THE BEATLES IN HAMBURG
Karussell 635 056
Summit/Karussell SRA 250-550 (reissue)
Released March 1970
Original recommended retail price:
Released in Australia in March 1970, The Beatles in Hamburg brought the group’s early Tony Sheridan recordings together domestically on LP for the first time, before being reissued by Summit Records Australia with new sleeve artwork and later repackaged again in PolyGram’s Rock Legends series.
Labels & Related Material
AULP635056K
March 1970
Tracks
Same tracks as German release
Pressing & Mastering

First Issued

Side 1

Side 2

Parts

Mar-70

✎635056-A

✎635056B S

AU

70

✎635056-A2

✎635056B S

AU

Nov-70?

✎635056-A2 SRA250-550A

✎635056B SRA250-5650B S

AU
On side 2 the etched '635056' is identical across all releases; it appears the mastering engineer missed a digit and initially etched 63506. Realising his mistake, he etched a 5 over the last six and etched in a 6 after, over what was the -.
Sleeve Information

Code

Circulated

Comments

AU1

Mar-70

'Flag sleeve' - Replica German sleeve with Karussell / Stern Musik logos

AU2

Nov-70?

'Ship sleeve' - Summit Records Australia / Karussell; front laminated sleeve
Overview
The June 1961 Hamburg recordings gave Polydor a lasting connection to The Beatles before their EMI career. Most featured the early group backing Tony Sheridan, although they also recorded a couple of performances of their own. Originally billed as the Beat Brothers, their involvement became commercially valuable once The Beatles achieved worldwide success.

Australian listeners had already encountered much of this material on Polydor singles, an EP and The Mersey Sound. The Beatles in Hamburg was the first domestic LP to bring the complete programme together. Its format closely followed the February 1968 German Karussell/Stern Musik edition, itself another repackaging of Polydor’s 1964 The Beatles’ First.

Phonogram Recordings, Philips’ Australian subsidiary, issued the budget album in March 1970. It subsequently licensed much of its budget catalogue to the newly formed Summit Records Australia.

The date of Summit’s reissue remains unresolved. Previously assigned to November 1970, it may instead have appeared as late as November 1971, according to Summit release sheets. Its new artwork incorporated Tony Sheridan’s original 1964 liner notes on the rear; click the sleeve image above to see this variation.

The agreement preserved Phonogram’s label identity and numbering on the records themselves. Summit branding and the SRA catalogue number appeared only on the sleeve. The “250” element of SRA 250-550 identified the series’ original $2.50 price.

PolyGram returned the programme to Australian shops in 1980 as part of its Rock Legends series. That edition is covered on the Rock Legends page.