For some reason, I only recently learned this tale. In September, 1963,
with the first hints of Beatlemania having appeared in the UK but the
Beatles unknown in the U.S., the quartet got a two-week break. John went
to Paris, Paul and Ringo to Spain. George and his brother Peter visited
their sister Louise in Benton, Illinois. George went camping, watched a Shriners’ parade, saw a drive-in movie, ate at an A&W, and bought both a Rickenbacker guitar and a slew of records, including an album by r&b
singer James Ray that included “Got My Mind Set on You.”
Louise engineered two interviews. George did one with a teenage girl for
a local high-school newspaper, and he and Louise hitchhiked to a radio
station to do another with a teenage girl who had a Saturday morning
show. The girl played a copy of “Please, Please Me” to little audience reaction. George met Louise’s neighbor, Warren Batts, who’d played with Bill Haley. The two sat in Warren’s living room playing guitar. At a VFW hall, George sat in with a band called the Four Vests, playing Hank
Williams, Carl Perkins, and Chuck Berry numbers.
George and Peter spent two or three days in New York, then flew home.
George next visited the U.S. five months later, in February, under very different circumstances. I can’t help but think of the people who met
quiet, scruffy George in southern Illinois. Did the man who gave him and
his sister a ride, for instance, ever put two and two together? I
imagine his kids huddled in front of the tv watching the Beatles on *The
Ed Sullivan Show* and thinking their dad was joking when he said, “Hey,
I know one of those guys.”
The photo, left to right, is George’s niece Leslie Caldwell, George, George’s sister Louise, and his brother Peter in Benton, Illinois.
https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/445185638_409068702107429_5717892306940811332_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=2uoTOkeVREEQ7kNvgE1Gaab&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&cb_e2o_trans=t&oh=00_
AYCCXE58Nz4VwbrdRfAPSYDiidKPpLfAQqcTdO7nFVcczA&oe=665B13A0
So I guess maybe George did not discover the James Ray song in Brian's
Record Shop.
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