Long Tall Sally

The Long Tall Sally EP exists because of British EP economics. By June 1964 the band had recorded a clutch of non-LP tracks — three covers from their stage set, plus Lennon's I Call Your Name (originally given to Billy J. Kramer) — and Parlophone needed a way to release them. The 7-inch four-track EP, sleeved in a moody black-and-red Robert Freeman portrait, became the only UK release for these recordings until the early-1980s rarities compilations.

Recorded 1 March 1964 (Long Tall Sally, I Call Your Name) and 1 June 1964 (Slow Down, Matchbox), all at Abbey Road. Long Tall Sally was cut in a single take; Carl Perkins was in the control room watching for the Matchbox session.

Long Tall Sally is McCartney's most Little-Richard-like vocal performance — Penniman himself reportedly wept when he heard it. I Call Your Name introduces a deliberate ska-style guitar middle-eight at George Martin's suggestion. Slow Down is a Larry Williams cover. Matchbox is a Carl Perkins rockabilly cover with Ringo on lead vocal.

Released 19 June 1964. UK EP chart number one for fourteen weeks (the EP chart was a separate weekly tabulation in the UK during the 1960s).

The EP is a small but significant artefact: a snapshot of the band still doing the cover-heavy live set they had honed in Hamburg, captured at the moment they were about to stop doing covers altogether. After this EP, no UK release before 1995 would showcase a non-original.