On this day in Beatles History...March 22, 1965

51 years ago today on March 22, 1965, a brand new Beatles record was released in America!  Unfortunately, that record was filled with previously released songs.

The Beatles were flying back to England after seven days spent filming the movie Help! in Austria as their fans in the United States were enjoying Capitol Records' release of The Early Beatles.  At least it was being enjoyed by new Beatles fans or fans who had worn out their copy of Introducing The Beatles which had been released on the Vee-Jay record label the previous year and contained an almost identical collection of songs.  Capitol Records had originally passed on their option to release The Beatles records in The United States, so Vee-Jay records scooped up the opportunity.  In 1965, Vee-Jay's contract ended and Capitol very quickly snapped it up and started releasing albums to make up for lost time.  The fact that this collection was essentially a re-release of old material gave it the distinction of being the only original release by Capitol Records that didn't chart in the top two.  In fact, it's highest chart position was #43.  As testament to The Beatles staying power, the album did still eventually sell over one million copies and get certified as platinum!

The Beatles 1968 Corgi Yellow Submarine Toy

By 1968, merchandise for The Beatles has already been around for several years.  It was no surprise that when The Yellow Submarine movie came out that there was a yellow toy submarine available for sale.  What probably was a surprise was that the yellow toy submarine released by Corgi in 1968 was of such high quality!  This toy was made of a very solid metal with a good amount of weight to it.  The periscope spun around and there were two little hatches that could be opened up to see the The Beatles inside.

Although Corgi didn't start making toys that tied in with movies and TV shows until 1965, had been making high quality, metal, toy cars in the UK since 1956, so they already had a lot of experience making a solid toy by the time The Yellow Submarine was released in 1968.  Additionally, from 1965 to 1968 they crafted so many toys to tie in with movies and TV such as James Bond, The Saint and the TV shows The Avenger and Batman, surely by then it would have been a simple task to create a toy submarine based on a very stylized cartoon.

On this day in Beatles History...March 4, 1966

50 years ago today on March 4, 1966, The Beatles released the Yesterday EP in the UK.  The EP contained the four songs Yesterday, Act Naturally, You Like Me To Much, and It's Only Love.  All four of these songs were previously released on the UK version of Help!  However, none of them were on the US version of Help!

Each of The Beatles sang lead vocals on one song.  Paul sang his phenomenally successful song Yesterday.   Ringo provided the lead vocals on their version of the Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison song Act Naturally.  George sang his song You Like Me Too Much.  John sang a song he co-wrote with Paul called It's Only Love which had originally been titled That's A Nice Hat.

On March 26, 1966, The Yesterday EP hit #1 and spent 6 weeks at the top of the UK charts.  It was around this time that John Lennon made his famous comment that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.