"Introducing... the Beatles" Was on Vee-Jay — not on Capitol Records!

When Beatlemania struck America in early 1964, we had not one but two of the Fab Four's albums to choose from. One was Meet the Beatles! on Capitol Records:

The other was Introducing... the Beatles, on Vee-Jay:

Notice how Ringo's hair on the Introducing... the Beatles album cover is not yet really a "mop top." The photo must have been taken just after Ringo replaced Pete Best as the Beatles' drummer. Ringo had moved over to the Beatles from Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Here's what Ringo looked like, pre-Beatles:

Introducing... the Beatles was not released by Capitol Records because Capitol had turned it down.

Capitol Records was the North American subsidiary of EMI, a British multinational music recording and publishing, electronics, device and systems manufacturing company headquartered in London. The record label Parlophone, the one which Beatles records came out on in Britain, was a sister label to Capitol in the U.S. So it was natural that Capitol had first dibs on releasing Beatles records in this country. But Capitol didn't "get" the Beatles — thought their popularity would not translate to this country — when their first crest of popularity arrived in England in 1963, and it passed on releasing its own version of the very first Beatles LP that came out on Parlophone.

At that point, Vee-Jay, a canny independent record label, picked up the rights to the album. After dithering during much of 1963, Vee-Jay released Introducing... the Beatles on January 10, 1964.

It's a kind of poetic justice that that happened. Vee Jay was known for its roster of "some of the most talented rhythm and blues artists of the era," according to Earl L. Stewart's African American Music: An Introduction (p. 210). For example, "Vee-Jay scored its first million seller in 1961 with the release of 'Duke of Earl' by Gene Chandler."

Vee-Jay's artists were mostly African American, although Vee-Jay was the first record company to release early hits by the Four Seasons. It released "Sherry," the Four Seasons' first No. 1 hit, in 1962, and several of the other early Four Seasons hits subsequently were released on Vee-Jay.

It was truly appropriate that the earliest Beatles music came out here on an R&B label such as Vee-Jay, because the early Beatles were inspired by black R&B and by early rock 'n' roll records by both black and white artists that R&B helped spawn.

Vee-Jay, which was African American-owned, released records by:

• The Dells
• The Spaniels
• The El Dorados
• The Impressions
• The Pips (later Gladys Knight and the Pips)
• Jerry Butler
• Dee Clark
• Betty Everett
• Priscilla Bowman
• Gene Chandler
• Jimmy Reed
• Memphis Slim
• John Lee Hooker
• The Five Blind Boys
• The Staple Singers
• The Highway QC's
• The Harmonizing Four
• The Sallie Martin Singers
• The Swan Silvertones
• The Gospel Harmonizers
• Comedian Dick Gregory

(I get this list from Earl L. Stewart's book and from Wikipedia.)

To be fair, the early Beatles' repertoire did not "mine" the music of black Vee-Jay artists the way it did the black artists of other record labels such as Smokey Robinson ("You Really Got a Hold on Me"), Chuck Berry ("Roll Over Beethoven"), Little Richard ("Long Tall Sally"), the Marvelettes ("Please Mister Postman"), etc.

But it's hard to see why not. After all, R&B, early R&R, soul, gospel, blues — it all came out of the same African American musical tradition, even when it was interpreted by white artists such as the Beatles, the Four Seasons, the Beach Boys, the Righteous Brothers, and the Rolling Stones.

Clever Ruse Gets These Teens in to Meet the Beatles

On this date 50 years ago — Monday, August 15, 1966 — a bunch of 15- and 16-year-old boys cooked up a scheme that would get them into D.C. Stadium (as it was called before it was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Stadium) to actually meet the Beatles and then watch their Washington D.C. concert.

They did so by impersonating the group that was the opening act on the program. That group was called the Cyrkle, and it had scored a big hit with a song called "Red Rubber Ball" that was co-written by Paul Simon of Simon & Garfunkel.

