Where I personally think TUAC succeeds is by doing exactly what it says on the title 'Re Imagining The BBC Chart'
As you guys highlight above again The BBC chart itself was error and tie ridden made more problematic by discovering the typos in the BBC charts from Dave and Trevor and therefore not fit for purpose.
Where TUAC comes into its own is that it takes the original BBC chart and polishes it up removing errors and ties and making it more robust. It keeps by and large the guiding principle of averaging the BBC used but adds another layer to reflect music paper sample size and factor in another level of mathematical data relevant to producing an all embracing chart.
The proof and evidence of where I think it succeeds is in the fact that it does not hugely differ from the BBC findings so stays true to the averaging principle yet delivers a more accurate and error free chart to us all.
With the evidence we currently have to go on from that era it ticks all the boxes as the most thorough chart of the time we have to date.
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The Ultimate Averaged Chart - The BBC Chart Re-Imagined
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Adding a BBC points column (which I have done many times on my own spreadsheet, as you may have gathered from my comments!) shows a load of questionable ties and non-ties. I don't know whether the additional clutter would be justified by what it reveals.
There are three cases identified so far where I think there is overwhelming evidence for a typo ...
(1) was confirmed by the original tape;
(2) was where a tie at number one did not make sense because all the contributory charts had straight ones and straight twos;
(3) having no number 7 and a tie at 8 does not make sense, in addition to the scores for 8 being wide apart.
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Good to see this one enter.
NEW 30 'Til There Was You - Peggy Lee
Later recorded by a well known group (whose name escapes me).
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Originally posted by MrTibbs View PostThe BBC chart made an error this week. It did not list a #7 but listed 2 records at '8 then continued with #9, #10 and so on.
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It is true to that there was a difference between the number of stores used by a compiler and the returns used in a particular week. But Alan Smith was alive to this, and he specified both the higher numbers for the stores and the lower numbers for the samples that Brian correctly uses.
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Rather than the BBC making an error, I think another transcription error is more likely - with Exodus's 8 being a typo for 7.
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It would seem that Elvis has won then ! He claims the top spot and The Allisons are relegated to a second week at #3. But is their challenge over
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The BBC chart made an error this week. It did not list a #7 but listed 2 records at '8 then continued with #9, #10 and so on.
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Here is the next Ultimate Averaged Chart for Week Ending March 25th 1961
The Ultimate Averaged Chart - Week Ending March 25th 1961 NME RM MM DISC RR Total Last This The Sound Survey Stores 80 60 110 50 30 Points Week Week The Top 30 Singles Chart BBC TOP 30 Scored 2 1 Wooden Heart - Elvis Presley 1 1 1 1 1 1 9900 1 2 Walk Right Back / Ebony Eyes - The Everly Brothers 2 3 2 2 2 2 9490 3 3 Are You Sure - The Allisons 3 2 3 3 4 3 9270 4 4 Theme For A Dream - Cliff Richard 4 4 4 4 3 4 8960 9 5 My Kind Of Girl - Matt Monro 5 5 7 5 6 5 8410 5 6 Will You Love Me Tomorrow - The Shirelles 6 6 5 6 5 6 8360 12 7 Exodus - Ferrante and Teicher 8 7 6 7 8 9 7870 7 8 (Ghost) Riders In The Sky - The Ramrods 8 10 8 10 9 8 7160 6 9 F.B.I. - The Shadows 9 12 10 11 7 7 6900 17 10 And The Heavens Cried - Anthony Newley 10 9 11 9 13 12 6850 11 11 Wheels - The String-A-Longs 12 11 12 12 16 13 6120 10 12 Who Am I / This Is It - Adam Faith 11 16 20 8 12 11 5940 24 13 Lazy River - Bobby Darin 14= 8 9 15 18 23 5810 8 14 Sailor - Petula Clark 14= 17 13 14 10 10 5750 14 15 Samantha - Kenny Ball 13 14 13 13 14 17 5690 13 16 Calendar Girl - Neil Sedaka 16 13 15 17 11 15 5420 19 17 Marry Me - Mike Preston 18 18 16 16 20 14 4650 20 18 Baby Sittin' Boogie - Buzz Clifford 20 24 17 19 19 22 3590 15 19 Are You Lonesome Tonight - Elvis Presley 17 20 18 15 16 3560 21 20 Goodnight Mrs Flintstone - The Piltdown Men 19 15 19 21 2300 NEW 21 Seventy Six Trombones - The King Brothers 22 20 24 2140 16 22 Ja-Da - Johnny and The Hurricanes 23 17 20 1670 18 23 Let's Jump The Broomstick - Brenda Lee 21 18 1190 26 24 Exodus - Semprini 18 27 1160 29 25 Warpaint - The Brook Brothers 30 17 920 NEW 26 Where The Boys Are - Connie Francis 24 26 710 27 27 African Waltz - Johnny Dankworth 27 19 680 22 28 Gather In The Mushrooms / Pepy's Diary - Benny Hill 28 25 420 23 29 Dream Girl - Mark Wynter 26 400 NEW 30 'Til There Was You - Peggy Lee 29 160 I Count The Tears - The Drifters 28 90 Pepe - Duane Eddy 29 60 You're Sixteen - Johnny Burnette 30 30 0 The BBC chart made an error this week. It did not list a #7 but listed 2 records at '8 then continued with #9, #10 and so on. 0
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We will never know the exact number of returns each music paper received week on week but we do know the stated sample for each is the figure I use and therefore it is the proportion difference between each chart that is the important factor therefore even if I halved or even quartered the returns I use the outcome would still be the same.
