Video: 'Rare Record: Introducing the Beatles (1964)'

(Tuesday, January 7, 1964, 2:30-4:00 p.m. GMT) — Introducing… The Beatles today became the first studio album released by the English rock band The Beatles in the United States.

Originally scheduled for a July 1963 release, the LP came out today on Vee-Jay Records, ten days before Capitol’s Meet the Beatles!. The latter album, however, entered the U.S. album chart one week before the former.

The Beatles’ recording contract that began May 1962 with Parlophone in the United Kingdom gave the parent corporation EMI rights to offer any of the group’s recordings to the various labels EMI owned in many countries of the world. However, EMI’s United States subsidiary, Capitol Records, declined to release the “Please Please Me” single.

Following this, Transglobal, an EMI affiliate that worked to place foreign masters with US record companies, negotiated with several labels before Vee-Jay Records signed a licensing agreement giving it the right of first refusal on Beatles’ records for five years.

As part of that agreement, even after its singles releases of “Please Please Me” and “From Me to You” failed to chart above No. 116 on the Billboard Hot 100, Vee-Jay planned to release Please Please Me, the band’s first studio album released in the UK, in the US, and received copies of the mono and stereo master tapes in late April or early May 1963.

Video: 'The World's Most Counterfeited Vinyl Album'

Originally, Vee-Jay considered releasing the Please Please Me LP unaltered, as it appeared in the UK. A surviving acetate made by Universal Recording Corporation of Chicago, probably in May 1963, contains all 14 songs in the same order as on the UK album, with the title still listed as Please Please Me.

But in keeping with the American norm of a 12-song album, Vee-Jay chose instead to omit “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why” (which had comprised the first single release) and change the album’s title to Introducing… The Beatles.

On Jan. 16, 1964, less than a week after Introducing… The Beatles was released, Vee-Jay was served with a restraining order stopping further distribution. Beechwood Music, Inc., Capitol Records’ publishing subsidiary, owned the American publishing rights to “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You,” and because the two songs had not yet been officially released in the US, Beechwood refused to issue a license for Vee-Jay to release them.

Approximately 80,000 copies of Introducing… The Beatles had been released with the two songs on them, with only 2,000 or so in stereo.

To circumvent the restraining order, Vee-Jay quickly reconfigured Introducing… The Beatles. It removed “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” and replaced them with the previously omitted “Ask Me Why” and “Please Please Me”, though some pressings of the album did not alter the track list.

The new versions were prepared in late January and began appearing in stores around Feb. 10, 1964.

Because of the initial restraining order, version two of Introducing… The Beatles did not enter the Billboard charts until three weeks after Capitol’s Meet the Beatles! album. Once it did, it quickly rose to the number two spot, where it stayed for nine straight weeks.

Even with the replacement of the two Beechwood Music songs, Vee-Jay and Capitol battled in court throughout the early part of 1964. Injunctions against Vee-Jay’s album were issued, lifted and restored more than once.

Because the album was often pressed quickly between restraining orders, there are almost two dozen different label variations, including mono and stereo copies, manufactured at numerous pressing plants.

Finally, on Apr. 9, 1964, the two labels settled. Vee-Jay was granted a license giving it the right to issue the 16 Beatles’ songs it controlled, in any way it saw fit, until Oct. 15, 1964. At that time, its license expired, and all rights would revert to Capitol.