Hello: Hello Little Girl

The Fourmost: Hello Little Girl

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John Lennon: Hello Little Girl (Decca Audition)

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"Hello Little Girl" is said to be the first song John Lennon wrote (in 1957), and was recorded by the Beatles twice: in a home demo tape with Stu Sutcliife on bass, and in the failed Decca audition on New Year's Day 1962. The Decca version is pleasant enough - there's some nice interplay between John's lead vocal and Paul and George' backup voices, but on the whole it's not a lot different from the standard Mersey sound that quite a few other bands were firing off at the time. In short, nothing particularly overwhelming.

When the Beatles were recording Please Please Me later in 1962, they had already moved beyond their audition material (they only re-recorded one of the audition tracks for release -- their unbelievable version of "Money"), and "Hello, Little Girl" got pitched into their trunk of songs. From which it was extracted in summer 1963 by manager Brian Epstein, for another Merseybeat band that he had just signed, the Fourmost (pictured). And the Fourmost's version, a bit more up-tempo but otherwise none too different, sailed to #9 in the UK in the wake of the first Beatles hits. Timing is everything.

Guest post by Q-Man