Songs That Were Covers: Anna

Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback!  I'm Bill Price, and in the series titled Songs That Were Covers I will review the history of the song titled “Anna” and the famous band that recorded their cover version.  Surprisingly, cover versions often became more popular than the originals. However, the cover version often resurrected interest in the song and artist who recorded the original version.  

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Transcript

In the series titled Songs That Were Covers I will review the history of the song titled “Anna” and the famous band that recorded their cover version.  Surprisingly, cover versions often became more popular than the originals. However, the cover version often resurrected interest in the song and artist who recorded the original version.  

Anna (Go to Him) typically referred to as just “Anna”, was a song written by American country-soul songwriter and singer Arthur Alexander. The song’s lyrics were based on Alexander’s early relationship with his girlfriend Ann, who later became his wife and how her former boyfriend attempted to win her back. Unfortunately, Alexander’s marriage to Ann would eventually end in divorce. 

The song was recorded by Arthur and released on the Dot record label on September 17th, 1962. The single managed to achieve the number 68 position on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 10 on the Billboard R&B chart. Interestingly in the recording, the lyric “go with him” instead of “ go to him” is used.  “Anna” is considered as one of the early soul ballads, however cover versions of “Anna” and other compositions by Alexander would become more famous than the original releases.  In a future podacst, I will review the career of Arthur Alexander.

Here is Arthur Alexander’s original recording of  “Anna” from 1962.

In December 1962, the Beatles came across the song “Anna” while looking through new releases at Brian Epstein’s NEMS record department in Liverpool, England.  They soon came up with an arrangement that compensated for the instruments that were used in Alexander’s original version. The song became a favorite of their fans in Liverpool and also during their final appearance in Hamburg at the end of 1962. The piano parts played by Floyd Cramer in the original version, were replaced by George Harrison’s guitar and the string section replaced by Paul and George singing “aaaah”.

In 1963 as the Beatles rise to fame was just beginning, they went EMI Studios to record their first album titled “Please Please Me”. “Anna” which happened to be a personal favorite of John Lennon was part of the Beatles’ early repertoire, was included in the album. “Anna” was recorded on February 11th, 1963 in three takes; with take three used for the album. Since the marathon recording session lasted just under ten hours, it was amazing that John even made through the entire session since he had been suffering from a bad cold that affected his voice. In addition to “Anna’ the Beatles also recorded additional cover songs for the album. It is amazing that the album was a live recording, with no editing or overdubbing.

“Anna” first appeared in the US on the VJ Records album titled “Introducing The Beatles”. It was released on January 10th, 1964 and peaked at number 2 on the Billboard album chart. Interestingly, the UK version of the album contains fourteen songs, while the US VJ album contains twelve songs. VJ then released a limited number of 45-rpm promotional copies for radio station disc jockeys with “Anna” and “Ask Me Why” as the B-side. Interestingly, there are only four copies of the promotional 45-rpm record that are known to exist, making them one of the rarest US Beatles records. “Anna” also appeared on the VJ extended play disc titled “The Beatles- Souvenir Of Their Visit To America”, which was released on March 23rd, 1964.

Surprisingly the next VJ release on October 1st, 1964, was a double album compilation titled “ The Beatles vs The Four Seasons”. Then less than two weeks later, a repackaged VJ album titled “Songs, Pictures and Stories of The Fabulous Beatles” was released and peaked at number 63 on the Billboard album chart.  In May of 1966, VJ Records went out of business, making both of these albums quite valuable.

On March 22nd, 1965, Capitol Records released the LP titled “The Early Beatles”. Interestingly the Capitol album did not use the EMI            mono mix, instead a different mono mix that was not as good as the one created by Beatles producer George Martin.

Arthur Alexander’s songs were instrumental in shaping the British Invasion of 1964, since they were covered by the early Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Both bands would later acknowledge that Arthur greatly influenced their music. Paul McCartney later stated that The Beatles quote “Wanted to be like Arthur Alexander”, end quote.

Here is the Beatles’ 1963 cover version of “Anna”.

This has been a review of the Beatles’ cover version of Arthur Alexander’s “Anna”.

And until next time, I’m you host Bill Price.