Freddy Breck’s run at the top of the charts came to an end as Cat Stevens’ ‘Can’t Keep It In’ knocked the former’s ‘We Believe In Tomorrow’ off the number 1 spot. Breck at been at number 1 for 5 weeks and he dropped into second place. Stevens had missed out on topping the charts back in 1967 when his ‘Matthew And Son’ failed to capitalise on crashing into the charts at number 5, only going on to stall at 2.

Elton John’s ‘Daniel’ was the climber and the only star rater of the week with a 4 place climb from 18 to 14. This was his first time with the biggest climber award.

Falling honours went to The Sweet who’s ‘Blockbuster!’ dropped 5 from 14 to 19 to take the award. This was the band’s 11th time with the faller award and they now sat tied second for number of fallers, joining Creedence Clearwater Revival and Tom Jones on 11 and sitting 1 behind leaders, The Bee Gees who were on 12.

We had now seen 7 weeks with Lobo’s ‘I’d Love You To Want Me’ and Don Gibson’s ‘(Woman (Beautiful Woman)’ sitting as the oldest on the charts. Both songs had now been with us for 21 weeks.

Richard Jon Smith’s ‘Candlelight’ was finally extinguished after a respectable run of 9 weeks and a peak of 11. This had been his first SA chart hit and there was plenty more to come from Mr Knockout as he was known. There were no other songs leaving the charts this week.

The new entry in ‘Candlelight’s place was ‘Never Never Never’ by Shirley Bassey (she was just plain Shirley Bassey back then, in 2000 she became Dame Shirley Bassey). By the time this song, her first SA hit, reached our charts, she had already seen 27 songs chart in the UK, with ‘Never Never Never’ being the 27th. In the US she had only had 3 chart hits, 2 of which were themes from James Bond Movies (‘Goldfinger’ and ‘Diamonds Are Forever’). ‘Never Never Never’ would only hit the US charts about a month after it entered the SA Top 20. It made number 8 in the UK and 48 in the US. The song was an English version of a song called ‘Grenade Grande Grande’ which topped the Italian charts sung by an artist called Mina.

Shirley’s arrival on the charts meant that we now had 7 of the top 20 songs being by solo female artists and this was a new record to date. The significant seven were Vicky Leandros, Maria, Barbara Ray, Maureen McGovern, Carly Simon, Roberta Flack and Shirley Bassey.

The Archies dropped to number 18 on the weeks count list as The Sweet moved 1 ahead of them on to 79 weeks and took 17th place for themselves. Middle Of The Road did a similar thing with Neil Diamond, their 77 weeks putting them 1 ahead of Neil Diamond causing the latter to drop to 20 while Middle Of The Road were 19th on their own.

On the local weeks count list, Barbara Ray moved into tied 7th place with The Peanut Butter Conspiracy while John Edmond in position 6 stayed 1 week ahead of her.

Lobo’s ‘I’d Love You To Want Me’ became the 17th song to pass the 300 point mark as its total moved on to 304 and put it 15th overall. Don Gibson’s ‘Woman (Beautiful Woman) which hit this milestone for points last week, moved into 10th place. Lobo had now had 2 in the charts for 7 straight weeks and was the 11th act so far to manage this.

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