1963 in the US and Canada
From: "Frederick W. Harrison"
Newsgroups: rec.music.beatles.moderated,rec.music.beatles
Subject: 1963 in the US and Canada (was First U.S. Tour)
Date: 1 Jul 2001 03:10:51 GMT
BigStar303 wrote in message
<20010630020229.19231.00001253@ng-mq1.aol.com>...
>The point being that a great song in and of itself isn't always enough.
>Certainly the history of rock 'n' roll is littered with hundreds of great
>songs, ones that would seem to have been a perfect fit for the charts, not
>making it for one reason or another. There has to be some kind of
>undefinable momentum behind them to gain that first crucial push.
>
>I think this may partially explain the lack of success of PPM, FMTY and SLY
>upon their initial release. The old story is sometimes you have to whack
>the mule upside the head with a two-by-four to get his attention. Maybe
>this is what happened to me, and in the U.S. as a whole.
"If only..." has become an oft heard refrain, especially in Mojo of
late. But one forgets that American radio in the early 60s was still
recovering from the payola scandals. The establishment was convinced
that without payola rock 'n' roll would shrivel up and die - which it
didn't. There was also a shift to male vocalists and clean cut teen
idols - think of all the Bobbys, as Jerry Lee Lewis referred to them.
Rock 'n' Roll was still being recorded, played on radio, and sold in the
stores - but it was now under attack and investigation. The FBI
attempted to decipher the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" because of alleged
obscenities so they could ban the record - but got nowhere. The
intensification of the Cold War and the aftermath of the McCarthy
hearings led to a suspicion of anything remotely subversive or
anti-authoritarian - which rock 'n' roll was. There was slander and lies
from white supremacists who, fearing the growing civil rights movement,
attacked the music because of it's "nigger" origins (echoing Hitler's
prohibitions on jazz and blues in Third Reich Germany) and through that
the black performers/promoters of the music. And many God-fearing
Americans saw the end of the world fast approaching and were convinced
that rock 'n' roll was the manifestation of the Antichrist in the Book
of Revelation, and so fought against it with religious fervor. Despite
this, the early 60s saw the rise of Brill Building pop, Phil Spector,
the rise of Motown, the beginnings of garage rock, and a folk/blues
music revival in which the brightest star was a young kid from Hibbing,
Minnesota who styled himself after Woody Guthrie and became the voice of
the protest movement.
Meanwhile, things were beginning to heat up in England. The skiffle
craze had given way to rock 'n' roll and an appetite for American R&B. A
struggling band from Liverpool was studying the A sides and B sides of
every disc they could get their hands on, honing their craft as copyists
until they were able to transform it into something new. Having learned
the art of songwriting from the records they listened to, they
incorporated influences from British working class and music hall, and
came up with their own sound. By 1963 success was beckoning at home and
those looking for new talent began to take notice of this new British
phenomenon called the Beatles and their fellow rockers. Record labels in
the UK began to record this new sound and offered the recordings to
their parent or sister labels in the USA.
Capitol USA was given the opportunity to release the Beatles, but
passed. Vee Jay and Swan picked up the right to release the records.
Given the prevailing anti-rock bias and the impression that the British
Beat movement was just a lacklustre copy of the original American sound
(and hey, some of those late 50's British attempts at rock 'n' roll WERE
lame) it was no surprise that the music was passed over by the majors.
Why release some unknowns from Liverpool when Nat King Cole, Glen Gray &
The Casa Loma Orchestra and other "adult contemporary" musicians were
the label's bread and butter? (And adult contemporary WAS Capitol's cash
cow at the time - as it was with most of the other majors.) The only
thing from England that sold was comedy records - Flanders & Swann, and
Beyond The Fringe, and Rolf Harris. Besides there were probably hundreds
of bands in the US who could play circles around these Brit upstarts -
why risk the money? Vee Jay had inroads to the R&B and teen markets and
were more open to experiment with something new - so they took the
chance.
In Canada, things were also beginning to happen. The ties with the
Mother Country (Great Britain) were still close, although the new medium
of television was beginning to direct the Canuck gaze southward to the
Promised Land. Capitol Canada, under the direction of Paul White, set
up two specific catalog number series to release other EMI recordings
from around the world: the
6000 series for albums and the 72000 series
for singles. This became the pipeline for British (and French via the
Pathe label) culture to flow into Canada - often months before the USA
took notice. And flow it did - everything from Scottish dance records
(Jimmy Shand), choirs (the beloved Glasgow Orpheus Choir - the label's
first hit album), comedy records, documentary recordings (the
investiture of Charles, Prince of Wales), British folk, pop, and rock.
