Beatle Country

Beatle Country
Studio album by Charles River Valley Boys
Released	November 1966 (1966-11)
Recorded	September 1966
Studio	Columbia (Nashville, Tennessee)
Genre	Bluegrass
Length	33:22
Label	Elektra
Producer	Paul A. Rothchild Peter K. Siegel
Charles River Valley Boys chronology
Blue Grass Get Together (1964) Beatle Country (1966) Bluegrass and Old Timey Music (2003)
Alternative cover
1995 CD release

Beatle Country is the fourth and final studio album by the American bluegrass band Charles River Valley Boys, released in November 1966 by Elektra Records. Where the Charles River Valley Boys' previous albums consisted of traditional and new bluegrass and some early country songs, Beatle Country contains only covers of the Beatles. The band and several session musicians completed the album at Columbia Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, across four days in September 1966. Paul A. Rothchild and Peter K. Siegel produced the album, with Glenn Snoddy as audio engineer.

After hearing the Beatles' song "I've Just Seen a Face" on the radio in late 1965, Jim Field recommended to his bandmates that they add it to their repertoire. Following the label's success the previous year with The Baroque Beatles Book, Elektra executive Jac Holzman acquired permission for the group to record an album of Beatles covers. Because the original versions often employ complex chord progressions, the group "'countrified' the chords ... 'flattening'"^[1] them out to bring the songs into the style of bluegrass. In addition to using rolling banjos, upright bass and a high lonesome tenor vocal, they further changed the songs structurally, allowing for extra instrumental breaks – a typical feature of bluegrass music, where each musician is allowed the chance to solo.

Upon release, Elektra promoted Beatle Country towards mainstream country and pop music audiences rather than to bluegrass fans. A commercial failure, it peaked at No. 127 on Cash Box's Top 100 Albums chart in January 1967. The album's ineffective marketing campaign allowed it to fall into obscurity, subsequently attaining cult status and becoming a valued collector's item. The album's cover artwork, created by Eros Keith under the supervision of William S. Harvey and without the band's involvement, features a group of cowboys gazing at the theater district of Swinging London. With its bending of bluegrass conventions, retrospective commentators have seen the LP as anticipating the progressive bluegrass movement of the 1970s. The album was re-released on CD in 1995 and in 2005.