AWSoP gets its first airing on the BBC

American or British ?

Joseph Scott writes

I have a cassette of the show Where It's At, BBC Light Programme, 20 May 1967, and in it host Chris Denning plays A Whiter Shade Of Pale, and comments at the end that he doesn't know whether Procol Harum are an American group or a British one, but if they are British they are very good (ie, because they sound authentically American).

This was the same show in which most of the Sgt. Pepper album was heard for the very first time on BBC radio, so many people must have been tuning in that afternoon – which perhaps accounts for a bit of the sales success of the Whiter ... single? After all, Whiter ... is one of those tunes that obviously would sell to anyone on its own merits, provided they had a chance to hear it!

(Denning also played the Kinks' Waterloo Sunset, the Who's Pictures Of Lily, and Brenda Holloway's Just Look What You've Done during the show: talk about great radio ...)

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