Originally Posted by david1956:
“That's right Rich. The Small Faces were denied a number one purely as a result of a clerical error. The Record retailer chart is full of them. The thing is though it only sampled about 20 shops and was unknown to the record buying public. It also had a cut off day of Friday when the other charts went from Monday to Saturday. The RR chart was always going to be out if date because most records were sold on Saturday. The most read chart was the NME.”
This is something that it a huge grey area for some.
Some of the retro chart shows use the charts that the BBC led us believe we're true but these were based in the early days on such a small sample of shops as mentioned above.
That is why some shows differ to others. For example there could be a Pick of the Pops from January 1967 broadcast and another chart show doing the exact same week but chart positions differ.
Most listeners would believe that if its on the BBC then it must be correct and that some syndicated show on an internet station must have made up their chart.
This, as we know is far from the truth and often the complete opposite.
The Guiness Book Of Hit Singles that have been compiled over the years do not carry an accurate reflection on the early days of charts. I admit it can't have been easy to compile charts in those days often relying on a very small collection of shops across the UK and results saving to be phoned in. It was so easy to manipulate the charts in those days. The record companies would know which shops to push their singles in to get them up the charts.
I too have glanced that link to the website of UK charts. What utter poppy cock. So they are saying Band Aid's Do They Know Its Christmas was the 19th best selling song of 1984 even though it sold a million copies in the FIRST WEEK of release and 2.75 million copies by the end of the year. Compare that with 1.8 million copies of Relax then you can see how reliable this website is. They've even got Automatic by the Pointer Sisters one place above it at No.18 and that sold just over 320,000 copies.
Just had a bigger laugh. Look at the 90's charts. They have at number 11 Elton John's 'Candle in the Wind 97'
The BIGGEST selling single of all time.