Today's Washington Post's story is told here.

Ticket to the Beatles'
Aug. 15, 1966, show at D.C. Stadium
Note: Upper Deck seat was just $4.00!

 Beatles take a bow,
Aug. 15, 1966, D.C. Stadium

The Beatles were on what turned out to be their last tour ever. (It was also their third U.S. tour.) I was not able to go to the show, as I was working evenings at an Arthur Murray Dance Studio. I was supposed to be on hand to sell (expensive) ballroom dancing lessons to potential female customers, with whom I would dance briefly and then make my pitch. I was 18 years old. Problem was, ballroom dancing was in serious decline. There were few potential new customers at the best of times, and on this particular evening there were none. At the moment I imagined the Beatles were taking the stage at the stadium, I was stranded in a lonely office and wishing I was on hand for the concert.

I may have dreamed this part up, but my recollection now seems to be that the windows of this office were open — even in the hot Washington summertime — and I could just barely hear the sound of fans screaming as it wafted in from the open-air concert several blocks away.

By the way, this tour came right on the heels of John Lennon's faux pas in stating the the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus" ... The final show was the now-famous one at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966.

Beatles at the Washington Coliseum

On February 9, 1964, the Beatles made their first live appearance in America. It was on the Ed Sullivan TV show.

The Beatles with Ed Sullivan,
Feb. 9, 1964

A little-known trivia fact: their second live appearance in the U.S. was exactly two days later, on February 11. It was in my hometown, Washington, DC, at the Washington Coliseum.

The Beatles at the Washington Coliseum,
Feb. 11, 1964

This show was performed "in the round," meaning audience members were sitting on all sides of the stage. So Ringo had to manually turn his drum set around in the middle of the concert so that the fans on the other side could see him ...

For more on the Washington Coliseum Beatles show, see here.

The Earliest Beatles LPs, Part 2

In "The Earliest Beatles LPs, Part 1" I talked about how the first Beatles LP in the U.S., Introducing the Beatles, was much like the first one in Britain, Please Please Me, except that two songs were missing: "Ask Me Why" and "Please Please Me."

Here's the song list from the British Please Please Me LP:

1. I Saw Her Standing There
2. Misery
3. Anna (Go To Him)
4. Chains
5. Boys
6. Ask Me Why
7. Please Please Me
8. Love Me Do
9. PS I Love You
10. Baby It's You
11. Do You Want To Know A Secret
12. A Taste Of Honey
13. There's A Place
14. Twist And Shout

The U.S. Introducing the Beatles LP was released by a relatively obscure label, Vee-Jay. But every LP after that was released by Capitol records ... until, that is, the Beatles created their own label, Apple.

In 1965, Capitol played catch-up by issuing a "new" album called The Early Beatles.

Its track list:

1. Love Me Do
2. Twist And Shout
3. Anna (Go To Him)
4. Chains
5. Boys
6. Ask Me Why
7. Please Please Me
8. PS I Love You
9. Baby It's You
10. A Taste Of Honey
11. Do You Want To Know A Secret

So 11 of the 14 songs on Britain's Please Please Me were finally present and accounted for on a Capitol LP. The missing ones: "I Saw Her Standing There," "Misery," and "There's A Place."

"I Saw Her Standing There" had by that time been inserted onto the Capitol LP Meet the Beatles, which was the second Capitol album issued here, and was based on the second British LP, With the Beatles. As far as I can tell, "Misery" was never released on a Capitol LP. Nor was "There's A Place."

I'd love to know why Capitol and Vee-Jay didn't simply issue the original British LPs intact! Does anybody know?

Anyway, I was oblivious to such niceties back in the day. One had to carry around a mental catalog of Beatles songs in one's head to be able to figure out which were not showing up on LPs here in America! I know that now, but I didn't know it then ...

