Freda Kelly with Paul McCartney, 1962

Liverpudlian Freda Kelly was the Beatles Official Fan Club Secretary from 1963 until it closed in 1972, two years after the breakup of The Beatles. I spoke with Freda back in March (2011) at the Fest For Beatles Fans in New Jersey, but this was before any plans were in place about her new film project. Freda’s documentary film will be called Good Ol’ Freda, as that is what The Beatles shouted out to her on their 1963 Christmas message sent out to all of the fan club members. You can hear the excerpt from this message where The Beatles address her on a previous post I made here. I spoke with Freda again on the phone this afternoon and she was just as charming as ever. I asked her about the film and she spoke in detail about how it will cover her life and times with The Beatles, not only answering fan mail, but traveling with The Beatles to events such as their appearance in December 1963 on television show Juke Box Jury, their recognition at the Liverpool Civic Reception in July 1964, or their filming of the Magical Mystery Tour special (Freda was sitting right behind Paul on the bus). Freda was a fan and friend of The Beatles from way back in the days of their Cavern Club gigs of 1961, before their future manager Brian Epstein was even aware of them. She has been to their homes and even helped their families cope with the stress caused by their new found fame.

The film promises to be of intriguing interest to historically minded Beatles fans who have seen her name on all of the fan club newsletters and literature of the 1960′s. Tripod Media is using Kickstarter.com to fund the film. After just a week, they have met over $11,0000 of the $50,000 required for post production. Rewards are given for all donations ranging from signed DVDs, photos of Freda with the Beatles, movie credit, even lunch or a personal tour of Liverpool with Freda! For more details on pledges and prizes, visit the Good Ol’ Freda Kickstater page here.

Here is my interview with Freda:

Happy Nat & Freda Kelly, 2011

Here is a fascinating video clip showing a few never before seen photos of The Beatles with Freda.

Good Ol’ Freda – Kickstarter Video from Tripod Media on Vimeo.

The Director of Good Ol’ Freda is Ryan White, the producer/director of Pelada, an award-winning documentary about a trip to 25 countries told through the lens of pick-up soccer. The film premiered at the prestigious SXSW Film Festival in 2010 and has played in over 20 film festivals worldwide. It’s been broadcast in as many countries and received rave reviews from Variety, The New York Times, and Sports Illustrated. Prior to Pelada, White had a longstanding collaboration with eight-time Emmy winner Sherry Jones.

Good Ol’ Freda is scheduled for release in late 2012 or early 2013 and will be the first Beatles documentary of its kind.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Welcome to the Beatles Rarity Of The Week. Most Beatles fans are aware of the recordings The Beatles made with Tony Sheridan, another English singer/guitarist they regularly backed during their stint at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg. Of the eight songs eventually released commercially, the most popular is My Bonnie, largely because it was the Beatles first recording on commercial vinyl, as well as the song that historically brought them to the attention of their future manager, Brian Epstein. One need only read the liner notes in the booklet for The Beatles Anthology 1 CD set, to know how record producer Bert Kaempfert had visited the Top Ten and was impressed enough with what he heard from Sheridan and The Beatles to get them under a contract and produce some recording sessions with them.

During June 22-23, 1961, The Beatles recorded My Bonnie, The Saints, Why, Take Out Some Insurance On Me Baby and Nobody’s Child with Tony on lead vocals and Pete Best still manning the drum kit. Another recording from these sessions, Ain’t She Sweet, featured John Lennon on lead vocal. There was also an instrumental composed by John and George Harrison titled Cry For A Shadow. When My Bonnie b/w The Saints was released on a single, in both Germany and the U.K., it was requested at Brian Epstein’s NEMS record store, and the resulting curiosity of Brian’s is what led him to the Cavern Club in Liverpool to see The Beatles perform. The rest, as they say, is history.

Many are under the impression that these 1961 sessions in Hamburg were when all of the Tony Sheridan recordings with The Beatles were made, but that is not the case. By the middle of the following year, Brian was already managing The Beatles, and one of the main roadblocks with getting them a record deal was the contract they had signed in Hamburg with Bert Kaempfert. After talks with Brian, Bert agreed to let them out of it if they consented to one more session with Tony, the next time they were in Hamburg.

