Tony Sheridan: the singer who gave The Beatles their first recording sessions
Even though they were making major leaps, The Beatles had yet to land an official recording session of their own by 1961. After slogging through marathon sets in Hamburg, Germany, the band encountered a number of friends and peers, including Little Richard, Billy Preston, and Rory Storm, whose drummer, Ringo Starr, would become a close acquaintance and occasional stand-in when Pete Best wasn’t up to standard.
Another singer that The Beatles befriended was Tony Sheridan, a fellow Brit who was performing at Bruno Koschmider’s Kaiserkeller Club. The two became well acquainted, and when Sheridan was offered studio time for Polydor Records in June 1961, he brought The Beatles along as his backing band. It would be the first time that the group would ever be recorded in a professional studio.
Prior to this, The Quarrymen (the group that immediately preceded The Beatles) recorded the original ‘In Spite of All the Danger’ and a cover of Buddy Holly’s ‘That’ll Be The Day’ at Phillips’ Sound Recording Services in 1958. The “studio” was actually the back room of a store that sold electronic goods and records.
The surroundings for the sessions with Sheridan weren’t much better. The two parties entered the Friedrich-Ebert-Halle in Hamburg to record a series of songs, which was situated in the gymnasium of a high school. Still, the session had an official producer in Bert Kaempfert and a professional sound engineer, so it counts as The Beatles’ first official session.
Sheridan and The Beatles ran a total of nine songs. Their rendition of ‘My Bonnie’ was selected to be a single, and after recording seven songs with Sheridan, The Beatles were offered an opportunity to record on their own. They decided to record ‘Ain’t She Sweet’, inspired by Gene Vincent’s cover, with Lennon on lead vocals, as well as the original guitar instrument ‘Cry For a Shadow’. The latter remains the only Harrison/Lennon composition in The Beatles songbook.
When ‘My Bonnie’ was released as a single, The Beatles were credited as “The Beat Brothers” on the official record sleeve. Lennon, perhaps unsurprisingly, was dismissive of the recordings. “It’s just Tony Sheridan singing, with us banging in the background,” Lennon later claimed. “It’s terrible. It could be anybody.” However, the single would play an important part in Brian Epstein’s decision to take on the group. When a young pop fan asked for the import record, Epstein (who had likely already heard of The Beatles) made the connection and realised that they could handle themselves in a studio.
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