Written by: Bob Gaudio & Judy Parker Produced by: Bob Gaudio South African record label (unless otherwise stated): Warner Bros.
Hit number for artist
3
Peak position
13
Weeks
5
Biggest climber awards
1
Star rater climbs
1
Biggest faller awards
1
Top 20 points
28
Overall Top 20 points ranking
=1882
Top 20 points ranking for the artist
4
Top 30 Points
78
Overall Top 30 points ranking
=1970
Top 30 points ranking for the artist
4
Annual ranking:
1976
=96
Other chart success:
Australia
16
Ireland
20
New Zealand
22
UK
6
US
3
Zimbabwe
5
When this song was released, the Four Seasons’ success had been fading and they had not seen a US top 10 hit since 1967’s ‘C’mon Marianne’. They had been dropped by their record label, Philips and had an unsuccessful time being signed to Motown. In the interim, lead singer, Frankie Valli, had been seeing some solo success, but he wasn’t available when the song was initially recorded and Don Ciccone took on the lead vocals. Their new label, Warner Bros, were so impressed by this that they named Ciccone as the new lead singer of the Four Seasons. Valli was not best pleased and halted the release of the record until he had put down some vocals to retain his position as lead singer. The song would make it to 20 on the Canadian charts, but then a 6 week postal strike meant the charts data is unavailable for a period, so it could well have peaked higher.
Written by: Bob Gaudio, Lenny Lee Goldsmith & Judy Parker Produced by: Bob Gaudio & Charlie Calello South African record label (unless otherwise stated): Warner Bros
Hit number for artist
5
Peak position
4
Weeks
14
Biggest climber awards
1
Star rater climbs
2
Biggest faller awards
0
Top 20 points
159
Overall Top 20 points ranking
=641
Top 20 points ranking for the artist
2
Top 30 Points
299
Overall Top 30 points ranking
=634
Top 30 points ranking for the artist
2
Annual ranking:
1981
22
Other chart success:
US
91
Zimbabwe
5
SA Radio charts:
Capital 604
1
Radio 5
9
The song would be the group’s only charting hit in the US in the 80’s and, at the time of writing, would be their last US hit. Judy Parker, who co-wrote the song, was the wife of Bob Gaudio who had been a member of Four Seasons, but had stopped touring with the band to concentrate on his production work.
Written by: Sandy Linzer & Denny Randell Produced by: Bob Crewe South African record label (unless otherwise stated): Philips
Hit number for artist
2
Peak position
12
Weeks
6
Biggest climber awards
0
Star rater climbs
0
Biggest faller awards
0
Top 20 points
38
Overall Top 20 points ranking
=1741
Top 20 points ranking for the artist
3
Top 30 Points
98
Overall Top 30 points ranking
=1836
Top 30 points ranking for the artist
3
Annual ranking:
1966
97
Other chart success:
Canada
33
New Zealand
9
UK
20
US
13
At the time they released this hit, the band were styling their name The 4 Seasons. It would be their first hit to feature Joe Long, who had recently joined the band, on vocals.
Written by: Bob Crewe, Sandy Linzer & Denny Randell Produced by: Bob Crewe South African record label (unless otherwise stated): Philips
Hit number for artist
1
Peak position
19
Weeks
1
Biggest climber awards
0
Star rater climbs
0
Biggest faller awards
0
Top 20 points
2
Overall Top 20 points ranking
=2312
Top 20 points ranking for the artist
5
Top 30 Points
12
Overall Top 30 points ranking
=2433
Top 30 points ranking for the artist
5
Annual ranking:
1966
=132
Other chart success:
Canada
3
New Zealand
8
UK
4
US
3
In 1980, UK band The Darts saw their cover of the song go to 14 in the US and the following year, Barry Manilow saw his cover version go to 12 in the UK and 32 in the US as well as getting to 4 in Australia.
Written by: Bob Gaudio & Judy Parker Produced by: Bob Gaudio South African record label (unless otherwise stated): Warner Bros.
