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