The 20th of February 1972
Official U.K. Singles Chart results from Sunday the 20th to Saturday the 26th of February 1972
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 19th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 20th,
announced on Tuesday the 22nd,
and broadcast on B.B.C. Radio 1 on Sunday the 27th of February 1972.
Neil Reid
Mother Of Mine
At No.9, on the the U.K. Top 50 Singles Chart the day I am born, is Neil Reid with “Mother Of Mine”.
Neil (who was aged 12 years young at the time)…
…was just in his last week of riding out the Top 10 when we arrive at this date. This would be the 7th week in that hierarchy, a feat some artists could only dream of over a whole chart run.
Neil’s single would first enter the chart on Boxing day 1971, and that there is a big clue for those who don’t know who this guy is, and how this single became so popular.
Think ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, ‘The X Factor’ or ‘Pop Idol’ and you’re on the right track.
This was a product of a talent show,..
…which had its origins going back as far as 1949, when the B.B.C. commissioned one series for radio broadcast.
The show was called ‘Opportunity Knocks’ and, apart from one 11 week standalone ITV series in 1956, had been a mainstay of television light entertainment since the show’s return to ITV since the summer of 1964, nearly 8 years ago.
The programme had been created, and was presented by British host Hughie Green, with his British / American / Canadian accent (due to his time in Montreal, Canada and also California as a young entertainer and film actor).
It became so popular due to the fact that it was the first talent show of its kind in the U.K. to embrace viewer participation, where the viewer could write to the studio’s address to ‘vote’ who they wanted to win and keep in from the previous broadcast, which would in turn be announced on the following show.
Each episode was recorded in front of a studio audience on the Friday, where they used a ‘Clap-O-Meter’ (in reality, someone behind the board moving the arrow by listening to the claps) to gauge the TV audience reaction for whom they felt was the most popular act (basically, whichever act got the loudest reaction from clapping, the higher the arrow would go). This didn’t count however on the actual voting of each performer, but was used just as an estimate. The show was then broadcast on the Saturday evening.
To get your vote in, you had to send it (in your own handwriting) to the studio address, for them to receive it by Thursday at the latest, so they would have enough time to count them, and proclaim the winner by the time of the next show recording.
Whoever won would then return for that next week to perform once again.
That series would then culminate with an ‘All Winners Show’ to highlight all the most popular acts over that series duration.
This current 12th series began on ITV,..
…on Saturday the 8th of November in 1971, and would run until the 1st of May, this year of 1972.
Neil, from Glasgow, Scotland (who, at the time, also went by the name of ‘Wee Neil Reid’) had waited two and a half years to appear on the show.
He’d originally written in to request a chance to appear at the age of 9, while at that time performing in northern working men’s clubs and parties.
But when Neil did get the chance, at the beginning of December 1971, he became an instant hit, and by the time of his return the following week, he had a recording contract and single ready to go.
The song itself…
…had been written by a member of Tom Jones’ backing group, Bill Parkinson, who’d written it for his own mother.
Bill had the idea of a love letter to his mother, due to hearing Tom’s rendition of the 1925 song “My Yiddishe Momme”, with words that had been written by American lyricist and screenwriter Jack Yellen, who would go you to write the popular songs “Ain’t She Sweet” 2 years later, and “Happy Days Are Here Again” a further 2 years after that, in 1929.
Hearing Tom’s version of “My Yiddishe Momme”,..
…gave Bill the idea of putting into a song, words he couldn’t express in any other way to his own mother, and initially hoped that Tom would get the chance to sing it for him.
However instead, Opportunity came knocking for Bill to be gifted with another voice to sing his song.
When it came for Neil to record “Mother of Mine”, he managed to do it perfectly in one take.
And by the week before Christmas 1971, with Neil returning each time to ‘Opportunity Knocks’, both the single and the public were ready to get together and send it into the U.K. Charts.
Due to the popularity,..
…the single appeared in the Top 20 in it’s very first week, straight after Christmas.
Two weeks later, by the 9th of January, it had smashed through the Top 10 and climbed to No.2, and no matter how many of the television viewing public bought the single, they couldn’t quite get it to the very top, due to a single I have already visited further back in this chart.
For 3 whole weeks it stalled there, before very gradually, it began to slip.
Firstly, it only goes back one place to No.3 for another couple of weeks, but then last week it’s gone down to No.5.
It will slip out of the Top 10 a week after this chart on the 27th of February and lose a few more places in the next couple of weeks, but on the 12th of March it actually pulls back 5 places and climbs back for a surprise 8th week visit at No.10, after which, it will go back to form, and very slowly fall back down the chart.
Eventually it will hold one place or another on the UK Singles Chart for a whopping 20 accumulative weeks.
Where the single had begun it’s journey during the dark Christmas holidays of winter 1971, it will wave goodbye after the much brighter and warmer 13th of May 1972, eventually selling a quarter of a million singles in the U.K., 400,000 singles in Japan, and 2 and a half million singles in total worldwide.
The “A” Side
The “B” Side
Neil Reid – Mother Of Mine (“Opportunity Knocks” TV Performance)
Neil Reid – Mother Of Mine (“Top Of The Pops” TV Performance)
Neil Reid meets “Mother of Mine” songwriter Bill Parkinson after 40 years
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