This is what brought The Beatles back to the same Studio Rahlstedt, where they had recorded the earlier sessions with Tony. The date was May 24, 1962. Pete Best was still with them, and they had also brought along pianist Roy Young, who had been playing with them at their latest engagements at Hamburg’s Star Club. The one person that didn’t make it to the session was Tony Sheridan himself. The Beatles, with Roy, went ahead and recorded two backing tracks for Tony to add vocals to at a later date. One track was a song called Swanee River. Another track, arranged solely by 19 year old Paul McCartney, was Sweet Georgia Brown, the subject of this week’s BROW.

Tony did make it to the studio a couple of weeks later, on June 7, to add his vocal track to Sweet Georgia Brown, and it appeared on a German EP called Ya Ya later in 1962. This EP, as you may have guessed, has been out of print for almost half a century. Swanee River was never released, and the master tapes have likely been lost forever. There is another recording of Tony Sheridan performing Swanee River, but without The Beatles as the backing band.

A year and a half later, on January 3, 1964, while The Beatles were the hottest commodity on the planet and soon to visit America, Tony replaced his vocal track on Sweet Georgia Brown, this time singing novelty lyrics that actually reference The Beatles by name. The verse previously sang as:

Fellas that she can’t get
Are fellas she can’t get*
Georgia claimed her, Georgia named her
Sweet Georgia Brown

was changed to:

In Liverpool she even dared
to criticize The Beatles hair
with their whole fan club standing there
Ah, meet Sweet Georgia Brown

* Tony should’ve sang this line as Are fellas she ain’t met

This second version is readily available (you can get it from the Amazon link below, or possibly at your favorite music store). The original version, with the initial vocal track by Tony, is not so easy to come by. I give it you now to compare. Thanks for stopping by this week!

Top Ten Club photo (Hamburg) L-R: Stuart Sutcliff, George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney (on piano behind Tony), Tony Sheridan

Here are some Amazon links to read more on, or purchase, some music related to this post:

1) In the Beginning – 2000 CD remaster of original 1970 compilation. Contains all eight songs The Beatles did with Tony Sheridan including their first ever vinyl release My Bonnie and Tony’s 1964 updated vocal of Sweet Georgia Brown

2) The Beatles with Tony Sheridan – 2004 film on DVD addressing The Beatles times in Hamburg with Tony Sheridan in 1960-1962.

3) Additional Amazon links for your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Happy Nat w/Freda Kelly, March 2011

Liverpudlian Freda Kelly was the Beatles Fan Club Secretary from 1963 until it closed in 1972, two years after the breakup of The Beatles. The Official Beatles Fan Club originally formed in May of 1962 and was managed by Bobbie Brown, but when Bobbie became engaged in 1963, Freda took over and remained the secretary until the end. Freda met The Beatles first way back in the days when they were playing The Cavern Club in Liverpool and was actually one of the Cavernites – a group of protesters fighting to keep the Cavern from closing down in both 1963 and 1966 (it was eventually destroyed in 1973 and later rebuilt across the street from the original location). When The Beatles sent their first Christmas flexi-disc message to their fan club members in 1963, Freda was mentioned by George Harrison, as heard here:

Note: After playing, click the play/pause button again to keep it from playing simultaneously with the interview below.

Another of the assistants mentioned, named as Anne Collingham, was actually a fictitious entity made up by Beatles public relations man Tony Barrow, to serve as the head of the fan club. By 1967, Freda had taken over the full running of the club and also worked for Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s NEMS Enterprises, as well as The Beatles own company, Apple. Yet with all of her duties, it was Freda in charge of seeing that all of that fan club mail was opened (up to 400 letters a day!), and sending the newsletters and messages to the membership of over 16,000 people.

Freda was a special guest at the New York Metro Fest For Beatles Fans this year, and I had the pleasure of having a quick chat with her. Although I’m sure she has a lot of interesting tales to tell concerning her time with The Beatles, her time was limited with all of the Fest activities that she was a part of, but I was very thankful that we had the chance to talk. As you might expect, Freda is a very sweet person and was an absolute pleasure to speak with. My talk with her is shared below.

Note: The live music and “Fest-ing” in the background was not to be avoided as this is the atmosphere of Beatles Fests (or if it isn’t, there is a problem somewhere!). Nevertheless, Freda’s voice is a little soft so you may have to listen close in spots. Enjoy!

