Marsha Albert is credited with being the person who jump-started the early 1960s phenomenon known as Beatlemania in the United States when as a 15-year-old girl, on 17 December 1963, she introduced for the first time on American radio a song written and recorded by The Beatles titled "I Want To Hold Your Hand", and that Beatles historian and author Bruce Spizer noted, in 2004, by his stating ''Marsha Albert's actions forced a major record company to push up the release date of a debut single from an unknown band during the holiday season, a time when record companies traditionally released no new product."
History
On the morning of22 November 1963, CBS Morning News, hosted by Mike Wallace, aired a light trend segment about The Beatles and the phenomenon surrounding this musical group called Beatlemania. Though due to air later that evening on the CBS Evening News, hosted by Walter Cronkite, it was preempted by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but was eventually re-aired by Cronkite on 10 December 1963—who knew that America needed a lift in spirit from the tragedies it had just gone through. After viewing this re-aired segment on The Beatles, Albert, a 15-year-old living in Silver Spring, Maryland, wrote to her local radio station, WWDC-AM, asking disc jockey Carroll James Jr. "Why can’t we have music like that here in America?". After receiving Albert’s letter, James Jr. "pulled strings and called in favors" and received from a British Overseas Airways Corporationflight attendant a copy from England of "I Want To Hold Your Hand"—and then, on 17 December 1963, James Jr. invited Albert to his studio where she introduced the song to America for the very first time.
Marcia Schafer Raubach dispute
Marcia Schafer Raubach, who in 1963 was a high school senior in West Frankfort, Illinois, claimed that she was the first to play a record by The Beatles in America on her father’s radio stationin September, but that was disputed by Chicago radio station WLS AM—though Raubach is credited with being the first American to interview on American radio a Beatle member, George Harrison, who at the time was in the southern Illinois region to visit his sister.
