Easy Beat (radio programme)

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Easy Beat was a BBC Radio programme broadcast nationally in the United Kingdom on the Light Programme on Sunday mornings, between January 1960 and September 1967. [1] It was one of the earliest BBC programmes to broadcast pop music. Like the contemporary Saturday Club , it was initially presented by Brian Matthew, later by Keith Fordyce and, finally, David Symonds. Both Matthew and Fordyce would later go on to host the long-running Sounds of the 60s, on the Light Programme's successor, BBC Radio 2.

It was scheduled between 10:30 - 11:30 on Sunday mornings, and regularly featured Kenny Ball's Jazzmen, and recorded sessions by featured guests in front of a studio audience. The Beatles appeared on four Easy Beat shows in 1963: [2]

7 April 1963: performing "Please Please Me", "Misery", and "From Me to You"
23 June 1963: performing "Some Other Guy", "A Taste Of Honey", "Thank You Girl" and "From Me to You"
21 July 1963: performing "I Saw Her Standing There", "A Shot of Rhythm and Blues", "There's a Place" and "Twist and Shout"
20 October 1963: performing "I Saw Her Standing There", "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me", "From Me To You" and "She Loves You".

When Radio 1 started in 1967, the show continued for several months under the title Happening Sunday and introduced by Ed Stewart, before being dropped. [3]

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References

  1. "BBC Genome Project". Easy Beat. Retrieved 18 February 2018.
  2. Bill Harry, Mersey Beat, Brian Matthew
  3. Radio Rewind: Light Programme Music