Beatle Country is the fourth and final studio album by the American bluegrass band Charles River Valley Boys, released in November 1966 by Elektra Records. Where the Charles River Valley Boys' previous albums consisted of traditional and new bluegrass and some early country songs, Beatle Country contains only covers of the Beatles. The band and several session musicians completed the album at Columbia Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, across four days in September 1966. Paul A. Rothchild and Peter K. Siegel produced the album, with Glenn Snoddy as audio engineer.
After hearing the Beatles' song "I've Just Seen a Face" on the radio in late 1965, Jim Field recommended to his bandmates that they add it to their repertoire. Following the label's success the previous year with The Baroque Beatles Book, Elektra executive Jac Holzman acquired permission for the group to record an album of Beatles covers. Because the original versions often employ complex chord progressions, the group countrified' the chords... 'flattening them out to bring the songs into the style of bluegrass. In addition to using rolling banjos, upright bass and a high lonesome tenor vocal, they further changed the songs structurally, allowing for extra instrumental breaks – a typical feature of bluegrass music, where each musician is allowed the chance to solo.
Upon release, Elektra promoted Beatle Country towards mainstream country and pop music audiences rather than to bluegrass fans. A commercial failure, it peaked at on Cash Boxs Top 100 Albums chart in January 1967. The album's ineffective marketing campaign allowed it to fall into obscurity, subsequently attaining cult status and becoming a valued collector's item. The album's cover artwork, created by Eros Keith under the supervision of William S. Harvey and without the band's involvement, features a group of cowboys gazing at the theater district of Swinging London. With its bending of bluegrass conventions, retrospective commentators have seen the LP as anticipating the progressive bluegrass movement of the 1970s. The album was re-released on CD in 1995 and in 2005.
Background
The Charles River Valley Boys formed in the late 1950s in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with young musicians meeting at a local coffee house, Tulla's Coffee Grinder, to jam together., quoted in . One of the first urban, northern United States bluegrass bands to form,, quoted in . the group focused on Appalachian, classic bluegrass and early country music., quoted in . Music scholar Laura Turner comments that "[t]he band's sound, repertoire, and intellectual acumen fit perfectly into the larger concept of folk revival – city-based youths seeking the sounds of a supposedly 'authentic' America". In the early 1960s, they became popular in Boston and within the Cambridge folk scene, performing regularly on Harvard College's WHRB radio station and at local coffee houses and folk clubs, including Club 47.
The Charles River Valley Boys recorded parts of their first album, Bringin' in the Georgia Mail (1962), in London in July 1961. Banjoist Bob Siggins later recalled that they were well received as they toured pubs and folk clubs in London, and that "[we] did get a little flavor of pre-Beatles London at the time... there were a lot of great musicians bubbling up all around us while we toured... we heard rumors about [the Beatles] in Germany and how great they were". After returning to America, the band encountered Paul A. Rothchild, then an advocate of folk music and a frequenter of the Cambridge folk scene in the early 1960s., quoted in . Attending Club 47, a performance by the Charles River Valley Boys enthralled Rothchild, who offered to produce an album for the group., quoted in . The result, Bluegrass and Old Timey Music (1962), along with the subsequent Blue Grass Get Together (1964), mostly consisted of traditional and new bluegrass songs and some early country songs.
In the lead up to the 6 December 1965 release of the Beatles' album Rubber Soul,; . the Charles River Valley Boys' guitarist, Jim Field, recalled hearing "I've Just Seen a Face" on the radio and thinking "it instantly felt like bluegrass". In particular, the I–vi–IV–V chord progression of the verses and the chorus beginning on the dominant had "a drive perfectly suited for a straight-ahead bluegrass trio". Siggins added: "I think the instantaneous 'feel' of the song was the tipoff for me... [a]dditionally, the lyrics could easily be (and in fact became) bluegrass lyrics".
With their usual set list made up of old and new bluegrass and country songs, the band added an arrangement of "I've Just Seen a Face" to their set, along with the country-inflected Beatles song "What Goes On".: normal set list, added "I've Just Seen a Face" and "What Goes On"; : "What Goes On" being country inflected. Performing the covers in February 1966 at the War Memorial Auditorium during Boston's Winterfest, the band received a positive reception from the 5,600-person audience. On the strength of this performance, they sent a demo recording of four songs – two of which were Beatles covers – to Rothchild, now working at Elektra Records. The previous year, the company sold over 150,000 copies of a novelty record of Baroque style Beatles covers, The Baroque Beatles Book, arranged by conductor Joshua Rifkin. With the commercial success of this LP in mind, record company executive Jac Holzman granted permission for the Charles River Valley Boys and Rothchild to record an album-length collection of Beatles covers.
