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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
At long last my first real record album is available as a CD, May 17, 2007
"The Beatles' Second Album" was my first real record album (records having to do with television shows like "Mr. Ed" and "Top Cat" do not count). I actually managed to avoid buying another Beatles' album until "Abbey Road," although I did pick up "The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits" and my father made copies of "Sgt. Pepper" and "Magical Mystery Tour" at the reel-to-reel tape club at the base. So when the Beatles albums came out on CD and they went with the original British albums rather than the ones that Capitol started cobbling together on this side of the pond, I had to put together a play list of the album that I knew so well. "A Hard Day's Night" is still my favorite Beatles album, all things considered, but this is the Beatles album that makes me wax nostalgic. My cousin Donna, who got to see the Beatles in concert, had "The Beatles First Album," but all I really did was listen to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" a couple dozen times in a row, which is why that song but not that album play a larger role in my memories of the Fab Four.
The tracks for this 1964 album, which hit #1 on the "Billboard" album chart, are as follows:
1. "Roll Over Beethoven"
2. "Thank You Girl"
3. "You've Really Got a Hold on Me"
4. "Devil in Her Heart"
5. "Money (That's What I Want)"
6. "You Can't Do That"
7. "Long Tall Sally"
8. "I Call Your Name"
9. "Please Mr. Postman"
10. "I'll Get You"
11. "She Loves You"
"She Loves You" is the #1 hit single that was most associated with this album, although "Roll Over Beethoven" also charted (#68). Those two songs define this album, which offers a mix of rock & roll with rhythm & blue, and original songs as well as covers. Actually, there are only five Lennon & McCartney tunes on the album, but except for "I Call Your Name" (written by John back in the Quarry Men days), they were all songs really co-written by the pair. "Thank You Girl" was originally intended to be the B-side for "From Me to You" but ended up being the A-side. "I'll Get You" was the B-side to "She Loves You," and John and Paul actually thought it was the better song. But "She Loves You" would prove to be the best-selling single in the U.K. for the entire decade and represented everything that the early Beatles were all about musically ("Yeah, yeah, yeah"), although it is different their previous singles by being about other people rather than the singer (cf., "Love Me Do," "Please, Please Me" and "From Me to You"). The song was actually covered by Peter Sellers on three different versions representing three different accents (the Irish one is my favorite), but I digress.
What really makes this "second" album stand out from the other early Fab Four efforts is that it has so many covers of songs by black American artists and songwriters, from Chuck Berry ("Roll Over Beethoven") and Little Richard ("Long Tall Sally") to Smokey Robinson ("You Really Got a Hold on Me") and Barrett Strong ("Money"), not to mention "Please Mr. Postman" originally done by the Marvelettes. This was the first album that Capitol Records put together for the American market, pieced together from "With the Beatles" (tracks 1, 3, 4, 5 and 9), and assorted singles. If you want to recreate the album from your current collection of Beatles CDs, then in addition to the aforementioned you want tracks 2, 7, 8, 10, and 11 from "Past Masters, Vol. 1" and track 6 from "A Hard Day's Night." Those of us who had the original vinyl album will be most inspired to do this, but even those of you born after 1964 might be curious to hear the album you would have been listening to if you had been around way back when. You might not be able to totally appeciate the nostalgia that makes me round up on this one, but you will have a much better idea of why I still of think of "The Beatles' Second Album" as number one.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not an import, February 26, 2007
This is not an import as it is listed. It's the original second album release in the United States. The USA and Britain had entirely different released albums, mainly because Capital Records in the states (Which EMI owned) thought they knew how to market to USA consumers better.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This is the Russian 2-album combo CD, November 1, 2006
The Amazon write-up is confusing. This purportedly Russian-release CD sold by jammin_recordings has all the songs from 2 albums, "Beatles Second Album" AND "Something New" as well as some low-grade bonus tracks (33 total tracks). HOWEVER, the songs are NOT the Capitol (USA) versions but the UK versions. I have been searching for Capitol's versions on CD but didn't want the $170 box set, which gives you both stereo and mono versions of each song (for what purpose?). Capitol added some echo to many of the songs as well as an occasional embellishment (extra guitar chord in the intro to "Any Time At All" and harmonica at the end of "Thank You Girl") and these were the versions I remember so well. My vinyl versions aren't worth salvaging and I still hope to find some USA-version CD's.
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