Welcome one and all to our fourth ‘On This Day’ feature, in which we take a look back at chart-topping history through the records which have made #1. (Please feel free to check out the previous dates that we have covered here, here, and here.)
What, then, were the stories atop the UK singles chart on August 28th through the years…?
Well, way back in 1953 Frankie Laine’s ‘I Believe’ was starting its seventeenth of eighteen weeks at number one. That’s a lot of weeks. Amazingly, no other record in the intervening seventy-two years has managed to equal it. The record set by just the 9th number one single – the charts having begun less than a year earlier – still stands! Interestingly, two of the records that came closest – ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’ (16 weeks, and the record holder for consecutive weeks) and ‘Love Is All Around’ (15 weeks) – were also both at number one on this date. The only other 15-weeker, Drake’s ‘One Dance’, was sadly not at #1 on the 28th August. ‘I Believe’ returned to #1 in the nineties ‘thanks’ to Robson & Jerome, but I won’t bother linking to that.
Eleven years later, and sitting at #1 was the Honeycomb’s stomping ‘Have I the Right?’ It was the third and final chart-topper produced by the visionary Joe Meek. Of the three, this is probably the most traditionally ‘pop’ sounding, though it is still crammed with wacky techniques – such as having the band stomping on the staircase outside his studio – and instruments, such as the slicing synths. It hit the charts in that glorious autumn of ’64, one of the most fertile times for British pop with ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’, ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘I’m Into Something Good’, and this, taking turns on top.
28th August is also the birthday of The Honeycombs’ female drummer, Honey Lantree. One of few women to take up the sticks – I can only think of Karen Carpenter and Meg White – she had been discovered while working as a hairdresser. Her salon manager was in a band, let her try out, and was so impressed that he incorporated Lantree and her brother into his group. She retired from music when the Honeycombs split in 1967 following Meek’s death, but she rejoined them every so often for tours right up until 2005.
August 28th has seen not one, but two versions of ‘I Got You Babe’ sitting at number one in the singles chart. The original was, of course, by Sonny and Cher in 1965…
It was their only #1 as a duo, and Cher’s first of four, spanning thirty-three years. Exactly twenty years later, and a cover by UB40 and Chrissie Hynde was spending its solitary week on top. I gave this record a ‘Meh’ award, and my opinions on it haven’t changed much. It’s still a bit of a slog…
On this day in 1977, and the world still coming to terms with his death aged just forty-two, Elvis Presley’s current single climbed to #1, the first of his record five posthumous chart-toppers. ‘Way Down’ had spent its first two weeks on chart climbing from #46 to #42, so its safe to assume that it wouldn’t have been a massive hit without tragedy striking. However, it would also be wrong to suggest that The King was a spent force at this point in his career, as his previous single ‘Moody Blue’ had made it to #6. In my original post on it, I rejoiced in the fact that fate ensured Elvis’s final single was a rocker, given that he’d spent much of the ’70s releasing schmaltzy ballads. Lyrically, it’s also fitting for the recently deceased star, given that it’s called ‘Way Down’, and compares a woman’s love to prescription drugs… However, fun as the song is, and as lively as Elvis’s perfomance is, the show is stolen by JD Sumner’s astonishingly low closing note.
Finally, on this day in 1993, Culture Beat’s ‘Mr. Vain’ was enjoying its first of four weeks at #1. I bring this to your attention not just because it’s a banger – and it is – but because it was the first chart-topper in forty years not to be released as a 7″ single. Vinyl was on its way out after a century as the medium of choice, to be replaced in the space of twenty years by CDs, then digital downloads, then streaming…
Thanks for joining this delve back through the decades. Next up, we continue our journey through 2001 with a similarly retro reboot…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Wow, that’s fascinating about Frankie Lane’s “I Believe”. I didn’t know. I can’t remember ever hearing about it spending the most weeks at the top.
It’s quite a nice song. As for whether it’s a hymn, well, “I believe that someone in the great somewhere hears every word”…well…that sounds pretty theistic!
(I wonder if it influenced “The Miracle is Mine” from Father Ted, by Neil Hannon. I vaguely remember mentioning that song here before; apologies if I’m being repetitive.)