The Earliest Beatles LPs, Part 1

In "Pre- and Post-Rubber Soul Beatles Albums" I mentioned that I myself didn't buy any Beatles records until the Rubber Soul album, even though I was a big Beatles fan. I could listen to their earlier albums at the house of my friends Gretchen and Ricky Murphy, for one thing.

My experience in doing so, and in listening to Beatles LPs at other friends' abodes, was of course limited to the records released here in the U.S. I didn't know it at the time, but U.K. releases were, to some degree, not the same.

You can see a discography of all the U.S. releases at "Beatles discography: United States of America (USA)." Compare it to "Beatles discography: United Kingdom (UK)" and you will see what I mean.

Oh, most of the songs on, say, the very first U.S. album release, Introducing The Beatles, were the same as on the U.K.'s earliest, Please Please Me. But two songs, "Ask Me Why" and "Please Please Me," were missing on the U.S. release. (The U.S. record appeared on the Vee-Jay label, by the way, although all subsequent early Beatles albums in the U.S. came out on Capitol.)

Introducing the Beatles (U.S.)

Please Please ME (U.K.)

Why did the U.S. album lack two key songs? Who knows? But that practice of omittimg songs continued with the Capitol LPs — prior, that is, to Sgt. Pepper.

Pre- and Post-Rubber Soul Beatles Albums

To my mind, you can split the Beatles' career into two sections: that which came prior to Rubber Soul, and that which Rubber Soul inaugurated:

Rubber Soul

Rubber Soul was released in the U.S. on December 6, 1965. That meant it arrived just about two years after "I Want to Hold Your Hand" got its first radio airplay here.

This album "spoke to me" as no prior Beatles album had. I had just started my freshman year at college, and Rubber Soul's songs seemed — oh, I don't know — a bit more "grown up" than their earlier songs had been.

Some background is in order. The 1964-1965 period encompassed my last two years in high school. Two of my best childhood friends, Gretchen and Ricky Murphy, became huge Beatles fans in late '63 or early '64 after we heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on the car radio of their father's 1955 Chevy Bel Air convertible, which looked like this:

1955 Chevy Bel Air convertible

It must have been during the '63-'64 Christmas vacation. Gretchen, who had just gotten her driver's license, was driving Ricky and me to the grocery store on behalf of their mother. "IWTHYH" came on, and they heard it for the first time.

They were hooked.

From that time on, every time I went over to their house, they would likely be playing one Beatles album or another on a portable record player that may have looked a bit like this one:

1960s-style portable record player

I didn't own any Beatles records, not yet.

Don't get me wrong. I loved their music. I just wasn't a record buyer. I was more of a radio listener.

But Rubber Soul somehow changed that. I guess one main reason was that my father had just installed a fancy stereo setup into the room he used as a study and office. I was able to borrow it to listen to my records. The problem was, I didn't have any records yet. Rubber Soul was, if I recall correctly, my first.

I was at that point able to have Gretchen and Ricky (and other friends) over to listen to my records.

After Rubber Soul, there was Revolver. (I'm skipping over the Capitol album Yesterday and Today. Capitol was the U.S. record label associated with the Parlophone label that released the Beatles' records in the United Kingdom. Capitol would typically delete some of the tracks on the early Parlophone albums and later combine them with singles that had not appeared on any album. It would then release a "fake" Beatles record, such as Yesterday and Today, as if it were a brand new album.)

Anyway, after Revolver came Sgt. Pepper, which was the first Beatles album to be released in the same form in the U.S. as in the U.K. ... But I'm getting way ahead of myself ...

January 3, 1964 — A Beatles video is shown in the U.S. on the Jack Paar show

The first time the Beatles were shown on American TV, other than a news show, was probably this clip from the prime-time Jack Paar show of Friday, January 3, 1964, over a month before their first Sullivan appearance:

(Don't be confused by the "03.01.1964" date attribution. In Britain, the day of the month comes before the month itself.)

This was, obviously, not a live TV appearance.