Hit number for artist
4
Peak position
1
Weeks
17
Biggest climber awards
2
Star rater climbs
2
Biggest faller awards
1
Top 20 points
246
Overall Top 20 points ranking
=200
Top 20 points ranking for the artist
1
Top 30 Points
416
Overall Top 30 points ranking
=237
Top 30 points ranking for the artist
1
Annual ranking:
1976
4
Other chart success:
Australia
2
Belgium
3
Canada
1
Germany
16
Ireland
18
Italy
19
Netherlands
3
New Zealand
2
Norway
6
Sweden
11
UK
1
US
1
Zimbabwe
6
SA Radio charts:
Radio 5
1
The song started life as ‘December 5th, 1933’ which marked the date of the repeal of the prohibition laws, but it was lead singer Frankie Valli and co-writer Judy Parker that persuaded Bob Gaudio to change the lyrics. Parker was Gaudio’s wife. In 1988 the song was remixed by Dutch DJ Ben Liebrand. This was only released in 1993 and would go to 14 on the US Hot 100. In 1996 British dance band Clock saw their cover version get to 13 in the UK and Ireland.
The Four Seasons’ ‘December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’ had now spent as many weeks as there were seasons in their name at 1 while Marie Gibson’s ‘One Day At A Time’ was enjoying a second week at 2.
Vicky Leandros, who had been the only Greek act to chart until Demis Roussos had recently entered the charts, had managed 4 biggest climbers. Roussos opened his account this week with an 8 place climb by ‘Happy to be on an Island in the Sun’ which moved up from 18 to 10. While he still had a way to go to catch up to Leandros in terms of number of biggest climbers, this 8 place climb immediately equalled the best a Greek act had managed to date and (spoiler alert) these 2 would be the biggest climbs we would ever see by a Greek act (Leandos had managed it with ‘The Love in Your Eyes’).
We saw 3 other star rater climbs and they were Brotherhood of Man’s ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’ (the biggest climber 2 weeks back) which moved up 4 from 9 to 5, Cliff Richard’s ‘Miss You Nights’ which climbed 6 from 15 to 9 and J.J. Barrie’s ‘No Charge’ which made a 5 place jump from 20 to 15. It was Cliff’s 9th time with a star rater and he was the 30th act to get to this many.
Richard Jon Smith picked up his 4th faller of the week award with a 6 place drop from 11 to 17 by ‘But I Do’. Smith was the 13th local act to have seen at least 4 biggest fallers.
Bruce Millar’s ‘I Won’t Give Up’ enjoyed its 2nd week as the oldest on the charts and its 15th week overall with us.
Barry Manilow’s ‘I Write The Songs’ was the first of 2 songs to leave the charts this week. It had been with us for 12 weeks and peaked at 5. This was 1 week less and 2 places lower than ‘Mandy’ his only other hit to date. He would grace our charts again.
Bobby Angel saw his weeks total for a song improve. His previous 2 hits (‘The Greatest Christmas Gift’ and ‘Don Junior’) had spent just 2 and 3 weeks in the charts respectively. ‘It’s A Burning Thing’ which left the top 20 this week, managed 9. While being better, this still fell short of the 11 and 17 weeks his first 2 hits had managed. ‘It’s A Burning Thing’ peaked at 15 and this was the worst peak we had seen so far for a song spending 9 weeks in the charts. The next worst was 13 which 5 songs (3 of which were by local acts) had managed.
Abba returned to the chart after an absence of only 4 weeks. Their 7th SA hit was ‘Fernando’ and this put them level with The Seekers at the top of the list for number of hits by acts not from the UK, the US or SA. ‘Fernando’ went to number 1 in Australia (selling over 720,000 unit), Austria, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand, Mexico, Switzerland and the UK (selling over 500,000 units there). It narrowly missed out on topping the charts in Canada, Finland, Norway, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Sweden, making number 2 on all those charts. In the US it made 13 and topped the Adult Contemporary charts there. The original Swedish lyrics of the song by Stig Anderson were different to the English ones that they recorded. ‘Fernando’ was originally recorded by Frida for a solo album and started off with the title of ‘Tango’ but that was changed at the last minute to ‘Fernando’. The arrival of ‘Fernando’ on the charts improved on last week’s 6 UK number 1’s in the top 20 and ‘Fernando’ was now a record equally 7th. The last time we had seen this many UK chart toppers in the top 20 was back in 1965.
