Chart Positions

[aarondillon2011@gmail.com]

Sometimes I am still shocked at how low a song charted, especially a song you know very well like "In The Midnight Hour" by Wilson Pickett. Did it really only get to #21 on the pop charts? And what about some of the Beatles songs that you hear on the radio that charted low but for the longest time you thought maybe they were top 10 hits because they were played so much?

[juicefree20]

Aaron:

in the case ofWilson, I believe that Pop Radio wasn't quite ready for raw Soul Music. I don't think that radio truly accepted hard soul music until around the time that Aretha hit with Respect. I'll have to check my Billboard Hot 100 book to verify, but as I think back, that's how I remember things to have been. I also believe that it's because of this that they didn't have as many Gold records as one would be led to believe. Given all of the hysteria surrounding them & the type of fans that they had, I believe that many of their fans bought the albums so that they could look at their pictures & hug them or hang them on the walls or something.

I also seem to remember that in their early days, a lot of the releases, both 45s & Lps had differing release schedules.

As for The Beatles, Ibelieve that it was simply a matter of them releasing so much music, that many times they were competing with themselves & cutting into their own sales. Add Motown, other British Invasion groups, american Pop & R&B & that accounted for a lot of positions on the Pop chart.

[roger]

Well, I find chart positions fascinating, but I also know that they don't tell the whole story and should only be used as a rough guide to popularity.

In Britain the "official" chart that the BBC uses has always been based on weekly sales over the counter [[ or more recently via the PC ). The idea being that the #1 single would be the one that sold the most in the U.K. over the 7 day period being surveyed, the #2 single would be the one that came second and so on.

It sounds quite simple and in the modern era of bar-codes and counters on downloading sites it is probably accurate. Back in the 60s and 70s they tried to do it by surveying record shops and getting them to return details of what they were actually selling to the chart compilers. In particular the big chains were used .. Boots/Woolworths/HMV and a selection of the independent local stores that were in British towns back then.

This meant that there could be big discrepancies between what was being played on the radio, what was being played in the clubs/discotheques and what was appearing on the charts. Some of the British radio stations, in particular BBC Radio One, used to have a "chart based" format in the late sixties, seventies and through into the eighties, so their playlists were based around what was in the Top 20 or 30 of the pop chart, and being played on the radio is an important element in generating sales.

Many record buyers would just concentrate on what was in the higher reaches of the charts, when I started buying records at the age of 11 and 12 I used to be like that and "well meaning aunts" would buy records as presents using the charts as guides, so merely by being in the Top 10 a record would sell.

So, to a large extent, the British charts were a viscious circle .. radio play would generate sales, which would create chart positions, which would create radio play which would generate sales .. until everyone had either bought the record or was heartily sick of hearing the d*mn thing!! And believe me I got heartily sick of hearing more records than I care to remember!!

If a new record came out where the BBC could be 99% certain that it would sell enough to make the chart it would go straight on their Radio One playlist .. e.g. a new BEATLES or ROLLING STONES tune, a new release that was already scheduled to be performed on a big TV show, or that year's British Eurovision Song Contest entry. If a record had just come out and was already showing in the lower reaches of the chart .. e.g. new in at #35 and looking to be in the Top 30 next week, it would get on the playlist. If the people who compiled the Radio One playlist particularly liked a new record and thought it "deserved" to be a hit it might get on the playlist.

There was a problem with slightly "left field" releases, I'll stick with Soul/R&B though it also applied to Reggae/Country/Hard-Rock etc. In that the playlist was also supposed to reflect a wide range of styles to appeal to as many people as possible, so a playlist of [[say) 40 records might only include [[say) 10 Soul tunes. It wouldn't really matter if virtually every club/discotheque and shop was blasting out Soul record after Soul record [[ which for a while in the mid '70s seemed to be the case ) the BBC Radio One playlist would not and could not reflect this.

There was another "problem" with Soul/R&B in that a large proportion of sales were via specialist shops, most of which were not chart return shops. Even worse, a large proportion of sales in these shops were U.S. imports which didn't count as potential entrants to the charts anyway.

Another "problem" was that Soul/R&B records could be "slow burners" that sold massively over a long period of time, but not enough in any particular week to chart. A lot of the big British "Pop" records were novelty items that soon became out of date, but sold massively over a period of six or eight weeks and therefore charted.