Recording
Recording for Beatle Country took place over four days in September 1966 at Columbia Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. The album was produced by Rothchild and Peter K. Siegel and engineered by Glenn Snoddy. Siegel recalled that Rothchild chose the studio because it was where Bob Dylan had recorded his 1966 album, Blonde on Blonde, and thought it would provide an authentic bluegrass sound. The previous month, Beatles rhythm guitarist John Lennon's controversial comment that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus" provoked indignation among American Southerners. Despite the furor, Siggins and Field recalled that it had no impact on their project.
Having undergone several personnel changes in the years prior, the Charles River Valley Boys' 1966 line up consisted of Siggins on banjo, Field on guitar, Joe Val on mandolin and Everett A. Lilly on upright bass, with the first three also providing vocals. Siegel described this group as "the strongest, most uniform bluegrass band sound that the Charles River Valley Boys had ever achieved". While the rest of the group were enthusiastic about the album's concept, Val, the oldest and most experienced of the group, was initially hesitant. Siggins recalls that Val "slowly got into it" and that "the clincher was that we did it in a great Nashville studio". Propelled by the group's fears that their fans would accuse them of selling out, Siggins recalled they attempted to record the songs "as hard-core bluegrass as we could"., quoted in .
Complementing the Charles River Valley Boys were several session musicians, including Nashville fiddler Buddy Spicher, West Virginia dobro player Craig Wingfield and California guitarist Eric Thompson. The session musicians were not informed of the album's concept so as to maintain secrecy and prevent another record company from releasing a similar cover album. Siegel recalled the recording process as efficient and professional, with the group recording fourteen covers in the four days. Rothchild and Siegel mixed the album in Elektra's New York studio, correcting small mistakes not noticed in Nashville and selecting twelve songs for inclusion.
Songs
The Beatles' songs the Charles River Valley Boys selected for the album varied chronologically from the December 1963 B-side "I Saw Her Standing There" to the August 1966 A-side "Yellow Submarine".: songs included, dates; : A- and B-side status. Some picks were from the Beatles' latest and increasingly experimental releases, which Turner writes allowed the album to serve "as a contemporary bluegrass commentary on the growing experimentalism of the Beatles songbook". Several display complex chord progression that exist outside of the harmonic standards of bluegrass; in arranging them, Field recalled a process whereby they "intentionally 'countrified' the chords... flattening [them] out a little bit". Turner mentions several bluegrass motifs being worked in across the album, such as: "the rhythmic impetus and timbre of the 'rolling' banjo motifs, persistently driving upright bass, occasional utilization of vocal techniques like Val's 'high lonesome' tenor, and an abundance of solo instrumental breaks".
The structural changes are incorporated on the album's opening track, "I've Just Seen a Face", later characterized by Field as the foundation piece of the entire album. Where the original includes only one instrumental break for a guitar solo, the cover adds extra breaks for banjo, mandolin and fiddle – a typical feature of bluegrass music, where each musician is allowed the chance to solo. Additionally, the original includes only one chorus, not including its final iteration, while the cover repeats the chorus twice. Turner opines that this serves to emphasize the "quintessential bluegrass technique" of close three-part harmonies. She describes the biggest differences between versions as consisting in their different textures and timbres, and in particular the Charles River Valley Boys' "incessant, 'walking' upright bass line that provides energetic drive, sparking mandolin tremolo, rolling banjo figures, and intricate, often double-stopped fiddle motifs that permeate the texture".
The band's cover of "Yellow Submarine" incorporates several sound effects added during the mixing process in New York, including ricochet gunfire and a mechanical wind-up toy. Sung in a comic tone by Siggins, he recalled that they tried to make it sound "as corny as possible... kind of like an old hee-haw movie". Siggins adapted his singing style to sound like the banjoist and entertainer Uncle Dave Macon, changing the pronunciation of "yellow submarine" to "yeller submarine". He further recalled: "We often stress the word 'yeller' to this day, to make it even cornier, as in the 'old yeller' dog name".
The Charles Valley River Boys' version of "Norwegian Wood" transposes from the original modal E to a modal A. In place of the original guitar-sitar intro is a mandolin tremolo. Val's first vocal is joined by a banjo that emphasizes the song's triple meter. Siegel compares the vocal to that of bluegrass musician Bill Monroe, in particular Monroe's rendition of the murder ballad "Roane County Prison", a traditional song from the Upper Cumberland area of Tennessee sometimes known as "In the Hills of Roane County".
Release
Elektra released Beatle Country in November 1966, and a 4-track cartridge release followed in March 1967. After hearing the album, Beatles bassist Paul McCartney sent a letter to the label expressing his appreciation of it. The LP was a commercial failure, peaking at on Cash Box Top 100 Albums chart in January 1967. Critic Stephen L. Betts credits the release's commercial failure to Elektra's weak marketing campaign. Rather than marketing the album towards bluegrass fans, they instead focused on mainstream country and pop music audiences, sending copies of the album to 2,225 radio stations that programmed "even an hour of country music". Siegel reflects that Elektra likely desired to extend the album's sales to beyond the small bluegrass market, but the strategy instead confused both country and bluegrass fans.