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Paul McCartney played a lunchtime gig at London’s famed 100 Club on 17 December, 2010. The club, the city’s oldest live music venue, has been under threat of closure due to an increase in rent. This was Paul’s smallest gig in more than a decade ago when he played at the historic Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1999. The 300 strong audience included Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones.

The 100 Club opened in the 1940s and is famous for sets from bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash, but The Beatles never played there.

Paul urged the audience to help save the club several times throughout his 28-song set. “It’s a great gig for us and many bands,” he said, “so I think, please, Mr. 100, try and save it, because it’s a really class place, this”.

The performance included classic tracks Let It Be, All My Loving, Eleanor Rigby and Hey Jude and finished with a medley of Yesterday, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band and The End.

The owner of the club, Jeff Horton, said it was “incredibly special” to have Macca play. “To have Sir Paul McCartney step up to the plate and fight for the cause with us is brilliant – there is nobody bigger than that,” he said. “To have the man who changed the face of pop music play here is incredibly special.”

Click the image above to play the video.

Click to read about or purchase these related releases from Amazon.com:

1) Paul McCartney – The Space Within US – concert film also featuring Magical Mystery Tour live with Paul’s current band

2) Magical Mystery Tour (Remastered) – 2009 remaster of original album

Here’s more Amazon links for your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Welcome to the Beatles Rarity of the Week. Plans for The Beatles to do a recording session for the BBC radio program Saturday Club fell through on March 11, 1963 because John Lennon came down with a sore throat. Plan B was put into effect, which was to just do a live performance during the actual broadcast on March 16. The Beatles were given time to do six songs and opened up with I Saw Her Standing There, which was also the opener for their upcoming first LP release Please Please Me, due out the following week. Due to time constraints, this was the first occurrence of a slightly shortened arrangement of the song (omitting the second middle eight). This was also the first of ten recordings of I Saw Her Standing There for BBC radio, although there is a couple earlier recordings of the song from the Cavern Club in Liverpool, UK and The Star Club in Hamburg, Germany. The other songs performed at the show were Misery, Too Much Monkey Business (a Chuck Berry favorite of John’s), I’m Talking About You (another Chuck Berry tune), Please Please Me (their first #1 single which had only just topped the UK Melody Maker singles chart) and The Hippy Hippy Shake (another cover originally by Chan Romero, but The Beatles were probably most familiar with the 1959 Little Tony version). As usual there was also chat with The Beatles from well-known host Brian Matthew. This was at a time when nobody in America had ever heard of The Beatles. The 1994 Apple collection of BBC recordings Live At The BBC did not include this particular performance, nor has it been on any other official release to date.

The Beatles, 1963

Click to read about or purchase these related items from Amazon.com:

1) Live at the BBC
2) Live at the BBC [Vinyl]
3) Live at the BBC EP 45 w/Picture sleeve

A Happy Note from Happy Nat: As of this month, the BROW is 3 years old! Can you believe it! I know most of you haven’t been around that long to read and hear them but they are still here in case you still need to (and want to) catch up. It’s been beyond fun so far, and I’ve got to know a lot more fans too – and that alone makes it worth it. So thanks everyone for sticking around and there is a lot more good stuff to come. Stay tuned…

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? If so, I will do my best to deliver, so let me hear from you. To browse for ideas, check out this search-able listing of thousands of Beatle-related recordings to choose from. Then let me hear from you here.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Since this footage pre-dates even their first 45, Love Me Do, we are lucky it has been preserved at all. This is The Beatles covering the old RIchie Barrett hit, Some Other Guy at the infamous Cavern Club. Granada Television filmed The Beatles with their new drummer, Ringo Starr, on August 22, 1962, to “possibly” use in their series Know The North. The footage was actually not used then, but was aired about 15 months later in November 1963 on the UK program Scene at 6:30. There is a tape stretch in the recording after the first verse. Sorry folks, but it is like that on all versions, to include even the cleaned up version on the official Anthology documentary. On my primary source tape of this recording you can hear someone in the audience screaming “We want Pete!” (referring to former drummer Pete Best) at the end of the song, but that has been truncated out of this film.

