This old earworm has taken up residence in my head and it won’t go away. Which is annoying as I didn’t much like it way back in 1970.

At the time it had a similar effect on all who heard it, selling an astonishing 30 million copies around the world.

I remembered that the ‘artist’ responsible for Yellow River was called Christie but I had no idea whether that was a band, a person, or perhaps a pseudonym for Tony Christie.

I suspect I had subliminally made myself a case for the latter, largely on the grounds that his big (and equally annoying) hit was Is This The Way To Amarillo. And anyone with a smattering of Spanish knows “amarillo” means “yellow.”

In fact it’s not. But it’s both of the first two – a group named after its leader Jeff Christie, who wrote the song (and, like Tony, came from Yorkshire). Jeff Initially offered his song to The Tremeloes, who recorded it with every intention of releasing it as a single in early 1970, until their last song Call Me Number One hit the dizzy heights of… not quite number one, but number two.

They were convinced that Yellow River was too pop-oriented to follow it up at a time when they were trying to become more “progressive” as the Seventies dawned. So they chose another song instead. It would turn out to be an ill-judged decision.

The sub-Beatles, sub-Bee Gees ballad  By The Way, crawled to a lowly no.35 in the chart while Yellow River, the song they turned down, went all the way to number one in May 1970.

It was exactly the same recording, except that the vocals of The Trems (as I’m guessing they were nicknamed) removed by producer Mike Smith, and replaced with those of Jeff Christie.

The story is actually a bit more complicated, and interesting, than that.

Tremeloes member Alan Blakley’s brother Michael had a group called the Epics and Alan wanted to give his brother a break so they decided to get Jeff Christie to come down from Leeds and let him use the Tremeloes’ backing track, with The Epics – renamed Christie – as his band. Just not on this song.

And where is this Yellow River, do I hear you ask? The song fails to explain but it was interpreted at the time, during the Vietnam War, as being about a soldier leaving the US Army at the end of his service, presumably due to some sort of subliminal association between the word “yellow” and the, ahem, Far East.

In fact, Christie has said he was inspired by the idea of a soldier going home at the end of the American Civil War.

I’m surprised to learn, too, that the long list of artists who have covered Yellow River includes R.E.M. and Elton John and here’s a quirky pop fact, a Russian band called Singing Guitars adapted it in the old USSR days, pairing it with the words of a Russian children’s song called Fat Carlson.

If you’re wondering what happened to Christie, they had one more hit, San Bernadino, the following year. I don’t remember at all (at least not without playing it).

Jeff reformed the band several times with different members, once achieving another No.1 hit – in Mexico. He even had a crack at Eurovision, writing a song called Safe In Your Arms for his backing band’s previous group Tubeless Hearts in 1991, and toured Europe to promote a solo double album of demos and (don’t laugh) “rarities.”