A Little Covers band?
There are six non-original songs on the first Beatles' LP: Please Please Me/Introducing the Beatles.
Anna (Go to Him) - Arthur Alexander
Chains - The Cookies
Boys - The Shirelles
Baby It's You - The Shirelles
A Taste of Honey - Billy Dee Williams
Twist and Shout - The Top Notes
Why these songs?
The choices are instructive. There's one show tune (A Taste of Honey) and three recent US girl-group hits (Boys, Chains, Baby, It's You).
The Beatles usually credited the performer rather than the writers — the names in tiny print and brackets were probably unfamiliar to them.
Baby It’s You, for example, was always referred to as ‘a Shirelles’ song’. In fact, the music was by Burt Bacharach, with lyrics by Mak David (brother of Hal) and Luther Dixon.
They did know Goffin and King. The Brill Street 'A' listers wrote the other ‘Shirelle’s song’ on Please Please Me. Ringo sang Boys, the B side of Will You Still Love Tomorrow?, in their stage show.
Soul mining
…we always {made} it known that there were black originals, we loved the music and wanted to spread it in any way we could… many kids were turned on to black music by us. It wasn’t a rip off. It was a love-in. John Lennon 1971
Five of the covers on The Beatles' first LP were originally recorded by black artists. Lennon and McCartney were affronted by suggestions that this was exploitative. And in fairness, any Beatles endorsement guaranteed a huge financial bonus.
That career turbocharge could be short-lived. John Lennon greatly admired the “country-soul pioneer” Arthur Alexandra but often forgot to mention him when performing Anna (Go with Him). Most Beatles fans assumed it was another Lennon and McCartney composition.
The Alabama songwriter’s career had faded into obscurity by the mid-60s.
Shake it Up, Baby
A cover version ends the LP and would become the only non-original to join the top tier of The Beatles' song catalogue. The Beatles repeatedly credited Twist and Shout to The Isley Brothers. In fact, the Isleys' version was itself a cover of a Phil Spector-produced original
The brothers weren't complaining, though. They had watched that first Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 at home with their new bandmate, one J Hendrix. Now a cover of their cover boomed out from every radio.
The Songs The Beatles Sang - free 4 min read on Medium
The story behind Twist and Shout
