The 20th of February 1975
Official UK Singles Chart results from Sunday the 16th to Saturday the 22nd of February 1975
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 15th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 16th,
published on Tuesday the 18th,
and broadcast on BBC Radio 1 on Sunday the 23rd of February 1975.
Telly Savalas
If
At No.23, on “The Top 50 UK Singles Chart”, the week of my 3rd Birthday, is Telly Savalas with If.
An extraordinary rendition…
…of one of David Gates’ most beautiful compositions, is capturing the music buying public’s imagination, who are at this moment in 1975, laying their money down on the counter and starting to buy this particular single in their droves.
The original version by Bread had never been released over here in the UK back in 1971, but it had become a Top 5 hit in their native USA. However, for those over here who were familiar with that band, they would have known about this song from their “Best of” collection which had first charted over here back in the autumn of 1972. I, myself, have also already visited the band earlier, back along my musical road, during my first year.
The main wonder…
…for this current iteration of the tune, is that it comes from someone so completely unexpected.
Telly is more familiar to everyone as, not just a film actor, but now as a popular TV star.
He’d recently been in numerous big screen hits, especially over the last decade. Most recognisably from such films as “The Dirty Dozen” and “Kelly’s Heroes“, and of course his portrayal as the hypnotic super-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, enchanting his harem of maidens, in the Bond film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service“.
However, all those roles, at this moment, take a backseat to how he’s currently wowing the TV viewers on Saturday night BBC TV, as the delectable and dynamic detective lieutenant Kojak.
This productive musical sideline…
…wasn’t entirely new to him. He’d been releasing singles and albums for about the same time I’d started toddling, but this particular single seems at this point to be hitting all the feels in all the right places. Whether that’s because of the spoken rendition in that smooth voice of his, where he seems to have taken lessons in the William Shatner style of vocal delivery, or if it’s the same bewitching tone which he enticed all those Bond girls up in Piz Gloria. Whatever it is, it’s working admirably.
I’m sure if he can capture his enthralled audience in this venture, just as his character Kojak can eloquently and effectively solve his crimes with just his charm, charisma and acumen, then this will be a cinch.
All it probably needs is the perfect set of circumstances, as smooth as that head of his, to set them up and shake them down, before he inevitably and flirtatiously takes out his lollipop and whispers “Who loves ya, baby?”.
The single…
…strides effortlessly in and lands straight into this week’s Top 30, and in the process, becomes the highest New Entry on the UK Singles Chart.
From here…
…it will make an incredible leap up and land squarely at the No.2 position, only being stopped by the single which is currently sitting at the top of this week’s chart. However, as the month of March comes along, so everything changes, and it clears that one final hurdle to stand defiantly at No.1, from where it fends off all other competition for two whole weeks.
When it does finally relent the top spot, it stays solidly in the Top 10 until the end of that month, eventually starting to slip further through April, until it drops away for good after the 19th of that decidedly warmer month having notched up a respectable 9 weeks of unprecedented chart action.
The “A” Side
The “B” Side
“If” Promotional Video broadcast on Disco (1975)
“If” Promotional Video 2
“If” Promotional Video for TopPop
“If” Promotional Video (performed partly singing) broadcast on Christmas edition of Top of the Pops (December 1975)
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