New	1	Day-O/Island in the Sun	–	Richard Jon Smith
20	12	4	Bolero	–	Tomita

It was another week at 1 for Goombay Dance Band’s ‘Sun Of Jamaica’ making it 3 weeks now for the song and 10 weeks in total for German acts being in the top spot. The previous chart topper, Janis Ian’s ‘Fly Too High’ spent a 3^rd straight week at 2 after having vacated the top spot.

While Don McLean was singing ‘Crying’ he would have been laughing as his hit was the climber of the week. It moved up 4 from 20 to 16 to take the award. It would be the only star rater this week.

Moving in the opposite direction at twice the speed of ‘Crying’ was Tomita’s ‘Bolero’ which dropped 8 from 12 to 20. This was the faller of the week.

We had 3 songs leave the top 20 this week, the first of which was the 53^rd to have an equal weeks and peaks figure. Kenny Rogers’ ‘Coward of The County’ had spent 12 weeks on the charts and peaked at 12. This was only the second time we had seen a song have a weeks and peak figure of 12. Barry White’s 1975 hit, ‘Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe’ was the previous one to manage this. Kenny would return to our charts at a later date.

We also bid farewell to Telex’s ‘Moskow Diskow’ which had seen a run of 6 weeks and a peak of 13. They would only have this 1 SA chart hit but we would see 2 other Belgian acts make the charts.

Last to go was Captain & Tennille’s ‘Do That To Me One More Time’ which had seen a run of 16 weeks and spent 1 of those weeks at the top of the charts. This would see the end of their SA chart career with 3 hits to their name, 39 weeks under their belt and they ended on a high as ‘Do That To Me One More Time’ would be their best performer both in terms of weeks and peak.

The 200^th hit by a solo woman was the first of our new entries and it was Marti Webb’s ‘Take That Look Off Your Face’. It was the 3^rd hit written by Andrew Lloyd Webber to make our charts. Webber co-wrote it with Don Black and it was Black’s 5^th credit as song writer on our chart hits. ‘Take That Look Off Your Face’ was from the musical ‘Tell Me On A Sunday’ and would give Webb a number 3 hit in the UK as well as going to 2 in Switzerland, 3 in Austria and Germany, 4 in Belgium and Zimbabwe and 6 in The Netherlands. Webb had starred in a number of West End Musicals in London including playing Eva Peron in ‘Evita’ and Grizabella in ‘Cats’. She still performs with her latest role (at the time of writing this) being Fairy Bowbells in a production of ‘Dick Whittington’ at the Theatre Royal in Windsor. Marti was exactly the same age as Cliff Richard was when he charted with ‘Hey Mister Dream Maker’ (36 years, 5 months and 23 days old). This was the 29^th time that people had charted at exactly the same age.

Diana Ross returned to the charts with a new one called ‘It’s My House’. It had been 313 weeks since she was last seen on the top 20 and this was the 22^nd biggest gap between hits to date and 8^th biggest for a female artist. This was her second solo offering, but she had seen 1 duet with Marvin Gaye chart and had also had a separate billing on ‘Someday We’ll Be Together’ which was accredited to Diana Ross & The Supremes. ‘It’s My House’ was written and produced by the song writing team of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson. It would be a minor hit for Ross, going to 32 in the UK, but it failed to chart on the main US Hot 100 although it did make it to 27 on the R&B Singles charts in the States.

The final new entry broke the local hit drought after we had been just 2 weeks with no local hits in the charts, the record shortest gap so far. Richard Jon Smith was our local hero coming to the rescue and we got 2 for the price of 1 as his new hit was a medley of 2 Harry Belafonte hits which went under the name ‘Day-O/Island In the Sun’ although the original name of the first of these 2 was ‘Banana Boat Song (Day-O)’. This was Richard Jon Smith’s 7^th SA chart hit and he was the 10^th local act to see this many hits chart. ‘Banana Boat Song (Day-O)’ was a traditional Jamaican song and would give Belafonte a number 5 hit in the US in 1957. Later that year ‘Island In The Sun’, which was written by Belafonte and Irving Burgie, would go to 42. While Belafonte’s version is perhaps the most famous, it was not the first to make the US charts. That honour went to a version by The Tarriers which entered the US chart on 22 December 1956. It would eventually peak at 6. The following week versions by Sarah Vaughan and the Fontane Sisters would also chart and go to 31 and 22 respectively. Belafonte’s version charted on 12 January 1957 alongside a version by Steve Lawrence. The latter went to 30. A few months later in April Stan Freberg took a version to 43. By contrast, ‘Island In the Sun’ would only see Belafonte’s version chart.

Japan caught up with Israel to be tied at the bottom of the list of weeks by acts from a nation. Both countries had seen artists spend 4 weeks on the charts. They were tied 23^rd.

There was still no movement on the top 20 of either the overall weeks count list nor the local weeks count list. The former had been unchanged now for 18 weeks while the latter continued to extend this record run to 35 weeks. While the overall list was completely unchanged, Richard Jon Smith’s weeks count on the local list was changing, but it was not enough for him to move positions. He sat 13^th with 61 weeks and was 3 behind Bobby Angel who was in 12^th place.

With ‘Sun Of Jamaica’ at 1 and ‘Day-O/Island in the Sun’ at 19, this was the first time we had seen 2 songs in the chart with the word ‘Sun’ in the title for 315 weeks (this ignores words like ‘Sunny’ and ‘Sunday’). The previous pair of ‘Sun’s was Terry Jacks and Bobby Wright’s versions of ‘Seasons In The Sun’.

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