Also joining us was Sailor with ‘A Glass Of Champagne’. Sailor consisted of Norwegian born Georg Kajanus, German born Phil Pickett and British born Henry Marsh and Grant Serpell. Despite their international line-up, they are regarded as a British band. Kranjus who had written the song ‘Flying Machine’ for Cliff Richard was also the writer of ‘A Glass Of Champagne’. The song went to number 2 in the UK and made top 3 in Switzerland, Germany and Holland. ‘Sailor’ gave us the 3rd case of a charting group having the same name as a song as we had seen in the top 20 as a song called ‘Sailor’ by Petula Clark spend time in the charts. The other 2 cases of this we had seen was ‘Waterloo’ (local act name and Abba hit) and ‘Sunny’ (song by Bobby Hebb and the woman who had sung ‘Doctor’s Orders’).
The male domination of the top 20 was beginning to wane as they dropped to below 10 of the top 20 for the first time in 13 weeks, although there were still more solo men in the charts than another type of act as they had 9 of the top 20 with the balance being split between 7 groups, 2 solo female acts and 2 collaborations.
Acts from Sweden moved onto 91 weeks in the chart and this gave them 10th place on the list of weeks by a nation to themselves as the Jamaicans on 90 dropped into 11th place. Abba had now accounted for 80 of those 91 Swedish weeks and they were the 23rd act to reach this milestone.
Cliff Richard moved into tied 16th place on the overall weeks count list, his 83 putting him level with The Staccatos.
Richard Jon Smith moved ahead of Bobby Angel and The Rising Sons with his total on 43. He held on to 17th place on the local weeks count list while the latter 2 on 42 fell into tied 18th place.
With Abba and Slik on the chart together, we experienced the 37th time we had 2 acts whose name was just 4 letters long in the chart together. We had seen 5 weeks when there were 3 such acts in the top 20 and that was when we had a run with Abba, Cher and MFSB in the charts at the same time.
‘December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’ by The Four Seasons was the number 1 song for a 3rd week running. Marie Gibson’s ‘One Day At A Time’ moved up 1 from 3 to 2, swapping places with another local song and previous chart topper, Bruce Millar’s ‘I Won’t Give Up’.
The Bellamy Brothers picked up the climber of the week award with a 10 place climb from 15 to 5. This was the 65th time a song had climbed 10 or more places in a week. Tina Charles’ ‘I Love To Love’ and Brotherhood Of Man’s ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’ were the only other star raters with the former moving up 4 from 8 to 4 and the latter climbing 5 from 14 to 9. This was Tina’s 5th time with a star rater having managed it 3 times with her previous hit, ‘You Set My Heart On Fire’ and now twice with ‘I Love To Love’.
Jean-Claude Borelly’s ‘Dolannes Melodie’ was the faller of the week with a 7 place drop from 7 to 14. This was the 28th time an instrumental had been the faller of the week.
There were 2 songs that left the charts this week and both were by local acts. Jonathan Butler’s ‘I’ll Be Home’ had lasted just 3 weeks in the charts and peaked at 16. This was the final song of his to chart. His 2 previous hits had both made the top 5 with ‘I Love How You Love Me’ peaking at 4 and ‘Please Stay’ making it to his best peak of 2. In total he had clocked up 27 weeks which at the time was the tied 30th highest for a local act.
We also said goodbye to the song that had been the oldest on last week’s chart, Flood’s ‘Let Me Into Your Life’. It had been with us for 17 weeks and spent 3 of those at number 1. This would be their only SA chart hit. The song that took over as the oldest was the same song that had taken over the top spot from ‘Let Me Into Your Life’ and that was Bruce Millar’s ‘I Won’t Give Up’ which was sitting on 14 weeks.
New to the charts was Cliff Richard’s ‘Miss You Nights’ which was his 16th SA hit. He still sat 2nd overall on the list of number of hits by an artist, 2 behind leader Tom Jones who was on 18. In contrast, Cliff had by this date had 66 UK hits with ‘Miss You Nights’ being one of them, peaking as it did at 15. It managed to get to 10 in Holland, 17 in Belgium and scraped a peak of 100 in Australia. ‘Miss You Nights’ was a cover of a song recorded by the songwriter Dave Townsend, but his version was never released. In 1994 Cliff released a double A-sided single with it and ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’ which made 14 in the UK. The song resurfaced again in 2003 when Westlife released it also as a double a-sided single with ‘Tonight’. That version got to 3 in the UK. In 2006 the listeners to BBC’s Radio 2 voted it their favourite Cliff song of all time. It had been 186 weeks since Cliff was last seen on our charts and this was the 35th biggest gap we had seen to date and the 84th time the gap had been 100 weeks or more.
