The Beatles 1st Ed Sullivan Performance

Rare Beatles Photos: 1964-1966

by MITO HABE-EVANS

Just when we thought there couldn't possibly be anything new to see about America's favorite mop-tops, memorabilia specialist and author Larry Marion brings us The Lost Beatles Photographs: The Bob Bonis Archive, 1964-1966. As it turns out, this guy Bonis snapped hundreds of photos of the Fab Four onstage, backstage, on planes and on vacation during their first and only three U.S. tours, all but a handful of which have never seen the light of day until now.

Bonis never wanted to capitalize on his privileged access, so his photos sat stored away for over 40 years; only his family and friends saw them or even knew of their existence. Bonis died in 1992, and nearly 20 years later his son Alex decided it was time to share his father's collection with the rest of the world.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/03/28/134792968/rare-beatles-photos-1964-1966?sc=nl&cc=mn-20110331

It's official: The Beatles are on iTunes

Nearly a decade after Apple Inc. introduced iTunes, the digital downloading service has finally acquired the music of the Beatles. Apple on Tuesday rolled out the Fab Four's music for legal downloading for the first time, offering 17 albums encompassing all 13 of the group's original studio albums, the two “Past Masters" collections of non-album tracks, two double-album hits compilations and a box set including everything except the hits collections.
Individual tracks are being sold for $1.29, the single albums for $12.99, double sets for $19.99, and the box set is priced at $149. The digital box set also includes an exclusive-to-iTunes concert film, “Live at Washington Coliseum, 1964," never previously released officially.

“We're really excited to bring the Beatles' music to iTunes," Paul McCartney said in a statement issued Tuesday. “It's fantastic to see the songs we originally released on vinyl receive as much love in the digital world as they did the first time around."

Complete on  >>  http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=70537

Abbey Road....

Beatles Tribute Show Coming to the Neil Simon Theater

By PATRICK HEALY
More than 30 years after the hit musical revue “Beatlemania” closed on Broadway, the tribute band Rain will perform an array of Beatles songs — from “The Ed Sullivan Show” days to “Abbey Road” — for 11 weeks beginning in October at the Neil Simon Theater, the production announced on Tuesday.

The five-person band (including a player on keyboards and percussion), which has been together and touring on and off for two decades, will mount a live concert production. Among the popular songs that are expected to be performed are “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Yesterday,” “Twist and Shout,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Hey Jude,” “I Am the Walrus” and “Revolution.”

The show, titled “Rain — A Tribute to the Beatles on Broadway,” is scheduled to begin preview performances at the Neil Simon on Oct. 19, with an opening night on Oct. 26. The limited engagement is set to end Jan. 2, 2011 — the end of the traditionally profitable holiday season on Broadway.
Photo: Joan Marcus

The Neil Simon Theater has been empty for months awaiting the musical “Love Never Dies,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to “The Phantom of the Opera.” That much-anticipated show was originally scheduled to open at the Neil Simon last November. But the London production of “Love Never Dies” opened this spring to harshly critical reviews, and its fate on Broadway has been in doubt since then. In April the Broadway producers of “Love Never Dies” said they were delaying the production until spring 2011 because of Mr. Lloyd Webber’s health problems.

A spokesman for the production said on Friday that “Love Never Dies” was still planned for Broadway next spring.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/beatles-tribute-show-coming-to-the-neil-simon-theater/?partner=rss&emc=rss

All Their Loving: Jazz Covers The Beatles

by Lara Pellegrinelli
Hear Six Interpretations Of The Band's Classics
September 9, 2009 - Aug. 15, 1965. Having traveled by helicopter to the site of the World's Fair in Flushing Meadow Park, Queens, four shaggy-headed Brits board an armored car for their ride to the recently opened Shea Stadium. Sixty thousand crazed teenagers await them. The foursome only plays a 30-minute set, but it changes American music forever.
Jazz is no exception. Up until the British Invasion, songwriters dominated the industry. Singers and instrumentalists competed to record their own arrangements of the day's hits — what we now call "covers." That system gradually collapsed. How would jazz musicians interpret new songs that were so closely associated with their creators? And what would they find to fuel improvisation without the fertile harmonies of the old standards?

It's been a long and winding road. Arguably, it took well into the 1990s before the developments of '60s rock were comfortably absorbed into the jazz tradition. The further we've come, the more musicians have been able to find their own voices within the creations of the Fab Four. Starting with some early attempts, here are five benchmarks along the way.

Album: Ramsey Lewis's Finest Hour (Ramsey Lewis)
Song: Hard Day's Night
Every geek knows that British rock was born when musicians discovered the blues thanks to recordings of artists such as Muddy Waters. It might not be as easy to hear the blues in the music of The Beatles compared to, say, The Rolling Stones. But it couldn't be more obvious when Ramsey Lewis plays "Hard Day's Night." The Chicago-born pianist topped the charts himself in the '60s with The In Crowd, and takes The Beatles back to their Southern roots.

