50 Years ago this weekend (February 23rd, 1964), The Beatles made their third and final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show as part of the initial deal made between Sullivan and Beatles Manager Brian Epstein ... and boy how things had changed in just three weeks!
By this point, The Beatles had FIVE Hits on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart with "I Want To Hold Your Hand" at #1, "She Loves You" at #2, "Please Please Me" at #29, "I Saw Her Standing There" at #35 and "My Bonnie" (the record that first introduced Epstein to his proteges) at #54.
For this program, The Fab Four sang "Twist And Shout" (not yet a single ... Tollie / Vee Jay would release it three weeks later), "Please Please Me" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand". (Actually the performance was taped a couple of weeks earlier when The Fab Four first hit New York City ... in fact, by the time the program aired here in The States, The Beatles were already back home in Jolly Ol' England, having arrived to about 10,000 screaming fans at Heathrow Airport the day before!)
By this point, The Beatles had FIVE Hits on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart with "I Want To Hold Your Hand" at #1, "She Loves You" at #2, "Please Please Me" at #29, "I Saw Her Standing There" at #35 and "My Bonnie" (the record that first introduced Epstein to his proteges) at #54.
For this program, The Fab Four sang "Twist And Shout" (not yet a single ... Tollie / Vee Jay would release it three weeks later), "Please Please Me" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand". (Actually the performance was taped a couple of weeks earlier when The Fab Four first hit New York City ... in fact, by the time the program aired here in The States, The Beatles were already back home in Jolly Ol' England, having arrived to about 10,000 screaming fans at Heathrow Airport the day before!)
ON THE CHARTS:
According to the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Chart dated February 22nd, THE BEATLES are still on top (for the fourth straight week) with I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND. SHE LOVES YOU has climbed to #2. PLEASE PLEASE ME is up another 16 places to #29. I SAW HER STANDING THERE joins them in The Top 40 at #35, giving The Fab Four FOUR Top 40 Hits this week … a full 10% of the countdown! MY BONNIE is lagging a bit behind at #54 … but it'll get there eventually. I ONLY WANT TO BE WITH YOU breaks into The Top 20 at #20 and THE DAVE CLARK FIVE are up to #65 with their first U.S. Hit GLAD ALL OVER.
Meanwhile, here in Chicago, it's official … WLS has become your Beatles station … all of the station's disc jockeys are shown wearing Beatles wigs on the back of this week's Silver Dollar Survey.
"I Want To Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" sit at #1 and #2, joined by "Please Please Me" at #18 and "I Saw Her Standing There" at #30. The Dave Clark Five hold down the #27 spot with "Glad All Over" as Cliff Richard slips down a couple of notches to #31 with his remake of "It's All In The Game".
