Why I picked this particular song to cover is pretty much a mystery. It was never (as far as I know) a hit in Canada, although I'm thinking I must have heard it somewhere because I had nothing but the sheet music to go by and that wasn't always accurate. My first songbook in fact was from the Beatles' publishing company Northern Songs and was distributed by their company, Apple Corps. It was also wildly off the mark. Whoever transcribed the music must have done so from a turntable or tape recorder running at the wrong speed with the consequence that all the songs were in weird keys like A-flat or C-sharp. Now I understand that the boys probably had better things to do than supervise every facet of their existence; but you'd think that someone would have thought to shout out "Hey, did you guys really write 'She Loves You' in G-flat?" at a concert.
So I didn't really know the song. I knew it was one of their early ones, but from when? (I'm kind of hazy on their music pre Sgt. Pepper. I thought it was by John Lennon (despite their shared writing credit, Lennon and McCartney [as well as Harrison] rarely collaborated on each others' songs. The rule of thumb is that usually the song's writer took the lead vocal.) I only found out later (tks, Internet!) that it was written by Paul very early in their career and was part of the soundtrack to A Hard Day's Night, of which I have only a dim memory of, mainly The Lads fleeing mobs of shrieking girls (to be sure, that was more or less the entire plot). Here they are performing it in 1964 at the Indiana State Fair (!).
I think we did OK. The vocal was mainly accurate, if cracking a bit on the second chorus. Their take on it was more of a pure pop song, where ours was a bit blusier -- thanks mainly to my cousin, who'd never heard it before and spent the first part trying minor pentatonic riffs before settling into a groove.