Album: Day Tripper: Jazz Greats Meet the Beatles, Vol. 1 (Count Basie)

Song: All My Loving
Count Basie once grumbled about recording pop tunes, telling a reporter in the 1930s that if you had to do them, you might as well make them swing. Whether out of obligation or perceived necessity, Basie was an early adopter of The Beatles, recording the album Basie's Beatles Bag in 1966. Not every tune works -- the Basie juggernaut basically clear-cuts "Norwegian Wood" -- but "All My Loving" is a perfect vehicle for his big band. The simple melody isn't far removed from '30s hits like "In a Mellow Tone." Basie makes the arrangement his own, tip-toeing through with wit and charm.

Album: Watch What Happens (Lena Horne & Gabor Szabo)
Song: Rocky Raccoon
What on earth inspired Lena Horne, that paragon of elegance and class, to record "Rocky Raccoon" with Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo in 1969? Sarah Vaughan took a lot of heat for her funked-up, disco-inspired versions of The Beatles, and with good reason. Horne doesn't seem entirely in her element, either. New Yorker critic Hilton Als described the arrangement as "wry, dismissive, and filled with contempt." I don't hear it that way. Tight-lipped, but with a wink and a nod, Horne (then 52) gets a little groove on, relating a folk tale that could have come from 19th-century America. She winds up somewhere between blues empress Bessie Smith and Tina Turner -- aiming, perhaps, for something nice and rough.

Album: Word of Mouth (Jaco Pastorius)
Song: Blackbird
Jaco Pastorius gave one of the most covered Beatles tunes one of the most highly regarded jazz covers. Like so much of the music by electric-bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius, "Blackbird" is propelled by a sense of flight. Harmonica player Toots Thielemans takes the melody and glides over the top. Leave it to fusion musicians -- guys with instruments that plug in -- to get down to business with rock

Album: New Standard (Herbie Hancock)
Song: Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
Pianist Herbie Hancock was one of those fusion musicians in the '70s and, by the '90s, he was pioneering what he called "new standards," exploring that concept in an album for Verve in 1995. On it, The Beatles keep company with Prince, Peter Gabriel and Kurt Cobain. Unlike a simple cover musician, Hancock expands the structure of "Norwegian Wood" and adds subtle, complex harmonies. His contributions seem to magnify the tune's wistful, nostalgic mood.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112656949

Sat Eye Candy: Abbey Road

THE SUN KING IS HERE TO GREET YOU AFTER YOUR GOLDEN SLUMBERS

Today marks the 40th anniversary of The Beatles' landmark Abbey Road being released in the United Kingdom. Few records can truly be called “essential" but this one rates and we've put together a “video album" to commemorate the occasion. Of course, John, Paul, George and Ringo are here, but we've opened it up to interpreters who've taken these songs and continued to breathe life and love into them since the collection arrived four decades ago.
SOURCE: JamBase
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=43272

Beatles sell 2.25 million albums in 5 days

LOS ANGELES – Nearly 40 years after breaking up, The Beatles are still breaking records for album sales.

EMI Group PLC says consumers in North America, Japan and the U.K. bought more than 2.25 million copies of the Fab Four's re-mastered albums in the first five days after their Sept. 9 release. Most of the records were broken for most simultaneous titles in the top-selling charts by a single artist. On Billboard magazine's pop catalog chart, for example, the band had 16 titles in the top 50, including all 14 re-mastered CDs and two box sets. The Beatles' original U.K. studio albums were re-mastered at Abbey Road Studios in London over four years and released to coincide with the sale of "The Beatles: Rock Band" on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090923/ap_en_mu/us_beatles_sales

The Beatles' Entire Original Recorded Catalogue Remastered

The Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music have announced the release of the original Beatles catalogue, which has been digitally remastered for the first time, for worldwide CD release on September 9, the same date as the release of the widely anticipated The Beatles: Rock Band video game. Each of the CDs is packaged with replicated original U.K. album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited period, each CD will also be embedded with a brief documentary film about the album. On the same date, two new Beatles boxed CD collections will also be released.
The albums have been remastered by a dedicated team of engineers at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London over a four year period utilizing state of the art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment, carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings. The result of this painstaking process is the highest fidelity the catalogue has seen since its original release.

This will mark the first time that the first four Beatles albums will be available in stereo in their entirety on compact disc. The 14 albums, along with a DVD collection of the documentaries, will also be available for purchase together in a stereo boxed set.
Within each CD's new packaging, booklets include detailed historical notes along with informative recording notes. With the exception of the Past Masters' set, newly produced mini-documentaries on the making of each album, directed by Bob Smeaton, are included as QuickTime files on each album. The documentaries contain archival footage, rare photographs and never-before-heard studio chat from The Beatles, offering a unique and very personal insight into the studio atmosphere.

A second boxed set has been created with the collector in mind. The Beatles in Mono gathers together, in one place, all of The Beatles recordings that were mixed for a mono release. It will contain 10 of the albums with their original mono mixes, plus two further discs of mono masters (covering similar ground to the stereo tracks on Past Masters). As an added bonus, the mono Help! and Rubber Soul discs also include the original 1965 stereo mixes, which have not been previously released on CD. These albums will be packaged in mini-vinyl CD replicas of the original sleeves with all original inserts and label designs retained.