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Welcome to this week’s BROW, which turns out to not only be a triple feature, but also a salute to a very significant man in Beatles history known as Chris Barber. Read on…

One of the main things that inspired John Lennon to form up his band The Quarry Men was the “skiffle-craze”. When UK musician Lonnie Donnegan’s fast-tempoed skiffle account of Lead Belly’s Rock Island Line came out in 1955, John was motivated to get in on the action. When his mother Julia bought him his first guitar in early 1957, he realized that all he still needed to form up his band were his friends, a washboard and tea chest bass.

Rock Island Line was not only a gold record in the U.K., but also a top 10 hit in the U.S. and Lonnie Donnegan (aka “the king of skiffle”) recorded it in 1954 while a member of the Chris Barber Jazz Band. At the time, Chris Barber was an already-established jazz trombonist who was recently responsible for launching Donnegan’s career. So if not for Chris Barber, there would have been no stardom for Lonnie Donnegan, no “skiffle craze” and therefore, no Quarry Men. It’s very arguable that The Beatles, in turn, may have never existed.

So thank you Chris!

Years later, in 1967, The Beatles in a relatively small way returned the favor by giving Chris one of Paul McCartney’s instrumental compositions he had first recorded way back in 1962 called Catswalk.

The audio featured here is a 1962 Beatles rehearsal of the track actually recorded at The Cavern Club in Liverpool. As intended, Chris made a spiced-up jazz arrangement of the song, renamed it Cat Call and released it as a single in the U.K. in October of 1967. It’s interesting to hear the life Chris breathed into this simple little demo, so I’ve included a recording of it here too. Cat Call was also released again in April 1979 on the compilation album The Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away.

The Beatles - Catswalk

The Chris Barber Jazz Band - Cat Call (excerpt)
This is part of the orginal 45 version also on the Battersea Rain Dance LP*.

The Chris Barber Jazz Band - Cat Call
This version is from The Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away.

* Many thanks to Andreas Wandfluh, Archive and Web Team Member of the Big Chris Barber Band / Chris Barber’s Jazz Band, who has provided this recording to me and allowing me to update this post with more information.

Chris Barber

1979 Compilation LP: The Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away, released April 1979, w/Chris Barber pictured in lower right corner

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Welcome to BROW. It’s a snowy day in my neighborhood. This week’s post takes a look at another snowy January Monday, 47 years ago, when The Beatles, supervised by A&R assistant Mike Smith played 15 songs, carefully selected by their new manager Brian Epstein, for Decca Records in West Hampstead, London in hopes of securing a recording contract. Pete Best was still on drums, and the band was shaky and nervous with so much at stake. Consequently, it wasn’t one of their more spontaneous sessions of the time, however Mike Smith was impressed with them. He had seen them a month earlier at a Cavern Club show and had high hopes. It’s well known history though, that the man in charge, Decca A&R executive Dick Rowe turned the band down flat, citing to Brian that groups with guitars are on the way out. Two of the fifteen songs performed were early Lennon-McCarney originals (Hello Little Girl, Like Dreamers Do) and the rest were covers that they often performed for their stage act. These two originals, along with three others from the session (Searchin’, Three Cool Cats and The Sheik Of Araby) were officially released on the The Beatles Anthology 1 CD set in 1995. The others were not officially released in the US but have been widely bootlegged. To Know Her Is To Love Her (originally To Know Him To Love Him) was written by another big name in Beatles history: Phil Spector, for his first band The Teddy Bears (with lead singer Annette Kleinbard). Here it is performed by a young and nervous sounding John Lennon. Perhaps I should have featured this last week since the date of the performance was New Year’s Day, 1962.

The Beatles (Left to right: George, Pete Best, John & Paul at their Decca Audition, 1/1/1962)

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Welcome to the weekend and to this weeks BROW. This recording was made on August 22, 1962 at one of The Beatles’ infamous Cavern Club gigs in Liverpool, only four days after Ringo Starr joined the band and less than two weeks before recording their first single Love Me Do. It was a Ritchie Barrett hit from the previous April and The Beatles covered it in their stage act often during this period as well as a few months later when they were guests on the BBC. Due to the subsequent rise of The Beatles’ popularity in the UK, the performance was televised in Britain the following November. The sound quality of this leaves much to be desired due to the acoustics of The Cavern and the prehistoric nature of the recording equipment. After all, it wasn’t recorded by anyone at EMI, just by some other guy.

The Beatles at The Cavern Club, Liverpool, UK in 1962

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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