User:Rambo's Revenge/List of Melody Maker number-one singles
The Melody Maker is a former British weekly pop music newspaper. From 1956 until 1988, the Melody Maker compiled its own record chart which was used by many national newspapers.[1] It formed as a rival to the existing charts published by NME and Record Mirror. Melody Maker's chart, like NME's, was based on a telephone poll of record stores—rival chart, Record Mirror, was based on the postal returns.[1][2] On 7 April 1956, the Melody Maker compiled its first chart using figures from 19 shops. The first chart-topper was It's Almost Tomorrow" by The Dream Weavers,[citation needed] with the newspaper having compiled a Top Twenty.[1] During the 1950s, sample sizes ranged from around 14–33 shops and on 30 July 1960 the phoning of record shops was supplemented with postal returns; the first chart to use this method sampled 38 stores from 110 returns. In the early 1960s Record Mirror could no longer afford to keep compiling the chart and some national newspapers switched to using Melody Maker's chart (the Record Mirror ceased on 24 March 1962).[1] On 26 August 1967, Disc, owned by the same company as Melody Maker, stopped compiling their own chart and started using the Melody Maker chart.[3]
Record charts in the United Kingdom began life on 14 November 1952 when NME imitated an idea started in American Billboard magazine and began compiling a hit parade. Prior to 15 February 1969, when the British Market Research Bureau chart was established, there had been no universally accepted chart. During this time the BBC used aggregated results of charts from the Melody Maker and other sources to compile the Pick of the Pops chart. However, according to The Official Charts Company and Guinness' British Hit Singles & Albums, the NME is considered the canonical source for the British singles chart before 10 March 1960 and Record Retailer after that.[4]
Number-one singles[edit]
- Key
- † – The song did not reach number one on the Record Retailer chart which is considered by The Official Charts Company as the canonical source until 15 February 1969.
- ‡ – The song did not reach number one on the BMRB chart which is considered as the official chart after 15 February 1969.
- [nb #] – The song spent a week at number one where it shared the top spot with another song.
| Contents |
|---|
| 1956 · 1957 · 1958 · 1959 · 1960 · 1961 |
Notes[edit]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab The names, singles, dates and duration of the number-ones are from the Melody Maker chart.
- ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference
dateswas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Both Johnny Otis Show's "Ma, He's Making Eyes At Me" and Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire" were classified jointly as number one on 18 January 1958. For the following week "Great Balls of Fire" claimed the number-one spot outright.
References[edit]
- Footnotes
- ^ a b c d Smith, Alan. "50s & 60s UK Charts – The Truth!". Dave McAleer's website. Retrieved 4 November 2010.
- ^ Smith, Alan. "Every No.1 in the 1960s is listed from all the nine diferent magazine charts!". Dave McAleer's website. Retrieved 4 November 2010.
- ^ Coryton & Murrells 1990, p. 9.
- ^ "Key Dates in the History of the Official UK Charts". The Official Charts Company. Archived from the original on 10 January 2008. Retrieved 16 May 2010.
- Sources
- Coryton, Demitri; Murrells, Joseph (1990). Hits of the '60s: the million sellers. London: B.T. Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-5851-8.