Hi, everyone. Welcome to another triple edition (plus a bonus track) of Music Monday.

(Image found online.  Original source unknown.)

Note: This will be the final Music Monday for 2023. Starting December 1st, the Christmas Countdown begins and will end on the last Monday of the year, which is Christmas Day. I would love to hear about some of your favorite holiday songs so please email me or comment below with your top choices. Music Mondays will resume on January 1, 2024. And now to the music.

Happy 60th anniversary to With The Beatles, the band’s second studio album. It was released on November 22, 1963 and included six cover songs. Today’s first feature was The Fab Four’s salute to Motown. I love that one of my favorite bands saluted one of my favorite genres (and theirs, too) with one of my favorite songs. The harmony between the group really shines through on this track.

Exactly five years later came the release of The Beatles, more commonly known by its nickname, The White Album. It was the band’s ninth studio album and the only double record of their career. It was also the first time the band had another famous musician join them in the studio. Eric Clapton played lead guitar on today’s second feature which is one of my all time favorites by George Harrison.

Nearly five years after that, Ringo Starr had the #1 song in the country. The tune hit the top spot on the chart on November 24, 1973 for one week, only two months after it was released. Co-written with his old Beatles chum Harrison, the track was the lead single from Starr’s third solo album-aptly titled Ringo-released the same month. It peaked at the #2 position on the Billboard album chart, but never hit the top spot because another chap from England-Elton John-was in that spot for the last eight weeks of that year with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Starr’s album went on to produce another #1 record two months later when the second single-his cover of “You’re Sixteen”-topped the charts for one week in January 1974. But it was the lead track that took a very sentimental turn for Starr who performed it in tribute to Harrison at “The Concert For George” in 2002. Harrison died 22 years ago on November 29, 2001. But thanks to some recordings he did in the 1990’s with Starr and McCartney together with a pre-recorded assist from Lennon, the world received an early Christmas gift: “the last Beatles song”. The track has a really sweet sentiment and the video takes us on a great walk down memory lane of the four lads from Liverpool we met on a Sunday night one February almost 60 years ago.

Picture 1: The Beatles’ 1963 album. Picture 2: The four pictures that came inside The White Album (L-R: George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney). Picture 3: Ringo and George in the early days of The Beatles era, circa 1963. Picture 4: George and Ringo circa 1990. Bottom: Ringo’s self-titled 1973 album. (Images found online.  Original sources unknown.)

The Beatles: “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” (1963, written by William Robinson Jr.).

The Beatles: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (1968, written George Harrison).

Ringo Starr: “Photograph” (1973, written by George Harrison and Richard Starkey).

Bonus: The Beatles: “Now And Then” (2023, written by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey).

Stay safe and well.