Randolph Peter "Pete" Best was born 24 November 1941 in the city of Madras, then part of British India. After Best's mother, Mona Best, moved to Liverpool in 1945, she opened The Casbah Coffee Club in the cellar of the Bests' large house in Liverpool, and it became very popular with British youths, having a membership of over 1,000. The Beatles (at the time known as the Quarrymen) played some of their first concerts at the club, and Best played there with the Beatles, as well as with his first band, the Black Jacks. In August 1960 The Beatles invited Best to join the group, on the eve of their first Hamburg season of club dates. He was eventually replaced by Ringo Starr on 16 August 1962, when the group's manager, Brian Epstein, dismissed Best under the direction of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, following their first recording session at Abbey Road Studios. Soon after he was dismissed, Epstein attempted to console him by offering to build another group around him, but Best refused. Feeling let down and depressed, he sat at home for two weeks, not wanting to face anybody or answer the inevitable questions about why he had been sacked. Epstein secretly arranged with his booking agent partner, Joe Flannery, for Best to join Lee Curtis & the All Stars, which then broke off from Curtis to become Pete Best & the All Stars, and they signed to Decca Records, releasing the unsuccessful single 'I'm Gonna Knock On Your Door'. Best later moved to the United States along with songwriters Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington, and as The Pete Best Four, and later as The Pete Best Combo, they toured the US in 1965 with a combination of 1950's songs and original tunes, recording for small labels Cameo and Mr. Maestro, but with little success. They ultimately released an album on Savage Records in 1966, 'Best Of The Beatles', which was a play on Best's name, but which led to disappointment for record buyers who neglected to read the song titles on the front cover and expected a Beatles compilation. The group disbanded shortly afterwards, and Bickerton and Waddington were to find greater success as songwriters in the 1970', writing a series of hits for the American female group, The Flirtations and the British group, the Rubettes. Many of Best's group's singles were written by Bickerton and Waddington, and by 1965 they had amassed a considerable body of original material, which would have been enough to put together an album of their own songs in 1965. While 'Best Of The Beatles' did include some of those songs, it also featured a lot of covers, and so this album would have been a much better example of their work, had it come out a year earlier in 1965.
Track listing
01 Why Did You Leave Me Baby?
02 I Need Your Lovin'
03 I Can Do Without You
04 She's Alright
05 Keys to My Heart
06 I'm Checkin' Out Now Baby
07 I'll Try Anyway
08 I Don't Know Why I Do
09 How Do You Get to Know Her Name?
10 She's Not the Only Girl in Town
11 Don't Play With Me
12 More Than I Need Myself
13 I'll Have Everything Too
14 The Way I Feel About You
15 If You Can't Get Her
12 More Than I Need Myself
13 I'll Have Everything Too
14 The Way I Feel About You
15 If You Can't Get Her
