Please Please Me (song) - Original US Release

Original US Release

Capitol Records, EMI's United States label, was offered the right to release "Please Please Me" in the US, but turned it down. Instead, it was placed with Transglobal, an EMI affiliate that worked to place foreign masters with US record labels. It was told to find an American outlet for the record as quickly as possible, in order to appease Martin and Beatles' manager Brian Epstein. "Please Please Me" was then offered to Atlantic, which also rejected it. Finally, Vee-Jay, which had released the top-five hit "I Remember You" by Frank Ifield in 1962, another record Capitol had turned down, was offered the right to issue "Please Please Me" in the States, and chose to do so. The exact date of the US issue was lost for decades, but research published in 2004 showed that the single "Please Please Me"/"Ask Me Why" was released by Vee-Jay on 7 February 1963. Coincidentally, this was exactly one year before The Beatles' plane landed in New York on their first visit as a band to America.

Dick Biondi, a disc jockey on WLS in Chicago and a friend of Vee-Jay executive Ewart Abner, played the song on the radio, perhaps as early as 8 February 1963, thus becoming the first DJ to play a Beatles' record in the United States. Art Roberts, legendary DJ and Music Director at the time tells how the record came to be played first at the station:

"Let me tell you the story of "Please Please Me". The record was released on the Vee-Jay label. It was a local Chicago recording company. The owner, Ewart Abner, brought a copy of the record to W. L. S. I was the music director at the time and listened to his story about a group, and looked at pictures in teen magazines he brought back from England. I figured, what if this group would get as popular in the United States as they were in England and Europe. So I added the record to the list."

"Please Please Me" peaked at number 35 on 15 March after four weeks on its "Silver Dollar Survey" chart. But the song did not chart on any of the major national American surveys.

The first pressings of the Vee-Jay single, which was assigned the catalog number 498, featured a typographical error: The band's name was spelled "The Beattles" with two T's. Later copies of the single corrected the typo. Also, unlike on the UK Parlophone edition, the composers on the Vee-Jay edition were credited as "J. Lennon-P. McCartney" on both sides. Except in Chicago, the record was a flop, as it sold approximately 7,310 copies. Today, copies of Vee-Jay 498, whether with the incorrect or correct spelling of The Beatles on the label, are valuable collector's items.