Donays - "Devil In His Heart" (UK Oriole) 1962
Written by Richard Drapkin.
The UK issue of a single released in the US on Brent.
This would appear to have been the group’s only single but members morphed into the Motown group, the Elgins with the Donays’ Yvonne Allen becoming the lead singer of a revived formation of the Elgins in 1971.
Of course, the song became famous when, with George singing lead, the Beatles covered it on their second UK album, “With The Beatles”. In the US, the title was featured on their 1964 LP, “The Beatles’ Second Album”. As to how the Beatles ended up recording a song that was not a US hit, that question is probably best answered by Bruce Spizer in his book, “The Beatles Please Please Me To With The Beatles”.
Spizer credits George as saying that Brian Epstein stocked at least one copy of any record released. The Beatles would often meet at Brian’s NEMS store before a gig and peruse the racks to check out new releases. George: “”Devil In His Heart” and “Money” were records we’d picked up and played in the shop and thought they were interesting”. Spizer thinks that “American” as it appeared on the Oriole American logo caught the group’s attention, especially as Oriole had just started releasing Motown records – such as Mary Wells’ “You Beat Me To The Punch” – using their Oriole American logo.
The Beatles recorded the song on July 18, 1963 and released it on “With The Beatles” on November 22 of that year. The group also recorded the song at a couple of their BBC sessions, one version of which later appeared on the “Baby It’s You” maxi-single from 1995.