I was hugely amused by this passage in your entry on that record: “My interest grew subtly; from simply knowing who was in the charts, to listening to them every week, to writing down the Top 10, Top 20, Top 40. My uncle had done the same thing for years – and every so often he would let me look through huge ring-binders full of several decades’ worth of hand-written charts, and peek into the cupboard where he had a copy of every number one single since the ’60s on vinyl, cassette or CD. By 2002, though, he was losing interest (it was, I suppose, a bit weird for a man in his fifties to be buying Atomic Kitten cassingles) and so perhaps in some sense I took over from him. I’ve never thought about it like that… We never discussed it or anything. He doesn’t know I do this. “
Seriously? That’s so English! (So Irish as well, actually. The Irish writer Flann O’Brien wrote his first novel sitting at the kitchen table with his father. He never told him he was writing a novel. It wasn’t the sort of thing they talked about.)
Maolsheachlann
Haha well I’ve always thought my chart obsession was a bit of a dirty secret. Not the coolest hobby. I have told close friends about when I used to write out the charts in a notebook (I used to do the same for football scores) and they think it’s at best eccentric, at worst a bit weird… My uncle was more open about it. He also owned every #1 single from 1952 to well into the 1990s, and often let me look into the cupboard where he kept them… I assume he’s still got them, and that they’re worth a fair bit by now!
That Frankie Laine fact does get overlooked. Possibly because it’s so old now, but also more because he did 18 weeks in three different spells (9, 6 and 3 weeks), whereas Bryan Adams did 16 weeks in one consecutive run. I’d bet most fairweather music fans would claim the Adams’ record to have had the most weeks at number one, and be wrong…
That Honeycombs single has never really dated. ‘Have I he Right’ was one of Joe Meek’s most remarkable productions ever – and as you said, summer 1964 really was one mighty fine season for British pop, just at a time when little me in short trousers was starting to find Sunday afternoons was one of the highlights of the week when I could tune in to the BBC Light Programme at 4.00 for an hour and listen to Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman’s breathless countdown (or count-up) of the Top 20 on the BBC Light Programme. (We didn’t have TV and Top of the Pops for another year).
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Your series reminds me of my long-running “On This Day in Rock & Roll History” feature, which by now has kind of fallen by the wayside. Some of the installments also included no. 1 songs.
Honey Lantree of The Honeycombs really was a standout as a female drummer at the time. While they still remain an exception, female drummers are no longer quite as rare as they used to be. Cindy Blackman Santana and Sheila E. are more prominent examples. Another female drummer who comes to my mind is Tikyra Jackson of Southern Avenue. While they happen to be one of my favorite contemporary bands, I realize neither Jackson nor the group are a household name.
Yes, to be honest I was being a bit glib when naming my female drummers, but Karen C and Meg W are probably the two that have most entered pop culture. Honey Lantree had 2-3 years of fame and then basically retired around 1967, and I respect that a lot!
You’d think there’d be a lot more. We all know the ladies are good at banging on the same drum!
Nice resume there! I also caught the writing chart bug, but not from an uncle, it was a double whammy of hey Jude hitting number one and Mary Hopkin winning Opportunity Knocks and Paul producing Those Were The Days – I’d been a pop music fan since I was 5 or so but this was the moment I started listening to Alan Freeman on Sundays for the chart rundown. My first personal chart was in 1968, and in 1971 I started writing the UK charts down in lunchtimes on Tuesdays with Johnny Walker’s new chart rundown at school and beyond, and didn’t stop until the 2000’s – so not just your uncle, though mine wasnt lack of interest, it just seemed pointless when you could get them online and in Music Week, and books. My personal charts stayed though!
Oh and I never cared about being a nerd, all my friends have always known I’m a chart/new music obsessive 🙂 Being anti-cool is the new cool and don’t listen to anyone who says otherwise especially teenagers, hah! 🙂
While I am very interested in the charts, and football scores, it’s also got something to do with the soothing feeling that comes from writing lists. I only ever got lines as a punishment once at school, but I never saw why it was such a terrible thing. I’ve always quite liked copying things down 😆
hah me too, writing lines as a punishment wasnt really a punishment,, 🙂
Wow…I never heard that Elvis song Way Down before. I remember I was watching Gilligans Island when the news came he died. It didn’t hit me hard but all the grownups around me were really down. I would soon know how they felt 3 years later on December 8, 1980.
Oh I’m surprised it wasn’t a hit in the US. I’d say Lennon’s death would have been more shocking than Elvis, given the circumstances.
Yea…and it was also my age… from 10 to 13 is a huge difference but yea…you are right about what happened…I like the song though!