Popular '71

This was the year I discovered there was music beyond what Radio1 and TOTP were playing, and Peter Glaze was parodying.

I was all of ten at the time, and started buying Disc, and reading it from cover to cover. You had to trust music journalists a lot more then, because, although you became aware of it, there was no way to actively hear new stuff other than chancing upon it on the tranny. (If you were a little older than ten you could ask your record shop to play something for you – they actually did that for you back then – but sadly not if you were ten years old!)

Don’t know why I went for Disc over any of the other three – possibly the middle pages poster, or more likely J. Edward Oliver’s fantastic cartoon (half) page at the back. Many years later I was lucky enought to engage in some correspondence with the great cartoonist, and it was a sad loss when he passed away around this time last year.

So this was the first year I would have been aware of all the big hits, and their provenance, before they suddenly appeared fully-formed on TOTP.

I was fast becoming a Bolan nut, so there’s a couple of classics straight away – Dave and Ansel and George Harrison are obvious classics, and I LIKE Sally Carr’s voice, so although this is not a patch on some of their later hits (e.g. Soley Soley, Bottoms Up, Sacramento) it would still get a six.

Oh.. please note my vote for “Maggie May” is really for “Reason To Believe” – a far better song, performed far better, but slightly less “commercial” sounding. Or are you counting it as a #18 or wherever it peaked before they stopped listing it?

“Baby Jump” – had a vague recollection of quite liking it, but I’ll be honest – I had to dig it out to check!

1971, a classic year for pop. Who knew?

I only voted for four of them, not including “Baby Jump.”

A decent year by and large undersold by its number ones.

1971 was a kind of year zero for me, too. Mungo Jerry was at the start of my big single buying habit that continues to this day and also the seed of that odd loyalty I still carry to some extent whereby if I like one record by an artist a lot, I have to collect the rest, so I didn’t just buy ‘Baby Jump’ (which I voted for but can’t really remember either) but the next two singles as well, even though I didn’t like any of them that much. (I can just about remember ‘Lady Rose’).

I got big on Rod/The Faces and even went to see them live, but soon tired of T.Rex and moved into a singer/songwriter loving period (this was the music that really dominated the early 70s for the generation directly above me), which earned the opprobrium of my prog loving peers. Went down well with the girls though, as I would eventually find. Scarily, or nostalgically, I voted for nine of these number ones and I am shocked – very shocked – that the Tams should be rated so low. 1970 and 71 were the years when the UK completely embraced all sorts of classic 60s soul and surely this one belongs in the pantheon. But. Or. Eh, maybe I should dig out the Motown Chartbusters it’s on before I ramble on too much about how great it is, just in case it isn’t…

Can you add a vote for Maggie May from me please as I forgot to click that one when I did the deed (I also voted in part for Reason To Believe as the superior half what I distinctly recall having been a double-A-side.

My copy has MagMa as the b-side. As does everyone elses from then, I suspect.

It’s the source of one excellent piece of fiction from Lester Bangs, in that book of ‘his’.

Fair cop, DJP, I’ve just pulled out my incredibly scratchy copy of ‘Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me’ and it is, indeed on Probe, a rather nice pink label, dated 1964. Decent Coastersish song. Still well worthy of a 6. I think I had it conjoined in my head with the Elgins’ wonderful ‘Heaven Must Have Sent You’, a hit in the same era, and which I do have on a Motown Chartbusters comp. It’s one of HDH’s sweetest songs.

The Phantom NME Chart number ones of 1971; Another Day, My Brother Jake, I Did What I Did For Maria, Never Ending Song Of Love.

Yes, I frightened myself there. But the fact the Belgians placed Nothing Rhymed right at the very top seemed like justification. Soley Soley, too. Hats off to them. Now, back to filing my gold label Brunswicks…

I’d have loved to include it, but sadly the clue is in the “.co.uk”

To provide a sense of upside down context, two singles got to number 40 on the same chart in 1971;

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