Devil In Her Heart is a cover version from the With The Beatles album, sung by George Harrison. The Beatles took great pride in their knowledge of American music and their taste in selecting even quite obscure songs for their setlist. Devil In Her Heart is a great example, being possibly the most obscure track they covered. The original is by a Detroit-based girl-group the Donays who were signed to the Correc-Tone label. Correc-Tone was one of a large number of Detroit labels which competed (e.g., to sign artists and songwriters) with the Motown organisation. They had at one stage signed a young Wilson Pickett, but ultimately failed to hold on to their talent. The Donays only ever released one single Bad Boy, and Devil In His Heart was the B-side. It was not a hit. It does not get much more obscure than that, yet the Beatles heard the song and saw its potential, at least as an album track and part of their live set.
Although Devil In His/Her Heart came into their show in 1963, the pattern of seeking out new songs to cover had been in place for some time. Before they were signed, and before the Lennon-McCartney writing partnership came to dominate their repetoire, the Beatles were part of a boom in “beat groups” in the Liverpool; a large number of cover bands were performing regularly, and there was a lot of overlap in the songs they performed, so to be able to identify promising new tracks to add to the setlist could give a band the edge.
The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, started out running a Liverpool record shop, NEMS. He would try to stock all released records in low numbers, identifying sales in what we would now call “the long tail“. Indeed it was through his close attention to the stores stock and sales that he first discovered the Beatles, when a fan requested a copy of a record (My Bonnie) they had made with Tony Sheridan while in Hamburg. Epstein’s approach of stocking obscure tracks also appealed to the Beatles who had eclectic tastes and did not want to be seen to follow the crowd. They continued to visit the store, looking for new material, after their own first single had been released:
Brian had a policy of buying at least one copy of every record that was released. If it sold, he’d order another one, or five or whatever. Consequently he had records that weren’t hits in Britain, weren’t even hits in America. Before going to a gig we’d meet in the record store, after it had shut, and we’d search the racks like ferrets to see what new ones were there… ‘Devil In Her Heart’ and Barrett Strong’s ‘Money’ were records that we’d picked up and played in the shop and thought were interesting (George Harrison, Anthology).
The Beatles switched the gender to Devil In Her Heart, and gave the song a slight Latin feel, making their cover seem more danceable than the original (Ringo’s well-judged drum part and maracas playing an important role). George does a great job with the lead vocal and signature lead guitar lines, while John and Paul seem to question his judgement through the answering backing vocals.