UK Music Chart: August 21, 1971 Featuring George Harrison

George Harrison Performing at a Rock Concert Benefiting Bangladesh, aka Kampuchea

After four weeks as the UK's best selling single, Get It On by T. Rex vacated the Number 1 spot and was replaced by Diana Ross with I'm Still Waiting.

This was the first of two singles by the ex-Supreme to top the British chart - the second came in 1985 with the release of Chain Reaction - and eventually sold enough copies to feature among Motown's best sellers in the UK.

Further down the chart, George Harrison returned with the charity single Bangla Desh, while reggae outfit The Pioneers and soul vocalists The Tams entered the Top 20 for the first time.

Image: George Harrison : Buy This at Allposters.com

1: Diana Ross: I'm Still Waiting

The Chart:

01 (03) Diana Ross - I'm Still Waiting
02 (02) The New Seekers - Never Ending Song of Love
03 (01) T. Rex - Get It On
04 (04) Atomic Rooster - Devil's Answer
05 (05) Family - In My Own Time
06 (13) Dawn - What Are You Doing Sunday?
07 (07) New World - Tom-Tom Turnaround
08 (08) Middle of the Road - Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
09 (09) The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again
10 (14) Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel / Hound Dog
11 (18) Buffy Sainte-Marie - Soldier Blue
12 (12) St. Cecilia - Leap Up and Down (Wave Your Knickers in the Air)
13 (06) Lobo - Me and You and a Dog Named Boo
14 (10) The Sweet - Co-Co
15 (27) George Harrison - Bangla Desh
16 (17) Slade - Get Down and Get With It
17 (25) The Pioneers - Let Your Yeah Be Yeah
18 (11) Dave and Ansel Collins - Monkey Spanner
19 (26) The Tams - Hey Girl, Don't Bother Me
20 (15) Greyhound - Black and White

*Previous week in brackets; Climbers denoted in red; New entries in bold

15: George Harrison: Bangla Desh

Harrison's UK follow-up to his best-selling track My Sweet Lord was probably pop's first large scale charity single, Bangla Desh. It was written in response to a request from Indian musician Ravi Shankar to aid the war torn region of (then) East Pakistan (now the independent Bangladesh), which had also been ravaged by one of the worst tropical cyclones ever in the region the previous November.

The situation also prompted Harrison's Concert For Bangladesh performances in New York, where he was joined on stage by the likes of Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and Eric Clapton.

17: The Pioneers: Let Your Yeah Be Yeah

Popular with skinheads at the time, Jamaica's The Pioneers were another Trojan Records success story, scoring three UK reggae hits between 1969 and 1972. This catchy cover of Jimmy Cliff's Let Your Yeah Be Yeah became the trio's biggest amongst them, peaking at Number 5 during September.

19: The Tams: Hey Girl, Don't Bother Me

The Northern Soul scene was flourishing at this time in the UK and it was responsible for pushing some otherwise obscure and forgotten American soul tracks into the British singles chart.

Among them was this 1964 recording of Hey Girl, Don't Bother Me by vocal group The Tams. A minor hit in the US on its initial release, it completely failed to register in the UK, but suddenly fell into favour when it was regularly played in British soul clubs.

It surprised even its most staunch supporters when it eventually went all the way to Number 1, remaining there for three weeks. [The video below shows a performance by the group on Top of the Pops at the time. Notice how one member suddenly disappears halfway through].