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The Cavern early days and the Beatles Meet Brian Epstein

Fifty-two years ago this month the now famous Cavern Club in Liverpool first opened its doors as a Jazz Club. It was opened on 16 January 1957 and later that year, John Lennon’s group, the Quarrymen, played there. But at that time the Cavern was purely a jazz club and while skiffle was acceptable, rock and roll did not go down well. As the Quarrymen were essentially a skiffle group, they did have the occasional gig at the Cavern especially on evenings billed as “Skiffle Sessions”.

One year later, on 24 January 1958, Paul McCartney played at the club for the first time with the Quarrymen who were billed to support the Mersysippi Jazz Band. George Harrison would join the Quarrymen a month later.

In 1961 after returning to Liverpool from a long stint in Hamburg, Germany, where they honed their skills, the Beatles started to build the following that would attract Brian Epstein to the ‘cellar full of noise’ as he put it. They started playing lunchtime gigs at the Cavern in February that year and were booked at other venues most evenings, sometimes playing at two or three clubs in the one night.

They left again for Hamburg on 27 March 1961 after playing their first evening session at the Cavern on March 21.

In July they returned once again to Liverpool and were immediately booked for both lunchtime and evening sessions at the Cavern. At this time, entrepreneur Bill Harry began publishing a fortnightly newspaper Mersey Beat which filled an information gap in the local music scene. Liverpool music store owner, Brian Epstein, began a regular record review column in the paper.

Towards the end of October 1961, a young fan, Raymond Jones, called into Brian Epstein’s NEMS Music store and asked for a copy of ‘My Bonnie’ by the Beatles. This track was recorded in Hamburg as part of a session where singer Tony Sheridan was backed by the Beatles as the Beat Boys. This name change made it hard for Epstein to track the record in the catalogues, but when two girls also asked for a copy later that week, he finally tracked it down on an import list.

This sparked an interest and prompted Epstein to visit the Cavern for a lunchtime session with his assistant, Alistair Taylor, on Thursday, 9 November 1961. Here he first met the Beatles face to face and the rest is history.

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