On This Date In Music History

[jpkansas]

September 13, 1965 - "Yesterday" by The Beatles was released as a 45 in America. It took only 3 weeks for the record to hit number one of the charts. It's now the most performed and most recorded song in music history. Paul recorded the song without the rest of The Beatles in the studio and, although he loved the song, he was a bit squeamish about releasing it to the public. In fact, the song was never released as a single in England because Paul was concerned that a ballad with an acoustic guitar and a string quartet was “selling out” The Beatles image of a rock ‘n roll band. Paul almost gave the song to Mary Wells, who pleaded with him to allow her to record it on Motown. So, the most recorded record in history was almost a Motown ballad recorded by Mary Wells instead of McCartney’s solo masterpiece we know today.

[55dodger]

Nice story JP. I've always loved the song Yesterday, still have my 45.

[Dawn]

Yesterday was one of the very first Beatles songs I knew, and it's still a fave of mine. I hadn't known that about Mary Wells wanting to record it!

[lora]

Cool. I'll bet a Mary Wells version of Yesterday would have been really pretty.

[Ken]

Great post jp! I didn't know that about Mary Wells either.

I watched some of The Anthology last night in fact and I remember Paul saying that he felt kind of embarassed about the song because the band had always thought of themselves as he put it "a great little R&B combo"