The second new entry was J.J. Barrie’s ‘No Charge’ and was the 26th song by a Canadian to chart in SA. Canada sat 4th on the list of hits by acts from a nation with only the big 3 (US, UK and SA) above them. They were 8 hits ahead of the next nation on the list, Germany. ‘No Charge’ was written by Harlan Howard and was first recorded by Melba Montgomery whose version topped the US Country Singles charts. Barrie didn’t manage to chart in the US with his version, but got to number 1 on the UK charts, knocking Abba’s ‘Fernando’ from the top spot before The Wurzel’s ‘Combine Harverster’ dislodged it a week later.
Cliff Richard’s new entry moved him on to 82 weeks in the charts and he now sat tied 18th on the weeks count list alongside Barbara Ray and Chris Andrews and this was the first time in 19 weeks that we had seen any movement in the top 20 of the overall weeks count list. Gene Rockwell’s week count moved on to 51 and he held on to 10th place on the local list while The Dealians on 50 weeks dropped into 11th place. Bobby Angel and Richard Jon Smith moved into tied 17th place on the local list alongside The Rising Sons with their totals on 42.
We now had 8 songs on the charts which had topped the UK, the US or both charts with ‘No Charge’ moving the total up 1.
‘December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’ by The Four Seasons enjoyed a second week at the top of the chart with the previous chart topper, Bruce Millar’s ‘I Won’ Give Up’, unmoved at 2. Marie Gibson’s ‘One Day At A Time’ at 3 was also unmoved.
Brotherhood of Man’s ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’ was the climber of the week moving up 6 from 20 to 14. The Bellamy Brother’s ‘Let Your Love Flow’ was the only other star rater as it climbed 4 from 19 to 15.
There were 2 songs that made the biggest fall this week and they were Flood’s ‘Let Me Into Your Life’ which dropped 5 from 13 to 18 and Barry Manilow’s ‘I Write The Songs’ which fell 5 from 8 into the 13th place that ‘Let Me Into Your Life’ had just vacated. ‘Let Me Into Your Life’ was enjoying its 7th week as the oldest on the charts and had clocked up 17 weeks in total.
We only lost 1 song from the top 20 and that was Tony Christie’s ‘Drive Safely Darlin’ which had enjoyed a run of 10 weeks and peaked at 8. This brought to an end the SA chart career of Mr Christie. He had seen 4 songs chart, clocked up a total of 40 weeks and seen a best peak of 2 which ‘I Did What I Did For Maria’ managed.
The only new entry was the first song by a Greek artist to chart that was not by Vicky Leandros. Demis Roussos’ ‘Happy To Be On An Island In The Sun’ was the 5th song in total by a Greek artist which followed after the 4 hits Leandros had had. Roussos started off his musical career as a member of Aphrodite’s Child alongside Vangelis (remember the ‘Chariots of Fire’ theme tune?) before forging a solo path. ‘Happy To Be On An Island In The Sun’ was produced by George Petsilas who had been married to another well-known Greek singer, Nana Mouskouri. The song made it to number 5 in the UK. Greece moved into tied 12th place on the list of number of hits by acts from a nation, sharing the spot with Italy.
Gene Rockwell became the 48th act overall and the 11th local act to reach the 50 weeks in the chart milestone while The Four Seasons hit the 20 week mark. Rockwell sat tied 10th on the local weeks count list, level with The Dealians.
The Four Seasons’ ‘December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’ became the 15th song to top the UK, US and SA charts as it took over the top spot from Bruce Millar’s ‘I Won’t Give Up’. The latter had enjoyed a run of 6 weeks at the number 1 spot. It dropped to 2.
Tina Charles had one biggest climber under her belt, but that was as part of 5,000 Volts. This week she picked up her first solo one as ‘I Love To Love’ moved up 7 from 17 to 10 to take the award.
Unlike last week where the biggest climber, which also moved up 7 places, was the only star rater in the week, there were 4 other star raters this week. These were Barry Manilow’s ‘I Write The Songs’ (up 4 to 8), Slik’s ‘Forever And Ever’ (up 4 to 14), Bobby Angel’s ‘It’s A Burning Thing’ (up 4 to 15) and Jonathan Butler’s ‘I’ll Be Home’ (up 4 to 16). It was Bobby Angel’s 6th time with a star rater and he was the 10th local act to reach this many.
