Baby's Request

Song facts

From Beatles Bible:

McCartney wrote the song for The Mills Brothers, the American jazz and pop vocal quartet who rose to fame in the 1930s.

“That came about because we were on holiday in the south of France last summer, and we saw The Mills Brothers, the famous old Mills Brothers. Everyone thought that they were dead but they were in cabaret down there, and they were 73 years of age and rotund. They were great and sang exactly like they used to and they are still an amazing group. I went to see them backstage and one of them said, ‘Hey, Paul. How’s about writing The Mills Brothers a song?’ So I said, ‘Yeah, Herbie, OK.’” Paul McCartney

Baby’s Request was never originally intended to be recorded by McCartney or Wings. A demo was taped, but a misunderstanding with The Mills Brothers’ management meant it ended up being used on Back to The Egg.

“I went back to the hotel and spent the next day writing a song for them and when we got back to London we demoed it, sent it out to them and, unfortunately, there was a slight cock up on the management front. For some reason, their manager got the idea that we were going to pay them to record it. So they ended up not doing it, and we ended up doing it ourselves.” Paul McCartney

The demo recording was made in October 1978 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. It was a taped in just a few live takes, and was used on the album without being re-recorded properly.

[…]

McCartney was not normally in the habit of re-recording his earlier songs, with some exceptions including 1984’s Give My Regards To Broad Street. However, he made an exception for Kisses On The Bottom, his 2012 collection of American standards.

The basic edition of the album had 14 songs, two of which were new original compositions by McCartney. A deluxe edition, meanwhile, had two bonus tracks: Baby’s Request and another cover version, My One And Only Love. The inclusion of Baby’s Request brought the number of original compositions up to three.

“Before we started the album I played Tommy [LiPuma] a couple of songs that were written in the style of the album that we were about to make. And he said, ‘Oh, we should try that.’ That was originally written, very much in this style, for The Mills Brothers. I was hoping they would do it. Something happened and they never did. I’m not sure if they ever heard that I’d offered it to them.” Paul McCartney

In Oct ’78, we recorded it My Baby’s Request @ Abbey Road 1st as a demo & then we put the track on Back To The Egg. I played a Gibson 335, Denny-piano, w/Paul & Steve on bass & drums. Paul overdubbed the trombone-like Moog solo.

From Laurence Juber on Twitter, June 17, 2022

Last updated on July 28, 2022

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