"Summertime"
An Extended Contract
The 16th of October 1960 would have been The Beatles’ last day in Hamburg according to their original contract. Kaiserkeller owner Bruno Koschmider, however, had told them as early as the last week of September that he would work out a contract extension. Allan Williams arrived in Hamburg early in October to work out the extension, which would go to the end of the year. There was talk of going beyond that. Stu and George both wrote home, saying that they would be moving to Berlin in January and would be under contract through February. That part of the contract never happened, and in the end they would barely make it through November.
Williams wasn’t done with Hamburg when he signed The Beatles’ contract extension. The fact was, he had grown disillusioned with Bruno Koschmider. Koschmider had tried to get Williams to take a reduction in his commission. He had also become very unreliable in paying on time or even at all. Enter Peter Eckhorn. Eckhorn was 21 years old, owned The Top Ten Club, and had already poached The Jets and Tony Sheridan from Koschmider, back in July. Williams told Eckhorn that he would be happy to start sending Liverpool bands to The Top Ten Club instead of The Kaiserkeller. Gerry and the Pacemakers were hounding Williams to get them a gig in Hamburg, so the timing was perfect.
Lu Walters Can Sing?
Allan Williams still wasn’t done with this little Hamburg trip. Lu Walters, bass player for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, was the second singer of the group after Rory. Williams thought that Walters would do well as a crooner, and persuaded him to record some songs to be taken around to London talent agencies. He identified a small place called Akustic Studio where performances could be recorded in much the same way that full band recordings were made by The Quarrymen, among others, at Percy Phillips’ studio in Liverpool (remember “In Spite of All the Danger?”). No fancy studio techniques or overdubs, etc. Just everyone playing at the same time, you know, like a band…
According to Walters, Rory was pretty unhappy about not being asked to sing on a recording, so he didn’t show up. The rest of the Hurricanes did, as did all of The Beatles except Pete. There are a couple of stories about how the recordings went down. The most likely one, as told by Walters and Johnny Guitar of The Hurricanes, is that three songs were recorded. They were Peggy Lee’s “Fever” (written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell), Kurt Weill’s “September Song,” and George Gershwin’s “Summertime.” The musicians were The Hurricanes (minus Rory, of course), with Lu taking the vocal to feature his voice.
Johnny Guitar remembered that Allan Williams didn’t think that the playing on “Summertime” was sufficient, so he asked John, Paul, and George to give it a shot. Lu played bass, so Stu wasn’t necessary, and Pete wasn’t there, so Ringo would still play drums. So there they were. John, Paul, George, and Ringo, playing together for the first time! Mark the date: the 15th of October 1960. Supposedly, nine copies of the recording were made and Williams apparently did take them around to promoters and labels in London, but got no interest. Unfortunately, there has been no sign of any existing copies, so as Mark Lewisohn put it: “It’s the holy grail of Beatles audio.”1 He says that Ringo has lamented that he wishes he could hear it again.2
Some Fuzzy Memories
The story as I told it above is the one that may seem most likely about what happened on the 15th of October 1960. But as usual, over the years there have been some other memories thrown in by some of the people who were there, and they don’t always match up.
Lu Walters, in a 1963 interview in Mersey Beat, said that The Beatles actually played on all three songs recorded that day.3 Twenty years later, in 1983, he told Mark Lewisohn that The Beatles had only played on “Summertime.”4 In the 1963 interview, Walters also said that there were several copies of the recording made and that they were “still available in Liverpool and being played regularly.”5 Most interesting to me is that fact that Walters said that Allan Williams’ idea to record him came about after seeing him sing “Fever” with The Beatles at The Indra.5 If that is really the case, it could have realistically only happened on the 1st or 2nd of October. Rory Storm and the Hurricanes left Liverpool on the 29th of September and the first two days of October were the last two days The Beatles played at The Indra, before moving to the Kaiserkeller. So it’s possible that Lu Walters and maybe other members of the band could have walked down to The Indra. Who knows? Ringo said in a 1976 interview with Elliot Mintz that The Beatles and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes played in two different clubs in Hamburg.6 He may have simply remembered that on those first couple of nights (before both groups began playing at The Kaiserkeller), The Beatles were still appearing at The Indra.
As a last chapter in this story…so why are the recordings missing? According to Williams, five or six copies were made.7 According to Walters, it was nine.8 Either way, it is accepted that Williams did take the recordings around to London agencies without any luck. In a 1966 interview in Disc, Williams claimed to have two copies. He said that in 1971 he took his last surviving record to Los Angeles so that Ringo could hear it. Before they could make a deal for Ringo to take possession of the disc, Williams said that he misplaced his briefcase and the recording was gone.9 Lu Walters claimed in 1983 that his only copy was in the hands of a relative in Australia, but by 2012 he said that he was not aware of any surviving copies.10 Where did they go? You can see why Mark Lewisohn calls the recording “the holy grail.” I’d like to believe that at least one of the recordings exists somewhere, and I’m sure we all agree that we’d love to hear the first time John, Paul, George, and Ringo played together.
As always, thanks for being here and reading. I really do appreciate it. Please leave comments to tell everyone your thoughts and to add any relevant information to the discussion. Please follow or subscribe to
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Next: Koschmider vs. The Beatles. Looking forward to that!
- Adamson
Photo: Kaiserkeller, Hamburg. Photo by Andrew Martin Adamson, 26th of June 2022.
Quotes:
1) All These Years: Tune In (Special Extended Edition), by Mark Lewisohn (Little, Brown; London; 2013), p. 715
2) https://ultimateclassicrock.com/beatles-first-recording-with-ringo
3) Mersey Beat, 19 December 1963
4) Lewisohn, p. 822
5) Both, Mersey Beat
6) Lewisohn, p. 710
7) Ibid, p. 822
8) Mersey Beat
9) Disc, 13 August 1966
10) Lewisohn, p. 822
The thing I most want to hear is an actual SET from those days. But of the stuff that we *know* was recorded and in theory might still exist somewhere out there, this is probably the #1 wish. I'm certainly far more interested in hearing it than I am in Carnival of Light, for example (not that I'd turn that down).
I suspect that they aren't actually all that good, in an objective sense. But it would be fascinating to hear anyway.
Very interesting article, thanks. Good research. It's amazing that we still have Beatle mysteries to enjoy and possibilities of missing recordings reappearing at some point. There's also the single sided 7 inch disc of, 'One After 909' that John, Paul and George made at Percy Phillips' studio in 1960. Let's hope we get to hear them all eventually.