The faller of the week was Tony Christie’s ‘Drive Safely Darlin’ which dropped 7 from 10 to 17. It was his 4th time with the award. This was the 25th time we had seen the climber and faller move the same number of places and this figure had been 7 or greater.
Flood’s ‘Let Me Into Your Life’ enjoyed a 6th week as the oldest on the charts. It was sitting on 16 weeks.
We lost 3 songs from the chart this week, the first of which was Conway Twitty’s ‘Don’t Cry Joni’. It had been with us for 7 weeks and peaked at 13. Of his 2 solo hits, this was his best performer, but it didn’t do nearly as well as his duet with Loretta Lynne, ‘As Soon As I hang Up The Phone’, which managed 16 weeks and peaked at 1. This brought to an end Twitty’s SA chart career which consisted of 3 hits, 25 weeks and 5 weeks at 1 with his aforementioned duet.
Tina Charles’ time with 2 hits in the charts came to an end after just 2 weeks as ‘You Set My Heart On Fire’ was the second of the 3 songs to leave the top 20. It managed 12 weeks and a peak of 4 which was better than the 9 weeks and peak of 10 that the 5,000 Volts hit that she sang on, ‘I’m On Fire’, managed.
We also saw the longest run with 2 songs by French acts in the top 20 come to an end as Pierre Groscolas’ ‘Lady Lay’ left after 10 weeks and a peak of 4. This 8 week run would the all time record for having 2 French acts on the charts at the same time. We had had 1 pairing before this and would see 1 more.
The first of the new entries was Gerry Grayson & Debbie with their song ‘Tears On The Telephone’. The song was a cover of a song by Frenchman Claude François who had originally recorded it in French as ‘Le Téléphone Pleure’ but when he translated it into English, he scored a number 35 hit in the UK with it. Hot Chocolate also scored a UK hit with a song with the same title, but that was a different one. Greyson had been on our charts once before with his number 13 hit, ‘Don’t Break This Heart’. The Debbie in question was Greyson’s daughter.
The second new entry was by David and Homer Bellamy, better known as The Bellamy Brothers. ‘Let Your Love Flow’ was written by a former roadie for Neil Diamond, a guy called Larry E. Williams. The song was a worldwide hit, topping the charts in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the US and going top 10 in Belgium (#6), Canada (#3), Ireland (#3), Holland (#6), New Zealand (#2), Norway (#2), Sweden (#2) and the UK (#7). In 2008 the song made it back on to the UK charts following its use in an advert for Barclaycard and climbed to 21 on that occasion.
Our final new entry was Brotherhood Of Man’s first SA hit, ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’. This was the 5th song to chart in SA that had won the Eurovision Song Competition and continued a recent trend of letting a Eurovision winner chart every 2 years as we had now had the winners from 1970, 1972, 1974 and 1976 chart, but those for 1971, 1973 and 1975 hadn’t. The only one out of kilter was the 1967 winner, Sandie Shaw’s ‘Puppet On A String’ which did make our charts. ‘Save All Your Kisses For Me’ topped the UK charts as well as those in Holland, Belgium and Norway, just missing out in Germany and Switzerland where it made it to number 2. In the US it managed to get to 27. One of the songwriters, Tony Hillier, had also had song writing credits on Cliff Richards’ 1971 hit in SA, ‘Sunny Honey Girl’.
We now had 9 local songs on the charts and it had been back in January 1974 when we had last had this many. This was 121 weeks previously. It had been 123 weeks since the local acts had occupied at least half of the top 20.
Three acts celebrated reaching the 40 weeks in the charts mark and they were Richard Jon Smith, Bobby Angel and Tony Christie. 71 acts in total had now reached this milestone so far with 19 of those being local acts.
Richard Jon Smith and Bobby Angel sat tied 18th on the local weeks count list and were unmoved there while Gene Rockwell moved level 11th with Maria on 49 weeks.
George McCrae became the 44th act to see their points total reach the 600 mark. McCrae breezed past this level and sat on 606 which placed him 42nd overall.
With ‘Let your Love Flow’ topping the US charts and ‘Save Your Kisses for Me’ topping the UK charts, we now had 7 songs on the top 20 that had topped the charts in either or both the UK and the US. It had been just over a year since we had last seen this many UK/US chart toppers in the charts when on 16 May 1975 there were 8.
SA Singles Charts 