Thursday, August 12, 2021

THURSDAY BACKTRACK: Music and news from 60 years ago - week ending 12 August 1961

At #3 this week is John Leyton's haunting 'Johnny, Remember Me':


Some memorable events (via Wikipedia):

6 August: British racing driver Stirling Moss wins the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring:

7 August: Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram begins his now-famous experiment to test how far people will go in following instructions to give (what they think are) increasingly powerful electric shocks to volunteers (played by actors who scream and twist). On average some 60% are persuaded to go all the way and give apparently fatal 450-volt shocks; even those who refuse do not try to stop the experiment or check the health of the victim. These results bear disturbingly on the excuse made by some Nazi war criminals that they were 'just obeying orders.'
Illustration by Fred the Oyster, CC BY-SA 4.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35182994


8 August: The Fantastic Four make their first comic-book appearance (the issue is on sale now but post-dated to November):
https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/12894/fantastic_four_1961_1


9 August: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev tells foreign diplomats and reporters that the Soviet Union can make a 100-megaton nuclear weapon (i.e. some 6,000 times more powerful than the one exploded by the USA over Hiroshima.)
    The USSR detonates a 50-megaton bomb (the 'Tsar Bomba') over a Russian Arctic island a few weeks later, on October 30. 
    Two years later (5 August 1963), an international Partial Test Ban Treaty is signed, prohibiting all nuclear bomb tests other than underground.


UK chart hits, week ending 12 August 1961 (tracks in italics have been played in earlier posts)

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

1

You Don't Know

Helen Shapiro

Columbia

2

Well I Ask You

Eden Kane

Decca

3

Johnny Remember Me

John Leyton

Top Rank

4

Halfway To Paradise

Billy Fury

Decca

5

Temptation

The Everly Brothers

Warner Brothers

6

Romeo

Petula Clark

Pye

7

Runaway

Del Shannon

London

8

Hello Mary Lou / Travellin' Man

Ricky Nelson

London

9

Time

Craig Douglas

Top Rank

10

A Girl Like You

Cliff Richard and The Shadows

Columbia

11

Pasadena

The Temperance Seven

Parlophone

11

You Always Hurt The One You Love

Clarence 'Frogman' Henry

Pye

13

Baby I Don't Care / Valley Of Tears

Buddy Holly

Coral

14

Don't You Know It

Adam Faith

Parlophone

15

Quarter To Three

The U.S. Bonds

Top Rank

16

Marcheta

Karl Denver

Decca

17

Cupid

Sam Cooke

RCA

18

Moody River

Pat Boone

London

19

But I Do

Clarence 'Frogman' Henry

Pye

20

Quite A Party

The Fireballs

Pye


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