The Early Beatles

The first North American LP released in the year 1965 was this compilation of earlier material by the Beatles entitled "The Early Beatles". This LP was released on March 22 1965 in the United States by Capitol in mono and stereo: the mono catalogue number is Capitol T-2309 while the stereo catalogue number is Capitol ST-2309.

This LP could be considered an official "replacement" of the previous configurations of "Introducing The Beatles" on Vee Jay records. Vee Jay records rights to it's original 16 Beatles' masters reverted to Capitol records in mid October 1964 when Vee Jay stopped making and distributing LPs containing these early Beatles masters.

The 11 tracks on the LP are all pulled from the UK Parlophone LP "Please Please Me" with the exception of "I Saw Her Standing There" (which was already available on the US "Meet The Beatles" LP yet remaining unreleased on an LP in Canada), "Misery" (which would remain unreleased on an LP in the US until the 1980 Capitol release of "Rarities" but available on the Canadian "Long Tall Sally" LP), "There's A Place" (which would remain unreleased on an LP in the US until the 1980 Capitol release of "Rarities" but available on the Canadian "Twist And Shot" LP). Finally, the odd song out would be "From Me To You" which would see the light of day in 1973 on Apple's double LP compilation "The Beatles 1962-1966".

The front cover of the LP features a colour photo of the band in Hyde Park, London. The photo was taken by Robert Freeman. The photo was originally used for the back cover of the UK Parlophone LP "Beatles For Sale". The photo is cropped and the title of the LP in blue and red is above along with the songs contained within below the title in an olive green colour.

The back cover is white with black print with short liner notes to the left under the LP title, the track listing for sides one and two to the right and mini black and white LP covers below both the liner notes and tracklisting. The catalogue number for both formats appears on the top right corner.

The labels use the classic black background with rainbow rim and blue/white perimeter print. There are errors on both the US and Canadian labels concerning writers credits: On side two track three "Baby It's You" shows the last name as "Davis", it should be "David". Also, the next track "A Taste of Honey" shows the writer's credit as "Ric Marlow". The credit should have both "Bobby Scott - Ric Marlow".

The inner sleeves in the US were the rust coloured "teen set" inners similar to the ones used for "Beatles' 65".

In Canada, this LP was not released in that country until on or about June 03 1968. The simple reason for this is that all of the songs contained on "The Early Beatles" were already available on the Canadian LP "Twist And Shout". When "The Early Beatles" was released in 1968 in Canada, all copies were stereo. No mono copies exist (that I know of). The cover is the same both front and back with the exception of Canadian markings at the bottom of the back cover "Printed in Canada", "Manufactured...." etc. The labels are also the classic black with rainbow print and the errors on the labels are exactly the same as the earlier US version !! Canadian copies of this LP originally came with the red/white "Capitol/Pathe" inner sleeves.