Song on Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan has Macoupin County connection

Friday, Feb. 9 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, which remains one of the highest-rated programs of all time in American television history and helped give rise to the phenomenon called “Beatlemania.”

That night, the Beatles performed five songs, including four of their biggest hits, which were almost drowned out by screaming teenage girls in the live audience.

The other song that night, though, is remembered by only the most devout Beatles fans, and has a Macoupin County connection.

Meredith Willson, who spent summers with a grandmother in Brighton as a boy, wrote “Till There Was You,” the second song performed by the Beatles on the Sullivan program, which never hit the Billboard Top 40.

Willson wrote the song while creating The Music Man, the 1957 stage musical which ran for 1,375 performances and was one of the longest-running Broadway productions up to that time. While the song is a footnote in Beatles history today, it was familiar to many Americans when the group played the Ed Sullivan show in 1964.

The Music Man captured five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The cast album took home the first-ever Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, and sat on the Billboard charts for 245 weeks.

Set in 1912, the stage version has Professor Harold Hill leaving Rock Island, Ill. in the opening scenes, heading to River City. The origin was changed to Willson’s old hometown of Brighton, in southern Macoupin County, in the 1962 movie adaptation, which was also a runaway hit.

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Brighton, located in southwestern Macoupin County, had special meaning for Willson. His mother, Rose Reiniger Wilson, grew up and was married in Brighton. She later accepted a teaching job in Mason City, Iowa, where Meredith was born on May 18, 1902.

The runaway success of the 1962 movie introduced millions of fans to the name of Brighton, Ill., if only for a few seconds. Willson spent summers with his grandmother in Brighton before carving a successful career in numerous disciplines of music.

He traveled for three seasons with the famed bands of John Philip Sousa and spent five years with the New York Philharmonic before a stint as a movie composer. One of his movie scores, The Little Foxes, was nominated for an Oscar in 1941, the same year that he had a number-one hit with “You and I” for big band superstar Glenn Miller.

Willson’s success made him a regular on the hit Burns and Allen radio show, and he later had programs of his own on both NBC and CBS radio. Willson also composed plenty of popular music, including the holiday classic “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” in 1951 and the fight song for the University of Iowa.

He went on to create four Broadway musicals, and produced three episodes of Texaco Star Parade for CBS. Willson died on June 15, 1984 and is buried in Mason City, where his legacy has become a tourist attraction.

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“Till There Was You” found fame as part of The Music Man, but the song had actually been around for several years when the musical debuted in 1957. Willson originally penned the song as “Till I Met You,” and it was first recorded on Oct. 25, 1950. On Jan. 14, 1951, it was performed on NBC Radio.

Willson later adapted the song as he was creating The Music Man, reworking it under a new name, “Till There Was You.” The song became a signature of the female lead, straight-laced librarian Marian Paroo, to her love interest, fast-talking Harold Hill.

In 1959, a version of the song by popular artist Anita Bryant peaked at number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Over in England, Paul McCartney was reportedly introduced to the song by a cousin. McCartney later claimed that had “no idea until much later” that the song was in The Music Man.

The Beatles played the song on Jan. 1, 1962, along with fourteen other tunes in an audition at Decca Records. It was reportedly the first time the group had been in an actual recording studio. The audition, however, was a failure.

The group subsequently recorded “Till There Was You” three times for BBC Radio and tried again for EMI Records in the summer of 1963. This time, the effort was successful, and the song was included on their second album, “With the Beatles,” which was released in the United Kingdom on Nov. 22, 1963 – the same day as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The song was released in the United States on a different album, “Meet the Beatles!,” on Jan. 20, 1964. There were also five more recordings of the song for BBC Radio in late 1963.

The song was defined by the lead guitar of George Harrison, who had his own Illinois connection. From Sept. 17-30, 1963 – five months before The Ed Sullivan Show appearance – he visited his sister in the southern Illinois town of Benton, where she lived with her husband, a mining engineer.

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On The Ed Sullivan Show, the Beatles opened with “All My Loving,” which was actually never released as a single in either the United States or the United Kingdom, but has since become one of the group’s many recognizable songs.

That was followed by “Till There Was You,” which is forgotten by all but the most rabid Beatles fans today. The song is routinely deleted in many clips shown on news and nostalgia programs today.

Next came “She Loves You,” which had debuted at number-one on the U.S. Billboard charts just eight days before, one of three Beatles hits that charted in America before the Ed Sullivan appearance. Later in the show, the group performed “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Both had just hit the American charts on January 25.

Over 73 million Americans – a record for the time – watched the broadcast. The Beatles also appeared on Ed Sullivan in each of the next two episodes, drawing 70 million viewers on February 16. The February 23 appearance was actually taped before the legendary first show, two weeks before.

The Beatles went on to chart twenty number-one hits in the United States, the most of all-time. The group also has the most number-one singles in the history of the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway, and had at least two chart-topping hits in twenty-one countries.

Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Ill. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or [email protected].