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Yes, would have been far more practical to determine sales from a weekly stocktake than try to record each sale on an individual basis....
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Originally posted by Metalweb View PostIsn't it rather odd the shops were ever asked to provide a list of their best sellers?
To do this accurately a shop would need to record all sales during the week, then go through the info and assemble a chart.
Had the compilers simply asked for a list of sales this would mean less work for the shop and the compilers could have aggregated the individual returns into a more accurate combined chart....
I suspect they recorded sales by looking at stock levels and then counting what was left at the end of the week. Some stores were more efficient than others at doing this. It's recorded that Brian Epstein at NEMS even devised a special system so he knew when to order more records. We also know that NEMS took part in the Record Mirror survey. So I bet the return from that store was great. Interestingly enough if other charts used NEMS it would prove that the story that they all used different shops to be false. I certainly believe this to be a lie and that the same shops were supplying the same charts. Only Record Mirror at one time named the dealers, they requested the others to so, but they never did. My bet is that we would have seen several stores sending the same lists to several papers.
Till receipts probably only stated the money and date at this time and were no use in recording individual sales. But did record overall sales of course.
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Brian you do realise that what you are saying is why the chart compilers would never have used all the shops you base your figures on. In all surveys be it polls or sales you have to have more participants than you actually need. If you require 20 shops to take part to get a reasonably accurate picture of whatever you will end with, you need about 50 to 60 on the books to be certain of getting what you want. As some will only fill in say a quarter of the results or simply send in the top ten of a form for 50 records. Some of the shops might even have stated each record and the amounts sold too. Because some people are like that. If any of the papers got full 50 charts from ALL the number on the books and on time too! Then that would be a miracle. The vast majority would arrive late, covered in tea and coffee stains or worse! And be filled in by what looks like a spider with a pen in each of it's legs! Clearly some of the dealers didn't know the difference between an album and a single. Hence that weird effect. So if the papers were lucky you could a top 50 from 20 dealers. The rest were trash.
The way to ensure a correctly filled out list from a dealer was to offer discounts on advertisements. Certainly by the 60's being a shop that supplied one of the papers could result in discounts from the record companies themselves, especially if the shop would add records that were not actually selling to the return. Of course when the Official Charts entered the scene, being a chart shop was much more profitable than not being one. Especially for those not connected with superstores.
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I agree with all comments above. Until the mid sixties record charts were seen as a fun part of the business and although much enjoyed and followed nobody paid much attention as to the accuracy of how they were compiled or methodology or took them too seriously. Then things changed and the business became aware of how charts could be used to promote and sell records for them and the era of manipulation and hyping began, which followed through to store manipulation and bribing etc etc and the fun and innocence of the charts was gone. From then till now the charts were hijacked by the industry not to reflect popularity but to market and sell artists and records as a product and make lots of cash for them. The charts are used for that now much as in the same way TV adverts are used to sell a packet of soap powder.
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In the Sun's 1964 survey they asked 250 stores to provide actual sales figures and only 70 did, with the rest providing simply an ordered list. This indicates how difficult it would have been to get sales figures. The Sun also showed the chart that resulted from using only the sales figures, and it did not vary much from their overall chart.
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I must say in my early years of interest in the historical (i.e. before I was born!) British charts I naively assumed that is what would've happened - those who compiled the charts from whatever music paper did so based on actual numbers (or at least those reported by stores whether or not they were truthful), not by getting each contributing store to compile it's own in-house chart without figures and then submit that to derive an overall point score to assign rankings. If only it had been that way around. Though I suspect that the reason MrTibbs gave earlier as to why many shops probably wouldn't provide an accurate or complete list of their Top 30 (and certainly 50) sellers each and every week applied just as evenly to the five music journals who compiled what purported to be national charts - they were in the business of compiling numerous reports on what was happening in their industry more widely and selling as many copies of their papers as possible, and so their staff would've also had limited time to devote to sorting through numerous sales tallies from tens of different record shops to compile a weekly chart based on them, especially in the era before any significant computers were available to help simplify and shorten such a tedious task. Much easier to let the stores do the heavy lifting, place an unrealistic amount of trust in them being correct, and then just total-up the points.
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Isn't it rather odd the shops were ever asked to provide a list of their best sellers?
To do this accurately a shop would need to record all sales during the week, then go through the info and assemble a chart.
Had the compilers simply asked for a list of sales this would mean less work for the shop and the compilers could have aggregated the individual returns into a more accurate combined chart....
