Imagine They turned down the Beatles! (1966)

Little Richard with the Beatles and the Chants

 

In 2024, I had the good fortune to hear Joe Ankrah of the Chants speak at a symposium in Liverpool 

Imagine, They Turned Down the Beatles!

No writer listed

Manchester Daily News'

July 2, 1966

    Said Alan Harding, age 21 one of the Liverpool Coloured Vocal Group, The Chants, "It seems fantastic now, but we brushed their offer politely aside. We thought the material we had was all right."

     The offer Alan referred to was a tape of new songs, and the offer was being made by the Beatles. That, as time in the pop world is measured, was relatively long ago, of course, back in 1962. The Beatles were big on Merseyside, being nationally beat was only just beginning to get into its stride, so the Chants' Alan, Edmond and Joseph Ankrah, Nat Smeda and Eddie Amoo could not really be blamed for their lack of interest.

     It happened at Liverpool's Cavern Club, where Paul McCartney had invited them after a chance meeting without hearing them sing. "When they gave a demonstration," Alan recalls, "The Beatles threw the chips they were eating into the air and came rushing over."

     The Chants got their first professional booking that night, and because they had no backing group, the Beatles offered to fill in. It was after that performance that the offer of the taped songs came.

     Since then, the Chants, who are appearing this week at Manchester's Piccadilly Club, have become a successful cabaret act. They have sung all over the country and have appeared in Germany, Belgium, and Spain. 

    There's only one dark cloud on the otherwise happy career of the group, who are five of Bessie Braddock's favorite people. ("They're terrific!" she says.) The Chants have never made the charts. Said Alan, "We still have the ambition, but material is always a difficult thing for vocal groups to come by."

     And that tape the Beatles offered? "We never even listened to it, for all we know, the songs may have been some of the biggest hits they ever had."