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The Beatles

Nickname: The Fab Four

The Beatles are the greatest popular group of all-time. Arguably the most successful entertainers of the 20th century, they contributed to music, film, literature, art, and fashion, made a continuous impact on popular culture and the lifestyle of several generations. Their songs and images carrying powerful ideas of love, peace, help, and imagination evoked creativity and liberation that outperformed the rusty Soviet propaganda and contributed to breaking walls in the minds of millions, thus making impact on human history.

In July of 1957, in Liverpool, Paul McCartney met John Lennon and joined his group, The Quarrymen. George Harrison joined them in February of 1958. In 1959 they played regular gigs at a club called The Casbah. They were joined by vocalist Stuart Sutcliffe, and by drummer Peter Best, whose mother owned The Casbah club. Early incarnations of the band included The Quarrymen, Johnny & the Moon Dogs, and The Silver Beetles. John Lennon dreamed up the band's final name, The Beatles, a mix of beat with beetle. In 1960 The Beatles toured in Hamburg, Germany. There they were hired by singer Tony Sheridan as a backing band for his recordings for the German Polydor label. During the year of 1961 they played regular gigs at the Cavern club and were looking for a new manager. By the mutual decision of the Beatles' members, their first manager, named Allan Williams, was replaced.

Brian Epstein was invited to be the manager of the Beatles in November 1961. His diplomatic way of dealing with the Beatles and with their previous manager resulted in a December 10, 1961, meeting, where it was decided that Epstein would manage the band. A 5-year management contract was signed by four members at then-drummer Pete Best's home on January 24, 1962. Epstein did not put his signature on it, giving the musicians the freedom of choice. At that time McCartney and Harrison were under 21, so the paper wasn't technically legal. None of them realized this and it did not matter to them. What mattered was their genuine trust in Epstein. He changed their early image for the good. Brian Epstein made them wear suits and ties, classic shoes, and newer haircuts. They were advised to update their manners on stage and quit eating and drinking in public. Brian Epstein worked hard on both the Beatles' image and public relations. He improved their image enough to make them accepted by the conservative media of their time. Most if not all of their communication off-stage was managed by Brian Epstein.

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The Big Question

What Is Your Favorite Jazz Interpretation Of The Beatles?

Read "What Is Your Favorite Jazz Interpretation Of The Beatles?" reviewed by Ian Patterson


When The Beatles landed at John F. Kennedy Airport on February 7, 1964, they were greeted by around three thousand fans. Two days later, when The Fab Four performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, the television audience topped 70 million. Popular music was never the same again. It was not long before jazz musicians followed the lead of countless pop acts in covering The Beatles' songs. The list is an incredibly long one and, some sixty years later, ...

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Book Review

Living The Beatles Legend: The Untold Story Of Mal Evans

Read "Living The Beatles Legend: The Untold Story Of Mal Evans" reviewed by Doug Collette


Living The Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans Kenneth Womack 592 Pages ISBN: #978-0063248526 Dey Street Books2023 Kenneth Womack covers a tremendous amount of ground in writing The Untold Story of Mal Evans. Granted, Living The Beatles Legend runs nearly six-hundred pages including scrupulous footnotes as well as a lengthy index plus all the appropriate references. But in doing so, this professor of English and popular music maintains a charming approach ...

2,774
Profile

Jazz Honors The Beatles

Read "Jazz Honors The Beatles" reviewed by AAJ Staff


All About Jazz is honoring The Fab Four in the year of the 60th anniversary of the release of their first album (Please Please Me). This collective tribute was originally published in September 2009--as a living document, we'll add more quotes & stories over time (see how-to in comments section). We also compiled a companion playlist and present it below. When The Beatles first emerged at the forefront of The British Invasion, few could have predicted the impact ...

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Extended Analysis

Revolver Super Deluxe Edition (5CD)

Read "Revolver Super Deluxe Edition (5CD)" reviewed by Doug Collette


The five CDs in The Beatles' Revolver Super Deluxe Edition reaffirm a fundamental verity regarding the group's work. The Liverpudlian quartet was never more unified in its creativity than in writing, recording and producing the sixteen tracks that comprise the box in collaboration with producer George Martin, engineer Geoff Emerick and the additional musicians and technicians who participated. The curators of this set in turn have channeled the remarkably pragmatic and disciplined approach of the Beatles and company. ...

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Radio & Podcasts

Beatles, Popin’ Jazz

Read "Beatles, Popin’ Jazz" reviewed by David Brown


There are two things I've always avoided in my explorations of the music. Beatles covers and Christmas jazz. But lately, I've noticed that Beatle jazz has been accumulating in the collection and I'm having a hard time ignoring it. So tonight, let's explore a bunch of Lennon/McCartney tunes as well as other pop tunes of the '60s, '70s and '80s as interpreted along the Jazz Continuum. Playlist Thelonious Monk “Esistrophy (Theme)" from Live at the It Club-Complete (Columbia) ...

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Film Review

The Beatles: Get Back

Read "The Beatles: Get Back" reviewed by Doug Collette


The Beatles Get Back Apple2022 Following Thanksgiving weekend 2021's much-ballyhooed Disney+ streaming premiere of Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back, the announcement of its physical release came off slightly anti-climactic. The prospective excitement was further dampened by the fact no additional content was to be included over and above the original eight-hours or so, then further muffled by the delay of issue by technical glitches in the first run of duplication. Thus, ...

