Behka’s Breakfast with The Beatles Recap: Week of October 27

I've decided to kind of do a "reboot" on our Breakfast with Behka and The Beatles segments in the morning show. I figured it might be interesting to play the songs and albums in as close to chronological order as possible.

I started last week with some early material from before they were signed by a record label. This week, I started with some of the earliest material they recorded on vinyl - whether it was their material, their album, or not.

On Monday, I played "Ain't She Sweet".

"Ain't She Sweet" is a song composed by Milton Ager (music) and Jack Yellen (lyrics) and published in 1927 by Edwin H. Morris & Co., Inc./Warner Bros., Inc. It became popular in the first half of the 20th century, one of the hit songs that typified the Roaring Twenties. It was performed by the Beatles with John Lennon on lead vocals during a session for the singer Tony Sheridan, who the group was backing. It was recorded on June 22, 1961 at the Friedrich-Ebert-Halle, Hamburg, Germany with Pete Best on drums, produced by Bert Kaempfert. The recording was released as a single on May 29, 1964, and included on the Anthology 1 album in 1995. A different rendition, recorded during a jam session in 1969 with Ringo Starr on drums, was released on the Beatles' Anthology 3 - it is the only song which appears on two of the Anthology records. A solo version of the song was also included in the John Lennon Anthology box set.

On Tuesday, I played another song from that album, "My Bonnie".

On The Beatles' first visit to Hamburg, Germany in 1960, they met rock and roller Tony Sheridan, and became friends with him. On their second visit, in 1961, The Beatles backed Sheridan in a series of stage performances. It is sometimes said that German Polydor agent Bert Kaempfert saw Sheridan with The Beatles, but others report that a friend of Kaempfert's suggested that he bring them in to put down some recordings. Either way, he produced the material with Karl Hinze engineering. While they recorded a number of songs together (as well as alone), few of them actually made it on to the album, with Sheridan re-recording many of them. The Beatles are known to appear on "My Bonnie" and "The Saints" .

On Wednesday, I played "How Do You Do It".

The song was written by Mitch Murray, who offered it to Adam Faith and Brian Poole but was turned down. George Martin of EMI decided to pick it up for the new group he was producing, the Beatles, as the A-side of their first record. The Beatles opposed using it, feeling that it did not fit their sound, but worked out changes from Murray's demo-disc version. These included a new introduction, vocal harmony, an instrumental interlude, small lyric changes and removal of the half-step modulation for the last verse. They recorded the song in September, 1962; although Murray disliked their changes, the decision not to release the Beatles' version was primarily a business one. The recording appeared in 1995 on the group's retrospective Anthology 1 album. Gerry and the Pacemakers' version, also produced by Martin, became a number-one hit in the UK until it was replaced by "From Me to You" (the Beatles' third single).

Then on Thursday and Friday, I took time off. Sorry.

We'll start up again next week on Monday with the first official Beatle single and kick things off from there.

Sweetly yours,
Behka