In the United States, Do You Want To Know a Secret was the first top ten song to feature Harrison as a lead singer, reaching number 2 on the Billboard chart in 1964 as a single released by Vee-Jay, VJ 587. The Beatles' version was never released as a single in the UK, where a cover version by Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas hit number one in the NME chart.
Lennon said he based the song on Wishing Well, from Walt Disney's 1937 animated feature film Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. Indeed, the opening lines of the lyrics are taken from this film song. However, the melody of DYWTKAS appears to owe more to "I Really Love You", a song released by The Stereos in 1961. This record, issued on Cub Records, a subsidiary of MGM Records, reached number 29 on the Billboard Top 40 chart. The lead singer on I Really Love You was Ronnie Collins. This song was covered by the le George Harrison in his 1982 studio album Gone Troppo, so indeed it appears to have been well known to the Beatles.
Lennon later said that he gave "Do You Want to Know a Secret" to Harrison to sing because "it only had three notes and he wasn't the best singer in the world". So George did pretty well with these 3 notes.....
The song was recorded during a ten-hour session on 11 February 1963 along with nine other songs for Please Please Me.
Take 8 was best — being a superimposition take of the harmony vocal and two drum sticks being tapped together (You can hear them from 1:09 to 1:20.), onto take six.
Here, we used take 7 and Take 8 to create a stunning true stereo version.