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Film Review

The Beatles And India

Read "The Beatles And India" reviewed by Doug Collette


The Beatles The Beatles And India Renoir Pictures/MVD 2022 The Beatles And India is not an authorized piece of film approved for release thru the current Apple organization, but perhaps it ought to be. This feature-length documentary collects in one place the various story lines arising around the iconic British band's abiding interest in all things Indian over the years, focusing on the late '60s. More importantly, this multiple-film-festival selection adds to and clarifies the ...

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Recording

The Beatles: 'Revolver' Reissue

The Beatles: 'Revolver' Reissue

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Revolver was recorded between April and June in 1966 and released that August 5th. I was 9 when Revolver came out but the album never wound up in my hands. I'm not sure why. The omission might have had to do with my gift-giving extended family's disapproval of an album named for a gun. Or maybe it was because I was in day camp that July. Or perhaps it was the confusion created by the minuscule gap between Yesterday and ...

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Recording

Ramsey Lewis Celebrates The Music Of The Fab Four With Posthumous CD 'The Beatles Songbook,' His First Solo Piano Recording, Due Jan. 6

Ramsey Lewis Celebrates The Music Of The Fab Four With Posthumous CD 'The Beatles Songbook,' His First Solo Piano Recording, Due Jan. 6

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity

The late, legendary pianist Ramsey Lewis offers an intimate, familiar affair with his solo piano recording The Beatles Songbook: The Saturday Salon Series, Volume One, to be released January 6 on Steele Records. This selection of tunes by the iconic songwriting duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, approved for release by Lewis, is also a surprising DIY project, created during livestreamed sessions in Lewis’s own jny: Chicago home. Lewis, of course, is no stranger to covering of postwar pop ...

Video / DVD

Sweden Meets the Beatles, 1963

Sweden Meets the Beatles, 1963

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

On October 13, 1963, Beatlemania—the youthful hysteria over appearances by the impossibly charismatic Fab Four—began in London after their afternoon rehearsal at the London Palladium. Suburban teens rushed the Fab Four as they headed to their limo and newspapers picked up on the mania the next day. Ten days later, on October 23, the Beatles flew to Stockholm for their first real tour outside the U.K. On October 30, they went on Swedish television, following a series of local pop ...

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Interview

The Beatles: Let It Be

The Beatles: Let It Be

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

In May 1970, the Beatles released Let It Be a month after they disbanded. I remember hearing it for the first time at age 13 on the driveway of my next-door neighbor in the suburbs. The neighbor was on his bike, I was on my green Schwinn Sting-Ray and two other friends were on theirs. His older sister was in her room with her boyfriend and they were blasting Get Back. The four of us listened and exchanged glances until one ...

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Recording

50 Year After Abbey Road: Two Worlds Of Music Listening

50 Year After Abbey Road: Two Worlds Of Music Listening

Source: HypeBot

With the Beatle's Abbey Road near the top of the charts 50 years after release, MIDiA analyst Mark Mulligan explores how older, physical-focused music fans remain the quickest route to high-value, large-scale revenue, as well as, much and how little has changed in the music industry. By Mark Mulligan of MIDiA and the Music Industry blog Half a century after it first after it first topped the charts, the Beatles’ Abbey Road is back at the summit of the UK charts. With the ...

Video / DVD

The Beatles: Abbey Road

The Beatles: Abbey Road

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Abbey Road was the last Beatles album on which all four members recorded together. By the time they gathered to work on their 11th studio album at the Abbey Road Studios between February and August 1969, they had done it all, seen it all and owned virtually everything they ever wanted. In fact, they had become so famous they were detached from the culture they helped start back in '64. Giving up touring in 1966 to become studio cobblers, the ...

Music Industry

The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Artist Positioning

The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Artist Positioning

Source: HypeBot

Manager Jake Udell reflects on the authenticity and image of modern artists, and how, historically, managers for groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones worked to successfully cultivate very distinct but very different images for both groups. By music manager Jake Udell from his Art of Manager The other day, an artist representative told me they aren’t paid to come up with the artist’s vision for them… “That’s the artist’s job.” I couldn’t agree more… The era we live in ...

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Video / DVD

Doc: The Beatles Decade

Doc: The Beatles Decade

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

For American teens in the 1960s, the Beatles represented the dawn of unrestrained excitement and parental rejection, a time when screaming, long hair, loud music, risque fashion, snarky humor and drugs mocked authority and convention. But through a British lens, the Fab Four were something more—an escape from glum parents, a bleak economy, a class-conscious society and a country still bound by stuffy tradition and set ways. Yesterday I found a fascinating multi-part documentary on the Beatles and the 1960s ...

Music Industry

GET BACK: Paul McCartney Settes With Sony/ATV To Reclaim The Beatles Songs

GET BACK: Paul McCartney Settes With Sony/ATV To Reclaim The Beatles Songs

Source: HypeBot

Copyright reversion, or the return of master recordings and publishing to the creators when copyrights 'run out', is an issue that is finally reverberating throughout the music industry. In perhaps the most high profile music reversion to date, Paul McCartney and Sony/ATV reached a settlement over the ownership of many of The Beatles' songs.  Paul McCartney and Sony/ATV have reached a settlement over the ownership of The Beatles song rights, avoiding a legal decision by a U.S. court in the case. According ...

Recording

The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper at 50

The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper at 50

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Fifty years ago today, Capitol Records released the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Bandin the U.S. Two months later, my Aunt Mary gave me the album for my birthday. Astonishingly, nothing from the album was released as a single for AM radio. At 11, I was a big Beatles fan, but I couldn't figure out what I was listening to or looking at while holding the cover. First, the Fab Four had facial hair and had become adults. I ...

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