“Ready ‘n’ Steady” by D.A. in 1979. It charted for three weeks, reaching as high was 102. Collector Joel Whitburn, who has every other record to have charted since the 1950s, has never been able to find the record–ore even proof that it existed. The charting, and the label number of “Rascal 102” is all there is. He thinks someone cut the record in their garage–if it ever existed–but who knows. Check your attics!
You’d think at least one radio station would have kept a copy.
I’m pretty sure Rodriguez has the only known copy in the United States (though everybody ignores the fact that there are hundreds of copies available in Australia).
More serious reply… This seems like it could be a copyright trap.
Why would Billboard do this exactly once in the 60 or so years it has been publishing charts, sometimes dozens of them a week?
Good point. Could it have been a lazy/goof-off writer making up a single for shits & giggles?
Somebody probably made it up on a bet, or to impress a girl. Not unlike the phantom college football teams that existed in New Jersey back in the day.
A song that is known to exist (if barely) was Shamus M’cool’s “American Memories” from 1981, which made the Hot 100 single charts even though as few as ten copies may have been sold! Here’s the weird story.
Very odd story. One would have thought a song would get on the charts because a lot of listeners liked it and were, presumably, buying it. 
FWIW, you can hear ‘American Memories’ on youtube. I can’t see how it could have gotten even as high on the charts as it did without some really unusual circumstances…
Physical copies are hard to find but the MP3 revolution has left few recordings behind. I’ve had a copy of this song since 1998.
This kind of stuff is a sore point for some people, they sometimes search for years and pay exorbitant prices for a copy in only fair condition. They aren’t happy when it appears free on twenty or thirty blogs. I don’t see a problem myself; we’re collecting two different things. I collect music, he collects media. Personally, I don’t understand collecting anything that’s so rare and valuable that it can’t be used for it’s intended purpose.
I don’t have a copy of the song in the OP’s post. I only collect songs that charted in the Billboard Top 100 - 475 songs in 1979. That one would be in the Bubbling Under chart.
Back from the dead!
This song does indeed exist and has been found! The whole story was just laid out in the July 8, 2016 episode of Crap From the Past. I won’t spoil anything, so click here and the lead-in and story starts at 43:09 into the show and if you can’t wait and must hear the song first it starts at 59:45.
Nice to see an old musical mystery solved once in a while.
Yeah that’s pretty bizarre: the record was never actually pressed but still made the charts. I wonder how many times that did happen in the past. Billboard charts in those days were pretty infamous for manipulation, just google “Bill Wardlow” to find the details.
And in regards to the song, especially considering it basically a demo it’s pretty good. I could see this being a legitimate top 40 if they’d gone into a real studio.
That is awesome! I listen to Crap from the Past all the time, and I never knew it would play such a major role in music history. 
The song itself is very catchy and sounds a lot like “You’re Sixteen.”
That is odd. Back then, Billboard’s criteria for the Hot 100 (and the “Bubbling Under” chart as well) required that a song be released as a single in order for it to be eligible for the chart. I wonder if there was some kind of technical loophole one could exploit to “release” a single without actually pressing it or offering it for sale, and then get it onto the chart purely on the basis of airplay. If there was, though, you’d think the labels would have figured out about it in the '90s when nobody was buying singles anymore but you still had to release them in order to get a song to chart.