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Originally posted by Graham76man View PostThe number of places asked for must have been at least the size of the chart. Especially if you did a top 50. Otherwise you could finish up with a little over the size of the asking amount. Especially if the shops were nearly all in agreement on the big sellers. When you were doing the tallies of the shops based on top tens you couldn't get to the 50 needed for Record Retailer.
Certainly by the mid 60's they were asking for 50 positions, the TV show said that. I don't know if NME was asking for that amount, since they never extended the 30 till the 1980's.
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Originally posted by Splodj View PostI think that prior to the 'split side' changeover there was a period of confusion about it across the board including NME. This is why I have this image of them discussing the matter, with NME even more determinedly splitting sides after that period of confusion, and the others going in the opposite direction.
Many later problems also would have been solved if the music papers all came on board, like when the BMRB took over chart compilation and the MM and NME were also invited to contribute but declined. They maybe later regretted this decision when EVENTUALLY the BMRB did become the prominent chart and theirs became marginalised.
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The number of places asked for must have been at least the size of the chart. Especially if you did a top 50. Otherwise you could finish up with a little over the size of the asking amount. Especially if the shops were nearly all in agreement on the big sellers. When you were doing the tallies of the shops based on top tens you couldn't get to the 50 needed for Record Retailer.
Certainly by the mid 60's they were asking for 50 positions, the TV show said that. I don't know if NME was asking for that amount, since they never extended the 30 till the 1980's.
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I think that prior to the 'split side' changeover there was a period of confusion about it across the board including NME. This is why I have this image of them discussing the matter, with NME even more determinedly splitting sides after that period of confusion, and the others going in the opposite direction.
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The battle has commenced but the war is not over ! Elvis draws first blood pushing The Allisons out of the way and Cliff is a casualty too edged out of the top three.
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Here is the next Ultimate Averaged Chart for Week Ending March 18th 1961
The Ultimate Averaged Chart - Week Ending March 18th 1961 NME RM MM DISC RR Total Last This The Sound Survey Stores 80 60 110 50 30 Points Week Week The Top 30 Singles Chart BBC TOP 30 Scored 1 1 Walk Right Back / Ebony Eyes - The Everly Brothers 1 1 1 1 1 1 9900 10 2 Wooden Heart - Elvis Presley 2 3 2 2 2 4 9430 2 3 Are You Sure - The Allisons 3 4 3 3 3 2 9190 3 4 Theme For A Dream - Cliff Richard 4 2 4 4 4 3 9100 4 5 Will You Love Me Tomorrow - The Shirelles 5 5 5 5 5 5 8580 6 6 F.B.I. - The Shadows 7 8 6 8 7 6 7820 8 7 (Ghost) Riders In The Sky - The Ramrods 6 10 7 6 6 9 7780 5 8 Sailor - Petula Clark 8 9 10 7 8 11 7410 14 9 My Kind Of Girl - Matt Monro 9 6 9 10 12 10 7210 9 10 Who Am I / This Is It - Adam Faith 10 11 11 9 10 7 6990 12 11 Wheels - The String-A-Longs 15 16 12 12 13 8 6020 23 12 Exodus - Ferrante and Teicher 14 7 8 15 19 20 5990 11 13 Calendar Girl - Neil Sedaka 12 13 13 14 11 12 5960 13 14 Samantha - Kenny Ball 13 14 14 13 14 14 5720 7 15 Are You Lonesome Tonight - Elvis Presley 11 12 11 9 13 5360 15 16 Ja-Da - Johnny and The Hurricanes 16 18 17 15 16 3830 NEW 17 And The Heavens Cried - Anthony Newley 18 15 16 18 28 3700 16 18 Let's Jump The Broomstick - Brenda Lee 19 17 20 20 15 3360 20 19 Marry Me - Mike Preston 17 25 16 16 21 3180 24 20 Baby Sittin' Boogie - Buzz Clifford 21 19 19 23 3080 NEW 21 Goodnight Mrs Flintstone - The Piltdown Men 20 18 1660 18 22 Gather In The Mushrooms / Pepy's Diary - Benny Hill 24 18 17 1630 22 23 Dream Girl - Mark Wynter 23 15 1600 NEW 24 Lazy River - Bobby Darin 22 17 1560 17 25 Rubber Ball - Bobby Vee 20 29 17 22 1130 NEW 26 Exodus - Semprini 19 960 27 27 African Waltz - Johnny Dankworth 26 18 790 19 28 You're Sixteen - Johnny Burnette 27 19 680 NEW 29 Warpaint - The Brook Brothers 20 660 21 30 Mystery Girl - Jess Conrad 28 29 300 Pepe - Duane Eddy 30 24 290 New Orleans - The U. S. Bonds 25 180 A Scottish Soldier - Andy Stewart 26 150 Seventy Six Trombones - The King Brothers 27 120 Buona Sera - Mr. Acker Bilk 30 30
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Originally posted by Splodj View PostThere does seem to be a particular time, from memory I think it is March 1958, when the non-NME charts did not split the sides. Almost as if they had a meeting about it and all but NME agreed.
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