George's Records: 6 May 1966

     Following on from the last post, here is another letter George wrote to Atlanta radio DJ Paul Drew six months later. They had established a friendship where Drew would send new American records that he thought The Beatles might like and George hand wrote this three-page letter to thank him for the latest batch. The letter (sent the following day, 7 May, from Kingston-upon-Thames post office at 10:45am) is historically significant for several reasons:

1. It was written during sessions for Revolver. In fact, George wrote it while waiting for John and Ringo to pick him up from 'Kinfauns' to go to EMI Studios. This day they finished work on John's 'I'm Only Sleeping' with superimposition of backwards guitar and Paul yawning.
2. George mentioned their new single 'Paperback Writer'/'Rain' (released in the US on 30 May, but George thought it would be out a week later) and that Capitol would make an intermediary album with tracks from Rubber Soul, old singles ('Yesterday'/'Act Naturally' and 'We Can Work It Out'/'Day Tripper') and a few new ones, which, of course, was the controversial "Yesterday"...And Today! LP.
3. Mal and Lily Evans had recently had their daughter Julie on 17 April.
4. George mentioned that The Beatles almost recorded in Memphis with James 'Jim' Stewart (misspelled as 'Stuart'; Stax Records) but 'too many people got insane with money ideas at the mention of the word 'Beatles', so it fell through!'

    Not too many records are mentioned, but George does refer to two. The first is a 45 by Edwin Starr. George dug it 'a lot' and asked Drew if Starr had an LP out. We know from George's jukebox that the record was Starr's debut single 'Agent Double-O Soul' released in the US on Ric-Tic Records in 1965. The B-Side featured an instrumental version of the same song.

    The second record George called 'too much' was Elva Miller's debut LP Mrs Miller's Greatest Hits released on Capitol Records in the US on 11 April 1966. An unlikely sensation, this grandmother from Claremont, California, warbled her way into the Billboard Hot 100 with her cover of Petula Clark's 'Downtown' and sold half a million copies of her LP in the first three months. It was against her family's wishes that the 58-year-old housewife became a recording artist. Unfortunately for Mrs Miller and her family, it was not her talent that garnered so much attention but rather a shared joke at her expense. George and Paul Drew were also amused by the absurdity. The marriage of a warbly, operatic voice against a modern pop backing was a comic novelty. Including a cover of The Beatles' 'A Hard Day's Night', the album seems to delight in Mrs Miller's inability to stay in time and on pitch.  Most of the tracks are modern covers but the song that George highlighted was written especially for her by producer Lex De Azevedo (who went on to musical direct for the Sonny & Cher Show, The Jackson 5 and The Osmonds). George quipped that 'Gonna Be Like That' 'has a set of lyrics that Paul + John could never top!' You can be the judge of that: listen here.