History of the Beatles' Us Singles - 1

My Bonnie / The Saints
MGM K13213, January 27, 1964

My Bonnie
Written by Charles T. Pratt in 1881
(as J.T. Woods and H.J. Fuller)
Sung by Tony Sheridan
Engineer: Karl Hinze

The Saints
(When The Saints Go Marching In)
Traditional
Sung by Tony Sheridan
Engineer: Karl Hinze
My Bonnie & The Saints

History
In 1961, Bert Kaempfert, an Artists & Recordings manager at Polydor in Germany, decided to record Tony Sheridan. He also wanted to use the Beatles as Sheridan's backing group since they were comfortable playing together on the Hamburg stages. On June 22, 1961, the Beatles began a two day recording session at the Hamburg Friedrich Ebert Halle school with Tony Sheridan. At this point, Pete Best was still playing drums. The recollection of engineer Karl Hinze is that these recordings were made on a portable 2-track deck and mixed live to stereo. This means the mono mixes are all reductions of the stereo mixes, and not separate mixes as they are in the case of nearly all the EMI recordings.
In addition to My Bonnie, The Saints, and Why backing Sheridan, the Beatles recorded Ain't She Sweet and the George Harrison - John Lennon instrumental, Cry For A Shadow. For their work, the Beatles earned a flat fee of 300 marks, and all rights to the recordings belonged to Deutsche Grammophon. In 1964, DG then released these recordings through MGM, and Atlantic Records
When released in Germany later that summer, the Beatles were called the Beat Brothers on the label. According to Kaempfert, almost 100,000 copies were sold. It was this record that caught Brian Epstein's eye, and he ordered 200 copies for his NEMS stores. The single, with the Beatles credited properly on the label, was released in England on January 5, 1962.

US Releases
April 4, 1962
January 27, 1964
February 3, 1964
March 1964
August 15, 1966
May 4, 1970
1973 , 1975 , 1981 , 1982 , 1983
November 25, 1995 Decca 31382 (released cancelled due to poor critical showing)
MGM K-13213
The Beatles, with Tony Sheridan and their Guests, MGM E-4215
Savage Young Beatles, Savage BM-69
This Is Where It Started, Metro M-563
In The Beginning, Polydor 24-2504
Flashback Greats of the 60's, K-Tel TU229 (My Bonnie only)
History of British Rock, Sire SASH 3712-2 (My Bonnie only)
British Sterling, Lakeshore Music LSM 811 (My Bonnie only)
First Movement, Audio Fidelity PHX 339
20 Hits, The Beatles, Phoenix 20 P20-623
Anthology I, Apple 34445 (My Bonnie only)

Highest US Chart Position
February 8, 1964 at #26

Live Performances
1962 : My Bonnie was performed at various venues throughout England, and possibly Hamburg.
John took over as lead singer.