Christie (band)
English rock band
Christie are an English soft rock band that formed at the end of the 1960s. They are best remembered for their UK chart-topping hit single "Yellow River", released in 1970, which hit number one in 26 countries that year.
Career
In addition to Jeff Christie (born Jeffrey Christie, 12 July 1946, Chapel Allerton, Leeds, Yorkshire, England) their vocalist, bassist and songwriter; they initially included guitarist Vic Elmes and drummer Mike Blakley (born Michael Blakley, 12 January 1947, Bromley, Kent, England, brother of Alan Blakley).
Jeff Christie had previously worked with several bands, including The Outer Limits, who released "Just One More Chance" / "Help Me Please" (1967) and "Great Train Robbery" / "Sweet Freedom" (1968).
In 1970, Jeff Christie offered his composition "Yellow River" to The Tremeloes.
They recorded it to release as a single but changed their minds as they were going more progressive as the seventies started. At the same time Tremeloes member Alan Blakley's brother Michael had a little group called the Epics and Alan wanted to give his brother a break. They decided to get Jeff Christie to come down from Leeds and let him use the Tremeloes' backing track. The Epics became Christie with Jeff as the lead vocalist and the result was a UK number one hit in June 1970, and subsequently No. 23 in the US, also accumulating more weeks (23) on the Hot 100 than any other entry on that chart completely inside 1970.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1083043. VIAF identifies the subject as 125105379. The Library of Congress control number is n93103769. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970, 1946, 1947 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Christie (band)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.