Written by: Larry E. Williams Produced by: Phil Gerhard & Tony Scotti South African record label (unless otherwise stated): Warner Bros.
Hit number for artist
1
Peak position
1
Weeks
16
Biggest climber awards
1
Star rater climbs
2
Biggest faller awards
1
Top 20 points
234
Overall Top 20 points ranking
=233
Top 20 points ranking for the artist
1
Top 30 Points
394
Overall Top 30 points ranking
=294
Top 30 points ranking for the artist
1
Annual ranking:
1976
7
Other chart success:
Australia
6
Austria
1
Belgium
6
Canada
3
Germany
1
Ireland
3
Netherlands
6
New Zealand
2
Norway
2
Sweden
2
Switzerland
1
UK
7
US
1
Zimbabwe
1
SA Radio charts:
Radio 5
6
Larry E. Williams, who wrote the track, had been working as a roadie for Neil Diamond. Diamond turned the song down and so apparently did Johnny Rivers. US singer Gene Cotton was the first to record the track. For the Bellamy Brother’s version, they used some members of Neil Diamond’s backing band on the recording.
The Bellamy Brothers were David (born 16 September 1950) and Howard Bellamy (Born 2 February 1946). They hailed from Paco Country in Florida and were inspired by the Country & Western music their father played and the rock and roll music their sister listened to. They came to the notice of Jim Stafford, a recognised singer, and David ended up co-writing Stafford’s biggest hit, ‘Spiders & Snakes’, which went to number 3 in the US. After this, they managed to get signed to a record label and when Neil Diamond’s drummer (a guy called Dennis St John) recommended that they release ‘Let You Love Flow’ as a single, they had their first major hit, going to number 1 in the US, Germany and Switzerland and peaking at 7 in the UK. It would also top our SA charts. At the time of writing that had seen 4 US Hot 100 hits and 3 UK chart entries.
Date of entry
Song
Peak (weeks at 1)
Weeks
21-May-1976
Let Your Love Flow
1
16
24-Jun-1977
Crossfire
6
12
14-Dec-1979
If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me
The Bellamy Brother’s ‘Let Your Love Flow’ took over the number 1 spot from Marie Gibson’s ‘One Day At A Time’ this week after the latter had enjoyed a run at the top of 2 weeks. ‘One Day At A Time’ fell to number 3. ‘Let Your Love Flow’ clocked up the 207th week at the top of the charts for American acts. The significance of this was that it put the Americans level with the British acts for week at 1. The Brits had been ahead of the Americans for the last 50 weeks.
It only took a 3 place climb to grab yourself a climber of the week award and 4 acts were up for this. Abba picked up their 5th such award with ‘Fernando’ moving up from 5 to 2. J.J. Barrie, who had been the ‘bridesmaid’ for the last 2 weeks seeing star raters but not biggest climbers, saw his hit ‘No Charge’ climb from 9 to 6 while Sailor’s ‘A Glass Of Champagne’ jumped from 15 to 12. Lastly Rabbitt’s ‘Charlie’ hopped (sorry) from 17 to 13. There were no star raters this week.
Faller of the week went to Slik’s ‘Forever And Ever’ which dropped 4 from 12 to 16 while Bruce Millar’s ‘I Won’t Give Up’ enjoyed its 18th week on the charts and its 5th as the oldest.
We lost 2 songs from the charts and both were by local acts. The first of these 2 was Gene Rockwell’s ‘Shame on Me’ which lasted 11 weeks in the top 20 and peaked at 10. Rockwell had seen 8 songs chart and this was only his second one to reach double figures for weeks. His only previous hit to manage 10 weeks or more was ‘Ciao’ which also managed 11. ‘Shame On Me’ was his first to go top 10 since his first 3 hits which gave him peaks of 4-4-5 in that order. There were still a couple more hits to come from him. By the way, ‘Shame On Me’ was the second song to chart with the word ‘shame’ in the title, the previous being ‘Shame Shame, Shame’ by Shirley & Company. There would only be 2 more.
We also bid farewell to Caroline du Preez & Tommy Dell’s ‘Sometimes’ which had seen a run of 14 weeks in the charts and peaked at 6. Caroline had only had 1 previous hit and that only went to 17 during a 5 weeks run. For Tommy on the other hand, this was his first hit. We would see another hit by this duet and Tommy would see further solo hits.
Despite losing 2 local songs from the charts, the local hit count was maintained at 7 hits as both the new entries were by South African acts.
Julian Laxton had appeared on the labels of a number of singles that had made our charts so far, usually as engineer and once so far as producer (on Rabbitt’s ‘Charlie’ which was at 13 this week), but this week he and his band made their debut on our charts as artist. ‘Celebrate The Rain’ was written by Laxton along with Patric van Blerk and a certain Trevor Rabin who was enjoying chart success with the aforementioned Rabbitt hit. This was the 6th song to chart where van Blerk had a songwriting credits and the 4th where he is listed as producer.
The second new entry was Lionel Peterson’s 6th song to chart, ‘That’s The Way’. The song was a cover of a Joe Tex number from 1969. Tex’s version made it to number 94 on the Billboard Hot 100 and 46 on the R&B Singles charts in the US. Tex had written the song and he had also penned ‘Hold On To What You Got’ which The Staccatos charted with in 1969.
Elvis joined The Rolling Stones in 6th place on the weeks count list. Both acts were on 109. Further down the list Abba moved into tied 17th place with The Staccatos with their weeks count on 83. On the local list, the only movement on the top 20 was The Bats falling to number 16 as Lionel Peterson, who had shared 15th place with them last week, moved on to 46 weeks while The Bats on 45 dropped the one place.
Weird fact of the week: we had now had 3 weeks in a row where we had at least 1 act in the chart where their names started with every letter from A through to G (Abba, Brotherhood of Man or Bruce Millar, Cliff Richard, Demis Roussos or David Cassidy, Elvis Presley, Four Seasons, Gerry Grayson). We had only seen this 3 times before (a ‘time’ here equals a run of consecutive weeks) and of those 3 times once we had also had an act starting with H.
SA Singles Charts 