It Was Fifty Years Ago Today

[Sailor Steve]

Yep, Capitol's first Beatles album. There was actually an earlier US release, from VeeJay records, with 12 of the original 14 from Please Please Me. The Capitol album was the US version of their second album, With The Beatles, released in November. It had 9 of the 14 songs from the British version, plus two songs from a single* not on the British album, and a song from the first album.

*It was a curious difference between British and American albums. Not only did the British versions have 14 songs to the American's 12, but songs that were being released as singles in Britain were intentionally not put on albums. When Capitol put up the money for the CD releases they chose to go with the original British versions. This led to much confusion from American fans from the old days, especially albums like Rubber Soul and Revolver, which not only had songs not on the American versions, but were missing songs that had already appeared on earlier British albums, and to the release of Past Masters vol. 1 & 2, two full discs of singles that were never on the British albums.