One of the rarest video recordings in Beatles history captures their performance of “Shout” on British television in 1964, taped shortly after the band’s triumphant first visit to the United States. Originally written and recorded by the Isley Brothers in 1959, this raucous call-and-response party anthem became the only song the Beatles ever performed that featured all four members—John, Paul, George, and Ringo—taking individual turns on lead vocals, all in the same song.
The Origin Story 📝
The song “Shout” was written and originally recorded by the Isley Brothers in 1959. The song actually started as an improvisation during a live performance. Once, when the Isleys were singing Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops” at the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia, lead singer Ronald Isley noticed that the audience was standing and going wild, so he spontaneously extended the song by improvising a call-and-response around the words “You know you make me wanna...” “Shout!” 🎤
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Shout, Pts. 1 & 2 (MP3 Music)
The group developed the song further in later performances, using a drawn-out “We-eee-ll” copied from Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman.” Then, they started performing it night after night, but didn’t even consider it a real song at first—it was just a “thing” they would do onstage, and the crowd would go nuts. Pretty cool origin story! 😄
Soon, the Isleys’ producers suggested they record “Shout” by itself as a single. The recording took place on July 29, 1959, at RCA Victor Studios in New York City, and lots of friends were invited to the studio to generate a “party” atmosphere. 🎉
Chart Performance & Impact 📊
Released in August 1959, the song was split over both sides of the disk—the first part on the A side, and the second half on the B side. It reached number 47 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the Isleys’ first chart hit and later their first gold single.
While it wasn’t a huge chart hit initially, it eventually went gold, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and Rolling Stone magazine ranked it at number 119 on its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” So eventually, it became a massive cultural touchstone over time! 🌟
Cover Versions & Crossover 🎵
The song had incredible crossover appeal and was covered extensively:
Joey Dee and the Starliters reached number 6 with their recording in 1962. In 1964 in the UK, Scottish pop singer Lulu (with the Luvvers) reached number 7 with her version. She re-recorded it in 1986 and it reached number 8 again! That’s some serious staying power! 💪
The Beatles Connection 🎸
As shown in the video at the top of this post, the Beatles recorded “Shout” on April 19, 1964, for the British television special “Around The Beatles” at IBC Studios in London. It had been in their repertoire for a long time, according to Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn, who says the Beatles performed “Shout” regularly between 1960 and 1961. The Beatles loved performing it, and the crowd reaction was always strong. ❤️
Why did the Beatles choose to perform it? The Isley Brothers were a huge influence on the Beatles, like other American R&B and rock and roll artists. Ever since their first paid gigs, the Beatles covered tons of songs from their American heroes, and “Shout” was a perfect high-energy party song that showcased all four members. And, incidentally, perhaps the Beatle’s most famous cover song of all time is the Isleys’ “Twist and Shout.” But their performance of “Shout” is among their most dynamic, allowing each Beatle to have a vocal spotlight, and it was eventually released on Anthology 1 in 1995. 🎼 (Into the weeds: “Twist and Shout” was written by The Top Notes in 1961.
Animal House & Cultural Immortality 🎬
Otis Day and the Knights was a fictional R&B band created specifically for the 1978 movie “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” The character Otis Day was played by actor DeWayne Jessie, who lip-synched to vocals actually sung by Lloyd G. Williams. 🎭
The fictional band performed “Shout” at the famous toga party scene in Animal House, with John Belushi hamming for the camera, and the song has been featured heavily in connection with the film ever since. This scene became iconic and introduced “Shout” to a whole new generation! 🎊
Fun fact: After the movie’s success, DeWayne Jessie actually purchased the rights to the band name from Universal Studios and created a real touring band called Otis Day and the Knights in the 1980s. They released a concert video and even an album produced by George Clinton!
Other Cultural Touchstones 🌟
Since the 60s, the song has woven itself into American culture as a wedding dance song where people progressively crouch down to the dance floor as the song gets quieter (the “little bit softer now” part), then rise back up for the “little bit louder now” part. Maybe you’ve done this dance yourself! 💃
The song is regularly performed at Dartmouth College (the Ivy League school that Animal House was based on) and is played at the end of the 3rd quarter at Oregon Ducks college football games—because the stadium was used in filming Animal House. 🏈
Since then, the song has appeared in tons of other movies and TV shows, and it’s even been used in commercials for the Shout brand of laundry spray! 😂
Bottom Line 🎯
“Shout” started as an improvised crowd-pleaser, became a gold record that defined the Isley Brothers’ early career, crossed over to multiple genres and artists, became a Beatles favorite, and achieved cultural immortality through Animal House. It’s one of those songs that just makes people want to party—which was exactly the point from the beginning! 🎉🎊
Coda and the ultimate Beatles Trivia nugget:
You’ll notice that in the Beatles video performance of “Shout” at the top of this essay, John Lennon gives a spoken-word introduction, a seemingly nonsensical one: “Thank you all very much, and God bless you.” Actually, he had given the same short speech five days earlier at the Foyle’s Literary Luncheon to accept an award for his bestselling 1964 book “In His Own Write,” a collection of cartoons and absurd satire passages he had written long before as a schoolboy—to poke fun at his teachers. At the luncheon, when called upon to make a speech, John stood up and simply said: “Thank you all very much, and God bless you”—and then turned to the person sitting next to him and said “You’ve got a lucky face.” 😄 Everyone at the luncheon was puzzled.
Foyle’s Literary Luncheon was a prestigious literary event and honored literary giants like George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, and Rudyard Kipling, as well as political figures like Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher. The tradition continued for 80 years, running from 1930 to 2010, making it one of the longest-running literary events in publishing history.
So at the TV show, John was, clearly, still thinking about (or perhaps poking fun at) his awkward “speech” from the literary event five days before. According to John’s first wife, Cynthia, both she and John were painfully hungover at the Foyle’s luncheon, and John hadn’t realized he was expected to make a speech. When he was urged to his feet, he panicked. The whole incident became legendary, and John being John, he later turned it into a running gag! 😂
So you’ve got a really cool piece of Beatles history there—John essentially riffing on his own embarrassing moment from just days earlier! Classic Lennon self-aware humor. 🎤✨
