1963: When the Beatles 1st Landed in America. Yes, 1963!
by Casey Piotrowski
The Beatles backstage at Coventry Theatre, November 1963, courtesy Apple Corps Ltd.
While some people may have spent February 9, 2024, celebrating the 60th anniversary of “The Night That Changed America,” the evening The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, maybe we should also have spent July 5th celebrating the 61st anniversary of something else that happened to the band in America.
Watch the Beatles perform “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on The Ed Sullivan Show
Wait! Sixty-one years? That would make it, let’s see now…1963.
Who in America knew about the Beatles in 1963?
As it turned out, lots of people.
The group’s first three American singles (“Please Please Me,” “From Me to You” and “She Loves You”) didn’t do anything nationally. But, in some pockets of the country in 1963, radio stations were playing those records and people were buying them.
There’s a wonderful site from Timothy C. Warden called ARSA (Airheads’ Radio Survey Archive). And that’s what it is, a site that has collected radio station playlists from all over the country and all over the world. More than wonderful, it’s incredible. They have more than 175,000 surveys from more than 4,600 stations. More than 240,000 singles are listed, recorded by more than 42,000 artists.
One day, I noticed that some of the songs that hit for the Beatles here in early 1964 had actually first charted earlier, in 1963. You may be surprised at just how big the Beatles were in the U.S. a year before anybody was supposed to know who they were.
Related: The Beatles at the BBC in 1963
Let’s start at the end, with “She Loves You.” It got to #81 at Philly’s big rocker WIBG (Wibbage). OK, big whoop! #81. It probably got play because that’s where Swan Records, the label that released the single, was located. But getting on the air in Philadelphia is probably what got the song on American Bandstand, also located in Philadelphia in those days. It was played during the “Rate A Record” segment on the show sometime in the fall of ’63 and the kids doing the rating gave it a 71 out of 98. That’s a middle C grade, but still, it was the first time the Beatles were heard nationally in the United States.
And Canada must have been ahead of us regarding the Beatles then. (Maybe some stations were still airing some BBC programming?) The song was a major hit there in the fall of ’63, getting into the top 5 in Winnipeg and Toronto and all the way to #1 in Vancouver before Christmas.
This March 8, 1963, survey from the huge Chicago station marks the first time the Beatles appeared on an American radio chart. “Please Please Me” holds the bottom position, at #40. It would be nearly a year until they broke for real in the States.
And maybe we should celebrate March 8, 1963, too, 11 months before Sullivan. “Please Please Me” hit #40 at the legendary WLS in Chicago. (Their morning man, “The Wild I-Tralian,” Dick Biondi, is credited with being the first jock to play the Beatles in America, getting “Please Please Me” on the air in February of that year.) That date in Chi-town was the first time the Beatles charted a record in America, and this was only six weeks after the single hit the top 40 in England.
It didn’t stop there. In early April, the single charted on a huge rocker in Southern California, KXFM, breaking the top 40 there. Then it would chart on another legendary station, KSFO in San Francisco, ultimately reaching the top 20, the first time the group would do that in the U.S. And it would hit the top 40 in Houston, and charted in Miami and Sacramento and got played in Honolulu.
But the “big whoop” really came with “From Me to You.” This was actually the first Beatles single to chart nationally, hitting #149 in Cashbox the week of July 13, 1963 (although “hitting” may be overstating things). That national showing was because of what the song was doing regionally. It would hit the top 40 in L.A. and Spokane; the top 30 in Chicago, Seattle, Louisville and Akron; the top 20 in Seattle and San Diego; and (cue the fanfare!) on July 5, 1963, the Beatles entered the top 10 in the U.S. for the first time, reaching #10 at KMEN, the other rocker in San Bernardino. In fact, the record would actually get to #7 at KXFM, and it would hit #8 in Duluth, Minnesota, so that top 10 in SoCal was no fluke. The song also charted in Orlando, so the Beatles were on the air coast-to-coast in the summer of ’63.
It would take months—and Paul and Paula, Eydie Gorme and the Singing Nun would be filling the top 10 in the interim—but that musical earthquake was coming, and these were the foreshocks before February 9, 1964, became the biggest whoop of all.
Watch The Beatles perform live on the Morecambe And Wise Show in December 1963
[Author Casey Piotrowski’s books on The Beatles are available in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.]
- 1963: When the Beatles 1st Landed in America. Yes, 1963! - 07/14/2024
- Paul McCartney’s Memorable ‘Band on the Run’ B-side - 06/08/2023
- John Lennon’s ‘Mind Games’: Love Is the Answer - 09/13/2022
3 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationWow! That’s some great digging.
I remember a friend of mine playing “From Me to You” on his record player, and not thinking much about it. Don’t recall hearing it on the radio, and we had two great rockers in Minneapolis – KDWB and WDGY.
And then harassing my mom months later to get “Meet the Beatles”.
Nice piece of research!
It must have been either 1963 or early 1964 when there was a segment on the Steve Allen show featuring photos of celebrities wearing what I thought was spelled “beetle haircuts.” I had no idea there was a music group associated with them, until I saw them on Ed Sullivan soon thereafter. But clearly others were well aware of the group.