In an era when Linda Perhacs is on US chat shows and people yawn when Vashti Bunyan turns up on a festival bill, Ruth C remains one of the few once-obscure girl singers of the era still entirely lost. She was Durham-born, and Funkadelic were initially her backing band. Her first album is a weird mix of Motown, folk and funk; one song has a crying solo, and the opening track is a monologue about her journey from Durham to Detroit. The whole thing is off-the-scale great:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ZNMYkRLU8&feature=related

Re 31: The Ryans’ 45 is totally bizarre, and it’s hard to believe it was any kind of hit.

I’m surprised Joe Meek never used bagpipes for novelty effect… am I forgetting something?

Yes, the era of what Blackburn and several others irritatingly and repeatedly referred to as the “Fun Thirty” is easy to forget since we’ve got so used to the Top 40 being the “public” chart; as I recall it expanded in May 1978 when the full Top 50 expanded to a Top 75 but in retrospect it’s difficult not to think in Top 40 terms.

There wasn’t the same element of frisson when the first Jive Bunny single climbed from 31 to 3…

I remember that gymnast clip, it wasn’t just STV. He was doing a routine on the rings, and as it ended the camera focused on the word “ARMY” on his vest – wasn’t it a recruitment film?

Brian May’s version of “God Save The Queen” was shocking, but for all the wrong reasons.

STV were at the time inclined to use as a time filler between programmes a film of a gymnast exercising, using the record as a soundtrack.

As we were discussing in the “Spirit in the Sky” thread a while back, this was a time when hymns made the chart: Cat Stevens’ “Morning Has Broken” was a hymn, and Les Crane’s “Desiderata” also reached the top ten. “Stars on Sunday” was at its peak and Malcolm Muggeridge was a TV regular. The RSDG’s was a sincere and elegant reworking of a hymn tune, and they later had a minor hit with “The Day is Ended” (as in “The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended…”)

Bagpipes are gorgeous and awesome.

Abysmal, I know, but sometimes one can’t resist.

Bagpipes aren’t even funny.

I had Tom Browne’s “end of year” chart on cassette until I managed to persuade my mother to let me have the cassette to record something more worthwile on it.

I think Stavely Makepeace a.k.a was number two.

Nobody has come back on my quiz question earlier, so here goes: just as “Groovejet” denied the Spice Girls the distinction of all their former members having solo No 1 hits, so “Amazing Grace” denied the Beatles – Ringo’s “Back Off Boogaloo” stopping at 2, as did Vicky Leandros’ Eurovision winner “Come What May”.

One last thing about the RSDG: the NME enjoyed the quote from their Pipe Major, Jimmy Pride. On being asked how many takes they’d required to record the song, he said: “One. We’re not pop stars, we’re professionals”.