This week we saw the 130th different song top our charts and it came in the form of The Pipes and Drums And The Military Band of The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards’ ‘Amazing Grace’ which dethroned Daniel Boone’s ‘Beautiful Sunday’. It was the 5th of 7 instrumental songs that would eventually make the number 1 position. The top 4 songs had all now made the number 1 spot and this was the 4th week since the start of the charts that the top 4 were either the current number 1 or were a former number 1.

The Hollies picked up their 8th biggest climber award as their hit, ‘Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress’ jumped up 11 places from 19 to 8 to take the honours. So far 42 act had seen a climb of 10 or more places in a week with 3 of these (Elvis Presley, Tom Jones and Donovan) having managed it twice. The Hollies’ jump this week was the 19th climb of 11 or more places with Tom Jones being the only one to feature twice in those 19.

Badfinger’s ‘Day After Day’ was the only other star rater this week. It climbed 7 from 16 to 9.

The New Seekers’ ‘Beg, Steal Or Borrow’ dropped 5 from 10 to 15 to be the biggest faller this week. It was the 3rd time they had seen a biggest faller and they had now managed this with all 3 of their hits to date.

The Congregations’ ‘Softly Whispering I Love You’ was the first of 3 songs to depart the chart this week. It had been with us for 14 weeks with 2 of those being spent at number 1. This would be their only SA chart hit. The departure of ‘Softly Whispering I Love You’ meant we had a new oldest on the chart and that honour fell to Neil Reid’s ‘Mother Of Mine’ which sat on 13 weeks.

James Lloyd’s ‘If You Go’ went. It had had 2 runs on the chart, the first was 1 week at 19, then a 2 week run spent at 15 and 17. From this one should be able to deduce that its total run was 3 weeks with a peak of 15. This ended Lloyd’s time in our charts. He had scored 2 hits, spent 16 weeks in total in the top 20 and his best peak was 6 with ‘Keep On Smiling’.

America’s ‘A Horse with No Name’ was the last of the leavers. It had spent 8 weeks with us and peaked at 12 and would be their only SA chart hit despite the success of their 1983 hit ‘The Border’ which made number 2 on Radio 5 and 4 on the Radio 702 charts.

The highest new entry this week was Roberta Flack’s ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ and it was the first time ever we saw her on our charts. This new arrival broke a 3 week drought where we were without a single solo female artist gracing the top 20. ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ was the 3rd Grammy Song Of The Year to chart in SA and had originally been recorded by Flack in 1969 and appeared on her album ‘First Take’ that year. It’s inclusion in the Clint Eastwood film, ‘Play Misty For Me’ in 1971 resulted in its worldwide chart success where it topped the charts in the US and Australia and made number 6 in the UK. The song was written in 1957 by British folk singer Ewan MacColl (father of singer Kirsty MacColl). In 2000 Celine Dion took a version of it to number 19 in the UK and 7 years later in 2007, Leona Lewis had a number 73 hit in the UK with it.

At number 19 The Carpenter’s ‘Hurting Each Other’ became the 29th song to re-enter the charts. It had been out of the top 20 for 2 weeks. 4 of the 29 that had re-entered the charts had done so twice giving us a total of 33 times we had seen re-entries so far. This was the 11th time we had had a re-entry this year.

Last of the new entries was local lad Dickie Loader with his 4th hit to date. It follow up his 1966 hit, ‘Sea Of heartbreak’, 1969’s ‘Young Love Can Hurt’ and 1970’s ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’. His previous hit had left the charts 81 weeks previously giving him the 8th highest gap to date between hits for a local act. Of those 8, only 2 were less than 100 (the other being 93 weeks between The Invaders ‘Chapel Of Dreams’ and ‘There’s A Light, There’s A Way’). Loader also had the 3rd biggest gap between hits for a local act which happened between his first 2 hits. Other than his first hit, Loader had penned all his others. Including Loader, 13 local acts so far had managed 4 hits to date. With this new entry, Loader reached the 30 weeks in the charts mark and was the 62nd act overall and the 15th local act to reach this milestone.

The Brits dropped below 10 hits in the charts again after having had 2 weeks with half the chart being by acts from there. They dropped to 9 hits. The local hit count in the top 20 moved up to 4 and it had been 12 weeks since it had last been this high. On the overall hits count front, the Americans drew level with the Brits with both nations having contributed 312 apiece to our charts to date. The locals were in 3rd place on 164.

The Hollies became the 6th act to reach the magical 100 weeks in the chart mark. They followed Tom Jones, The Troggs, Percy Sledge, The Bee Gees and Creedence Clearwater Revival (in that order) in reaching this milestone.

For the first time in 7 weeks we saw some movement on the top 20 of the weeks count list as Engelbert Humperdinck moved into 16th place alongside The Archies with both acts now on 78 weeks.

Dickie Loader’s milestone achievement of 30 week mentioned above failed to move him from 15th spot on the local weeks count list, but The Rising Sons who moved on to 22 weeks now shared 20th place on that list with Hilary and Carike Keuzenkamp.

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