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''Introducing... The Beatles'' is the first Beatles album released in the United States. Originally scheduled for a July 1963 release, the LP came out on 10 January 1964, on Vee-Jay Records, ten days before Capitol's ''Meet the Beatles!''. The later album, however, entered the U.S. album chart one week before the former. Consequently, when ''Meet The Beatles!'' peaked at #1 for eleven consecutive weeks, ''Introducing...The Beatles'' stalled at #2 where it remained nine consecutive weeks. It was the subject of much legal wrangling, but ultimately, Vee-Jay were permitted to sell the album until late 1964, by which time it had sold more than 1.3 million copies. On 24 July 2014 the album was certified gold and platinum by the RIAA. ==Initial non-release== The Beatles' recording contract that began May 1962 with Parlophone in the United Kingdom gave the parent corporation EMI rights to offer any of the group's recordings to the labels EMI owned in many countries of the free world. However, the United States EMI label, Capitol Records of Hollywood, turned down release of the "Please Please Me" single. Following this, Transglobal, an EMI affiliate that worked to place foreign masters with US record labels, negotiated with several labels before Vee-Jay Records signed a licensing agreement giving it the right of first refusal on Beatles' records for five years. As part of that agreement, even after its singles releases of "Please Please Me" and "From Me to You" failed to chart above No. 116 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, Vee-Jay planned to release the ''Please Please Me'' album in the US, and received copies of the mono and stereo master tapes in late April or early May 1963. Originally, Vee-Jay considered releasing ''Please Please Me'' as it appeared in the United Kingdom. A surviving acetate made by Universal Recording Corporation of Chicago, probably in May 1963, contains all 14 songs in the same order as on the UK album, with the title still listed as ''Please Please Me''. But in keeping with the American norm of a 12-song album, Vee-Jay chose instead to omit "Please Please Me" and "Ask Me Why" (which had comprised the first single release) and change the album's title to ''Introducing... The Beatles''. Also, the engineer at Universal in Chicago thought that Paul McCartney's count-in at the start of "I Saw Her Standing There" was extraneous rather than intentionally placed there, so he snipped the "one, two, three" from Vee-Jay's mono and stereo masters. Except for those omissions, the order and contents of the album were untouched, resulting in a US album that bore the closest resemblance to a British Beatles LP until ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' in 1967.〔 〕 Preparations for the LP's release continued in late June and early July 1963, including the manufacturing of masters and metal parts and the printing of 6,000 front covers. But, despite the claims of many older books that ''Introducing... The Beatles'' was first released on 22 July 1963, no paper trail exists to suggest that the album was released at any time in 1963. After a management shake-up at Vee-Jay, which included the resignation of company president Ewart Abner after he used company funds to cover gambling debts, the label cancelled the release of ''Introducing... The Beatles'' as well as albums by Frank Ifield, Alma Cogan and a Jewish cantor. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Introducing... The Beatles」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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