A Taste of Honey

Angela Lansbury and Joan Plowright in the Broadway production of A Taste of Honey

I think it's pretty safe to say that most people know this song as an instrumental.  The most famous version is by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass from their 1965 album Whipped Cream and Other Delights.  It was originally written purely as an instrumental for the play A Taste of Honey.  Once the lyrics were added, however, it quickly became a standard as multiple artists began recording it.  The Beatles were influenced by Lenny Welch's version, released in late 1962, even though it was only a minor hit at the time.

It was Paul, of course, who was attracted to the song.  John actually was against the group performing it, feeling it didn't fit, not even in their widely-varied repertoire.  But, once they began playing it in Liverpool in October of '62, it got favorable reactions from the group's diehard fans.  John still managed to get his digs in, sometimes singing "a waste of money" in the backing vocals.

The many incarnations of the Star Club tapes from Hamburg in December of 1962 include a performance of the song, which Paul introduces as a request from a Scottish lady in the crowd.  Like most of the songs in this set, it is played as a brisk pace, as the group's collective attention was elsewhere, focused on their impending return to England to promote their first two singles.  It is worth hearing if only to note that the arrangement they would soon record was already firmly in place.

The recording was made on February 11th, 1963, when the Beatles spent the entire day recreating much of their stage act as what is essentially a live-in-the-studio album.  Though they had been performing the song a good deal of late, producer George Martin pushed them through five takes before he got what he wanted.  Still, he decided to return to it later in the session for one of the few overdubs on the album.  For the first time, Paul was asked to double-track his vocal line during each chorus.  The boys were so enamored of this effect that they wanted to double-track almost every lead vocal on their second album later in the year.

They performed A Taste of Honey seven times for BBC Radio.  A July 1963 recording made for their program Pop Go the Beatles can be heard on the collection Live at the BBC.  They even played it for what was only their second appearance ever on television for the show People and Places on October 29th, 1962, shortly after they had first introduced the song into their act.

The song appeared on the album Please Please Me, and on the EP Twist and Shout in the UK.  In the US, it was first released on the VeeJay album Introducing...the Beatles, and later on a VeeJay EP with the unwieldy title Souvenir of Their Visit to America.  Capitol Records did not release the song until March of 1965 on the album The Early Beatles.

Late in 1963, it was replaced in their live act by Till There Was You, a similar standard that became even more popular among their fans.