for Sunday 17th July 1966

South African soul singer Sharon Tandy (B Sharon Finkelstein)'s recording of It's An Uphill Climb To The Bottom was scheduled for release on the Polydor label, but withdrawn for unknown reasons. There were a few test pressings, however, and one of them made its way out to the Galaxy. Rather bizarrely, the record company allowed the single to spend three weeks in the bottom five of the Fab Forty before deciding to withdraw it. After this decision, the test pressing is quite likely to have been thrown overboard to join other rejected releases in a watery vinyl graveyard.

It certainly was an 'uphill climb' to unearth any information about this Fab Forty entry and initially, it proved almost impossible to verify that the recording ever existed. The single's withdrawal by Polydor ensured that it was excluded from the weekly UK release sheets of the era, issued by Francis Antony. An invaluable source for tracking down obscure tracks from the Big L playlist, Francis Antony listed no Sharon Tandy single releases between February 1966 and February 1967. Nor was It's An Uphill Climb... listed in the Record Collector Rare Record Price Guide, which often includes withdrawn singles because their rarity status commands high prices. With two major research resources drawing a blank and no information to be found on the internet, it was difficult to know where to look next.

Our friends at Oldies Project who were naturally hopeful of including the track in their Fab Forty programmes, asked the webmaster of a South African site dedicated to Sharon, for information about the mysterious recording, but he had no knowledge of it. It is rumoured that the singer herself did not even recall recording the song.

Finally however, Brian Long, the author of The London Sound, managed to find the recording referenced in a discography published in Record Collector magazine issue #296, dated April 2004 (clip above, left). The 'B' side is catalogued as Don't Be Proud. No suggested valuation was given in the feature and the single has not subsequently been added to the Sharon Tandy entry in the Record Collector Rare Record Price Guide.

It's An Uphill Climb... was penned by Fangette Willett who had a contract with New York publisher Metric Music. Walter Jackson's version of the song had entered the US Hot Hundred on June 4th, 1966, where it peaked at #88. Seeing as it was issued in the UK on July 1st and we so frequently see two recordings of the same song climbing the Fab Forty in tandem, this begs the question why the Sharon Tandy version was chosen for the Big L playlist over Jackson's US chart entry.

Having proved that the Sharon Tandy single existed, it was another matter to track down a copy. The Oldies Project team had been searching for some time for this elusive recording, which was one of very few that were missing from their collection encompassing the entire Radio London playlist. It took several years of searching, but in April 2010, Kees Brinkerink the producer of Oldies Project's This Week in..., spotted a copy of It's An Uphill Climb... on eBay and managed to place the winning bid.

Kees said, "I was astonished to see it offered. The condition of this test pressing is far from mint but it will certainly be usable in any future Oldies Project Fab Forty broadcast. I paid quite a lot for it, but I just had to have it."

Sharon Tandy died in March 2015, aged 71.