The foremost exponent of British rock in Canada before the Beatles was
Cliff Richard and the Shadows - the very band the Beatles claimed to
despise. A whole generation of Canadian guitar players honed their
musical skills on BOTH American rock 'n' roll AND the emerging British
equivalent. Randy Bachman (Guess Who & BTO) and Neil Young both idolized
Hank Marvin as a guitarist. Neil Young's first recording as the Squires
was a Shadows derived instrumental titles "Aurora". Canadian radio was
slow to respond to rock and roll (the first Top 40 station began
broadcasting in 1957) but had quickly learned the American model -
without the payola. And the American majors regarded Canada in 1963
(population around 16 million) as a minor market not really worth
noticing as regarded trends or breakouts. As well, with one national
radio/TV network (the CBC) and pockets of smaller, insular regional
stations, the prospects for promoting a record across Canada were rather
bleak. The US at least had Billboard which allowed the music industry to
pick up on regional breakouts and follow what was happening in the rest
of the country. In Canada, there was no equivalent of Billboard. with
the result that something might sell well in one area of the country and
not even be noticed in another.
Thus when the Beatles records were released in 1963, beginning with
"Love Me Do" in Canada in February, followed by "Please Please Me" on
Vee Jay in the US in March, the reactions were quite different. In the
US there were some markets that playlisted the Beatles.
saki has stated,
with proof, that WLS in Chicago was the first station to playlist the
Beatles back in March 1963. Their influence may have crossed the border
and affected radio station CFGP in Grand Prairie, Alberta for they
charted the "Please Please Me" single in their Top 40 by April 20, 1963,
rising to 27 the following week (the only chart of
the time to have surfaced provides these details).
Then again, CFGP may have picked up on
the record on their own - no one knows for certain in hindsight.
(Capitol is the label given for the release, rather than Vee Jay.) So
there was airplay to start the ball rolling in Canada as early as April
1963, and possibly earlier if some station picked up on "Love Me Do".
The lack of a Canadian radio/record industry magazine at the time has
frustrated any attempt at investigation of this possibility. But what
happened next in both countries was different.
In the US each subsequent Beatles release had pockets of airplay, but no
sudden swell of regional interest that would have driven the record onto
the national charts or the band into the spotlight of the music
industry. For all intents and purposes, to US radio the Beatles were
also-rans, regional rumblings that didn't catch fire. It would take Ed
Sullivan to recognize that the Beatles were the next big thing as he
observed the crowds at a London airport on a trip to Europe. From his
unprecedented act of signing the band to appear on his show in February
1964 came the impetus for Capitol US to get serious about the Beatles -
failing to follow up on an act that appeared on his show was simply not
done at that time, for the Ed Sullivan Show ruled Sunday night prime
time television (and there weren't many other alternatives in most
markets at that time.) In Canada, the public gradually became aware of
the Beatle phenomenon through news reports from Britain which, at that
time, made up a significant portion of Canadian newspapers and
magazines. Canadians were well informed as to goings on in the Mother
Country. The wave of immigrants to Canada from the UK also helped to
spread the word. Capitol Canada continued to release each new single
from the band (though Paul White maintains that they never achieved
significant sales) and by November 1963 the momentum had built to the
point where "She Loves You" was on the charts in the largest radio
market in the country (Toronto); it would go Top 20 in December. The
album "With the Beatles" was released as
"Beatlemania
With The Beatles"
in Canada a mere three days after release in the UK, which is the surest
indicator that something was already happening with the Beatles in
Canada. The promotional push that erupted in the US in late 1963 only
helped to solidify the popularity of the band in Canada; in fact, there
was some identification with the Beatles as "our boys" due to the strong
ties of the Commonwealth at that time. Canada would not begin to
seriously disassociate itself from Britain culturally until the 1967
Centennial of Confederation, at which point Canada was forced to develop
an identity of its own, in no small part due to its hosting of the
World's Fair (Expo '67) in Montreal, then the most "happening" city in
the country. (34 years later we're still trying to forge a Canadian
identity.... C'est plus change, c'est plus que la meme chose...)
Meanwhile in the USA, British musicians achieved the invasion that
British armed forces had failed to achieve during the War of
Independence and the War of 1812. Britain, which in the 50's watched
helplessly as its Empire collapsed or gained independence, suddenly
emerged as "Swinging England" and rock now had a second base of
operations.
Frederick Harrison
" A stone may change the course of the river." C.S. Lewis
