Thursday, July 01, 2021

THURSDAY BACKTRACK: Music and news from 60 years ago - week ending 1 July 1961

Elvis and Del Shannon still occupy the top two places; at third, for the second week, comes 'Temptation':


Some memorable events (via Wikipedia):

25 June: American neo-Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell, discharged from the US Navy two years earlier for his political views, attends a Washington, D.C. rally of Elijah Mohammed's Nation of Islam.The strange connection is based on both parties' belief in racial segregation, and vehement antisemitism. Malcolm X (who six months before had been sent in secret to broker a truce with the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta) gives a speech there;  Rockwell himself speaks at another NOI rally in Chicago in February 1962 (in 1967 he is murdered by John Patler, a former member of Rockwell's party who had been expelled a few months earlier for trying to introduce Marxist ideas.) In 1964, Malcolm X leaves the NOI, disillusioned with its leader, and is assassinated the next year by NOI member Talmadge Hayer.

27 June: Arthur Michael Ramsey is enthroned as 100th Archbishop of Canterbury.


28 June: following the April failure of the Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored 'Bay of Pigs' invasion of Cuba, President Kennedy issues a trio of directives to transfer the responsibility for the planning of peacetime paramilitary operations to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 'The directives... were so secret that copies were not released to either the CIA or to the U.S. Department of State' (pic source.)

1 July: Fantasy Island opens: a theme park on Grand Island near Buffalo, New York

UK chart hits, week ending 1 July 1961

Htp: Clint's labour-of love compilation https://www.sixtiescity.net/charts/61chart.htm

1

Runaway

Del Shannon

London

2

Surrender

Elvis Presley

RCA

3

Temptation

The Everly Brothers

Warner Brothers

4

Pasadena

The Temperance Seven

Parlophone

5

A Girl Like You

Cliff Richard and The Shadows

Columbia

6

Hello Mary Lou / Travellin' Man

Ricky Nelson

London

7

Halfway To Paradise

Billy Fury

Decca

8

But I Do

Clarence 'Frogman' Henry

Pye

9

The Frightened City

The Shadows

Columbia

10

You'll Never Know

Shirley Bassey

Columbia

11

Pop Goes The Weasel / Bee*Bom

Anthony Newley

Decca

12

Runnin' Scared

Roy Orbison

London

13

Well I Ask You

Eden Kane

Decca

14

I Told Every Little Star

Linda Scott

Columbia

15

Little Devil

Neil Sedaka

RCA

16

Have A Drink On Me

Lonnie Donegan

Pye

17

More Than I Can Say

Bobby Vee

London

18

Marcheta

Karl Denver

Decca

19

Ring Of Fire

Duane Eddy

London

20

Weekend

Eddie Cochran

London


1 comment:

James Higham said...

Duane Eddy still in there - good to see.