Melody Maker was a British weekly popular music newspaper, published between 1926 and 2000. It was the third publication, after the New Musical Express (in 1952) and the Record Mirror (in 1955), to start its own singles chart, effective 7 April 1956. Like NME, Melody Maker drew a sample of random record stores by phone. Its first chart drew from figures for 19 shops; during the 1950s, sample sizes ranged from around 14–33 shops, and on 30 July 1960 the phoning of record shops was supplemented with postal returns; the first chart to use this method sampled 38 stores from 110 returns. In its 9 February 1963 edition, Melody Maker disclosed that it received chart returns from 245 retailers and that its chart was audited by auditors supplied by Middlesex County Council. When Disc & Music Echo (