The Beatles With Tony Sheridan And Their Guests

This title was pressed only once and was released on the old-style MGM yellow and black label, pressed by Quality Records in Toronto in early 1964. This record featured a very small selection of Beatles material (half Tony Sheridan material and another half filled with music by "the Titans", another MGM act), making for a very poor "Beatles compilation".

Availability

This album was pressed only once and was available starting 3 February 1964. The record was not very popular, especially in Canada and was found in stores for a few years, most of them even finding their way in bargain bins across the country, with a delete hole punched through both the cover and record itself.

General Information

By late 1963, the Beatles started gaining popularity in Canada (seeing a burst in sales for the Beatlemania LP and the She Loves You single), and were about to break through in the USA shortly after as well. MGM Records apparently felt a potential opportunity in the Beatles (MGM possibly noticed the sales of a Sheridan German EP or received advanced copies of the disc, triggering interest) and entered discussions with Deutsche Grammophon in Germany, with whom they had maintained a reciprocal licensing agreement since April 1962, just as Decca issued the Polydor My Bonnie single in North America (See the My Bonnie single on DECCA). This allowed MGM to issue DGG material in the USA and Canada, while in return, DGG could also release MGM material in Germany.

MGM seemingly wanted to stake a claim in the Beatles market and found a few Polydor releases in the UK and Germany featuring Tony Sheridan. Together, these sources gave them a few songs to build a compilation, but it was not enough; MGM wanted a full LP. Curiously, Sheridan’s full German Polydor LP was not considered and adding to the lack of immediate rights to release other Beatles–Sheridan recordings from the 1961 Hamburg sessions, MGM decided to round out the album with tracks pulled from their own catalog instead.

MGM chose to complete the Beatles selection with tracks from the Titan's second album "Let's Do The Twist For Adults", changing the name of some tracks, trying to move away from the dying "twist" craze, and getting closer the new "beat" era. All in all, it felt like what it was: a filler album (as Piers Hemmingsen explains well, a cash grab album attempting to scrape whatever tracks were possible to hop on the bandwagon while it passed). A nice collector's item today, but a disappointing album back in 1964.

Finally, MGM rehashed the concept a few months later re-releasing the album on their new budget label called "METRO". "This Is Where It Started" is more or less the same album (minus 2 tracks), with a different title and cover. The metro album probably sold even less than its original MGM incarnation, but at least (unlike the MGM album) it was released in both Mono and Stereo (see the Metro album entry.)

Pressing Information

This (only) pressing was manufactured by Quality records in Toronto. Master tapes were sent from MGM in the USA, and a lacquer / master was prepared in Toronto. The Canadian number adds a "(C)" to differentiate Canadian pressings from US pressings. While the US album was available in both Mono and Stereo the Canadian album was only prepared in MONO.

The version of "My Bonnie" found on this album is identical to the MGM single version, and features no English introduction like the one found on the DECCA single version. Hand-written matrix numbers are as follows:

Side A: E-4215-S1
Side B: E-4215-S2

Cover

The cover for this album features a front slick construction where slicks were glued on a white cardboard frame (unlike the regular brown cardboard found on Capitol LPs). The inner seams are a different model than Capitol albums, having a 10 mm inner seam that is both angled (edges of the seam or on an angle) and rounded (the centre of the seam has a curve cut out of the seam). Both the front and back slicks were printed at Parr's Litho (the logo can be found on the front cover).

The cover design is almost identical to its USA counterpart, but features unique Canadian markings, mostly on the back cover where one can find a "BUY CANADIAN" logo and a "PRINTED IN CANADA ON CANADIAN PAPER" logo, alongside the Canadian Quality Records legal text.

Due to poor sales, most copies were relegated to bargain bins, and most copies today are found with a punch hole stamped through both the cover and record. It seems that un-punched copies are harder to find today.

Packaging

This album was shipped in a tight shrink wrap, with a regular plain paper inner sleeve.