John Lennon was a big Bing Crosby fan. His Aunt Mimi who brought him up, was a Bing fan, and John would have listened to his records as a child. 

The Beatles first number one record in the UK, "Please Please Me" was based on "Please" by Bing. John was looking for something for a new song and remembered the Bing song. 

Lennon recalled: "I remember the day I wrote it, I heard Roy Orbison doing "Only the Lonely", or something. And I was also always intrigued by the words to a Bing Crosby song that went, 'Please lend a little ear to my pleas'. The double use of the word 'please'. So it was a combination of Roy Orbison and Bing Crosby" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Please_Me_(song)

Lennon was a long-time fan of Bing's music, especially the early Crosby. According to Coleman:

"Yoko's gift to John for the 38th birthday was a very special antique: a bubble-top Wurlitzer jukebox of the style popular in American soda fountains. It took only 78 RPM records and its arrival coincided with John's increasing interest in nostalgia music. The first batch of records ordered were... as many Bing Crosby records as he could get." (p549)In a 1980 interview a few weeks before Lennon's death, Coleman asked Lennon what music he was currently listening to. He said, "Hank Williams, Carl Perkins, John Gielgud reading Shakespeare and anything that Bing Crosby had ever done." http://www.stevenlewis.info/crosby/beatles.htm

Last edited by John Shrewsbury (08/1/2014 12:26 pm)