Generally there was a time delay of at least 6 to 8 weeks between a record's U.S. release and any British release, whilst the U.K. record companies debated whether they would release it, how they could promote it and as they obtained master tapes etc. In that time a large number of sales could be "lost", if a record was particularly hot. Probably the best example of this is "Lets Get It On" .. it only got to #31 on the U.K charts but it must have sold tens of thousands on import, the "lost" sales led to reduced airplay.

So in the 1970s record companies started to look for ways to "hype" their new releases into the charts. And if they knew the identity of the chart return shops [[ which they did ) they could hype new releases by virtually "giving away" special editions to these shops .. special "limited edition" low price "Picture Sleeves", "Coloured Vinyl", 12" remixes, to try to boost sales. This could mean the difference between a new release selling [[say) 4000 in a week, and not making the chart and therefore missing out on the playlist, and it selling [[say) 5000 in a week and appearing as a new entry at #42 on the chart and making the playlist.

Worked too!! As an example "Boogie Oogie Oogie" was around for a few weeks as a reasonable selling new release [[ after being a reasonable selling import for a few weeks ) enough to trouble the bottom end of the charts but not getting much U.K. radio play .. Capitol records put out a special limited edition "12 inch extended remix" at virtually the same price as the regular 7" .. there was a mad scramble to get this from people who already had the standard 7" .. the record leapt up the charts, got airplay and eventually made the U.K. Top 5.

Interesting record "Boogie Oogie Oogie" from a chart perspective ..

It debuted on the Billboard R&B charts on 13th May 1978, had a 25 week run and peaked at #1.
It debuted on the U.K. chart on 17th June 1978 had a 16 week run and peaked at #3.
It debuted on the Billboard Hot-100 on 24th June 1978, had a 23 week run and peaked at #1.
It reached #1 on the Billboard R&B chart on 5th August 1978.
it reached #3 on the U.K. chart on 12th August 1978.
It reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 9th September 1978.

So, it reached its U.K sales peak around the same time in reached its Billboard R&B peak, and by the time it got to #1 on the Billboard Hot-100 it was falling off the British charts. Which shows how volatile the U.K. charts were around then compared with the U.S.

Here is the U.K. chart for August 12th 1978 where it peaked at #3 ..

http://www.theofficialcharts.com/arc.../1/1978-08-12/

Did the surge in U.K. sales from that special 12" release have a knock on effect by causing increased interest across the Atlantic? Quite possibly!

In the mid '60s things were a little different .. this was the era of British offshore pirate radio. Those stations would play "B" sides and L.P. tracks as much as they would play the "A" sides and their charts [[ The Radio London "Fab 40" etc ) were literally made-up by them to illustrate what you might hear on the station that week. For example "Baby Do The Philly Dog" was in the Radio London Top-10 but never made the sales charts at all, so listeners to that station might think it was a big "hit", people who look at the charts will think it was not. I remember that when I got my first "U.K. Chart" book in the early '70s I was VERY surprised to see that it didn't include "My World Is Empty Without You" or "Along Comes Mary" in it .. which I had thought were both big hits!!

Roger

[MIKEW-UK]

Roger, your epic posting on the charts situation in the UK is superb. Thank you. It really brings back all the memories of just how difficult it was for me to hear new soul releases from the mid 60s and onwards. I was living in Plymouth in my teens and relied on Radio Luxembourg as my sole exposure to soul sounds, and in the West Country the transmissions were full of static and the sound would wax and wane, it was dreadful. I sought out information by subscribing to Home of the Blues / Blues and Soul, and as I had no hope of hearing most songs before purchasing, I learnt to distinguish the different styles [[Chicago / Memphis / Detroit / New York / Miami / Philly), then the studios, composers, arrangers, etc to decide what to buy blind. I would then go to a record store in Plymouth town centre and place an order and pay for a single that I had never heard but decided to buy on the strength of the credits, and which would be specially ordered and arrive after a week or two on the Red Star rail freight service in the guards van from London! Oh the anticipation, the excitement of collecting the record and then getting home to play it. Of course, the other thing is that so far as I could tell, I was the only person in Plymouth who had any interest whatsoever in this kind of music, and I also learnt that trying to interest anyone else in appreciating this music was a complete waste of time as they never 'got it'.

I really appreciate all the great posts on SoulfulDetroit as it proves there are indeed others out there who do 'get it' and also share these amazing lifelong passions.