Remastered Releases
Please Please Me (CD debut in stereo)
With The Beatles (CD debut in stereo)
A Hard Day's Night (CD debut in stereo)
Beatles For Sale (CD debut in stereo)
Help!
Rubber Soul
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles
Yellow Submarine
Abbey Road
Let It Be
Past Masters
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=42351

The Beatles - Don't Let Me Down (1969)

The Beatles Apple Rooftop Concert
The version recorded on 30 January 1969 was released as a b-side to the single "Get Back", recorded the same day.
Written By John Lennon & Paul McCartney

Long and Winding Road, Newly Repaved

By ALLAN KOZINN
THE newly remastered CDs of the Beatles’ original albums and singles, which EMI and Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, are releasing on Wednesday, have less of a gee-whiz factor than The Beatles: Rock Band, which hits stores on the same day. But for those of us for whom the music is paramount — and who will forever refer to Rock Band as “the toy” — the game is a plastic tail wagging a cartoonish dog. And though the compact disc, as a format, may be on its deathbed, these remastered CDs are really the main event.
The complete catalog, in mono and stereo, has been given a careful digital upgrade. These are straightforward transfers of the albums as they were released in Britain, rather than the American versions, which were reconfigured by Capitol Records (to the Beatles’ chagrin). Do not look for bonus tracks: the only extras are making-of documentaries on each of the stereo discs. And although the stereo and mono mixes could have fit together on single CDs, in most cases EMI is selling them separately.

The up side: In most cases this music has dimension and detail that it never had before, and the new packaging reflects each album’s musical and cultural importance. Over all, the new discs sound substantially better than the Beatles’ original CDs, which EMI issued in 1987. The most striking and consistent improvements are a heftier, rounded, three-dimensional bass sound, and drums that now sound like drums, rather than something in the distance being hit. But because each album has its own sonic character, due partly to developments in recording technology during the Beatles’ career, and partly to the growing complexity of their work, some discs are improved more radically than others, and some are hardly improved at all.

Probably the most revelatory of the new transfers is the stereo White Album. From the opening jet engine effects on “Back in the U.S.S.R” to the final orchestral chord on “Good Night,” this album now leaps from the speakers. Gentler songs like “Julia” and “I Will” have a lovely transparency, and hard rockers like “Yer Blues” and “Helter Skelter” — as well as John Lennon’s quirky vision of dystopia, “Revolution 9” — have a power and fullness unheard until now.

“Abbey Road” also benefits considerably. The clearer instrumental profiles serve this rich-textured album beautifully: “Sun King” and “Here Comes the Sun” are unusually supple; the vocal on “You Never Give Me Your Money” no longer has a shrill edge, and Lennon’s proto-Minimalist “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” has never sounded more mesmerizing. Nor has the group’s valedictory jam in “The End.”

And if you are cherry-picking among these reissues, the two-CD singles compilation “Past Masters” should be near the top of your list. The stereo mixes of these songs are often less hard hitting than the mono singles were, but the remastered versions, with their enriched bass, palpable drum sound and improved sense of vocal presence, no longer sound anemic. You find yourself discovering textural details (the percussion overlay in “She’s a Woman” is one such surprise) that show how imaginative the Beatles’ arrangements are.

It’s about time. In 1987 the elation of finally getting the group’s classic recordings on CD, four years after the format was introduced, quickly gave way to disappointment with the discs’ sound quality and presentation. Like many early CDs, several (though not all) of the Beatles’ discs had a harsh upper range. And except for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which was put in a deluxe package with liner essays and archival photos, the 1987 CDs came with minimal, slapdash artwork.

Collectors who had long prized both the mono and stereo mixes of the group’s albums, which have different attractions (and sometimes different vocal takes and instrumental details), and had hoped that EMI would find a way to release both mixes on CD, were upset that the 1987 series offered the first four albums only in mono and the rest only in stereo. In one sense all of the group’s music had made the transfer; in another, about half the catalog was missing.

In a way it still is: the stereo recordings are available either individually for $18.98; $24.98 for double albums, or boxed (as “The Beatles”) for $259.98. But the mono albums can be had only in a 13-disc boxed set, “The Beatles in Mono,” for $298.98, which covers up to the White Album (the last album the group mixed in mono) and includes a mono version of the “Past Masters” singles compilation that includes previously unissued mono mixes of “Across the Universe” and songs from the “Yellow Submarine” soundtrack.
more....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/arts/music/06alla.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Beatles fans swarm Abbey Road on album anniversary

LONDON – Beatles fans mobbed London's Abbey Road on the 40th anniversary of the famous photo that turned this ordinary London street into a musical pilgrimage site.

Hundreds of fans swarmed the site Saturday morning, bringing traffic to a standstill.
Abbey Road cuts through the swish north London neighborhood of St. John's Wood and is where the Fab Four recorded much of their work.
It became a part of music history after the Beatles were featured on the cover of the eponymous album walking on the street's crosswalk.
Tourists flock to the site every day to recreate the iconic scene, much to the annoyance of locals.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090808/ap_en_mu/eu_britain_beatles_anniversary

Beatles performing "Don't Let Me Down"

Let´s Remember It!