70s Music Chart January 3rd 1970

Here are some brief news events that take you back to January 1970.   It was a time when the official population of the United States of America reached a grand total of  two hundred and three million and three hundred thousand odd. And sticking to the American point in sports Superbowl IV: Kansas City Chiefs beat Minnesota Vikings, 23-7.

The war in Biafra which was also known as the Nigerian Civil war had been going since 1967. Nigeria was formed by the British decades before and when they left in 1960 it became a civil war over religious and territorial  claims. With more British involvement the war came to an end after a December 1969 battle. The British at the time seemed to support one side only, and the small state of Biafra was engulfed back into Nigeria. The cost in human life for this war may be as high as three million people. There in the background of the dispute of course was oil.   It was the month that the US set off a nuclear bomb in the Nevada desert, and the US shows the film version of MASH at the cinemas starring Donald Sutherland. The Robert Altman film was set in Korea, but rang a big bell with Americans still suffering the problems in Vietnam. The film  also starred Robert Duvall and Eliot Gould.

 January 1970 Russia responds to the US NEVADA bomb with their own at Semipalitinsk.   Gadaffi becomes Libya’s Prime Minster and  in one form or another continued to rule Libya into 2011. His country would always be linked with terrorism and a dictatorship, he was never afraid to rub the British or the US the wrong way, and he usually won too.   London Heathrow welcomes the first commercial landing of the new Jumbo jet the 747. It was the month that Rhodesia claimed independence from the UK by Ian Smith making it a Rhodesian republic after eighty years of British involvement. Smith said  "Today is not such a tremendous day for us Rhodesians. Our Independence Day is the great day. Rhodesia did not want to seize independence from Britain. It was forced upon us." Rhodesia  stayed a republic throughout the 1970s, right up to 1979, when it became the African state of Zimbabwe. Ian Smith died in 2007. “Ian Smith lived an exemplary family life and in private was a down-to-earth, modest man. Ian Smith was not corrupt nor was he a megalomaniac. However whilst Ian Smith acted in what he thought were the best interests of then Rhodesia he made some disastrous political decisions as Prime Minister which directly contributed to the trauma that Zimbabwe is suffering from today... The policies of his Rhodesia Front party radicalized black nationalists and directly spawned the violent and fascist rule of Zanu PF.” David Coltartmember of the Zimbabwe Parliament (House of Assembly and Senate) since 2000.   We had a few well known deaths too in January 1970. The pioneer of quantum  mechanics Max Born, David McKay the president of the Mormon church.   Born in January 1970 was the actress Mini Driver famous for such films as Goodwill Hunting, another actress to share that month of birth was Heather Graham who appeared in the film Austin Powers:The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Let's take a look at the pop charts from January 3rd 1970, the music charts in the 1970s has the legacy of the 1960s included, so this makes it a very special chart indeed.

Let's look at the stars and the songs that we sang and danced to when the music charts meant something very important. These charts represent the British charts as broadcast by the BBC. The charts were compiled by the British Market Research Bureau. Part One Number Twenty To Number Eleven