"Carol"

This morning, I listened to a compilation album of Chuck Berry (in the 20th Century Masters series) and noticed a small feature in "Carol" that's also present in the version that the Beatles did on the BBC.

In Berry's original, the repetition involved in the alliteration in the line "Ev'ry time you make the scene, you find the joint is jammed" provides a slight sense of this fullness.  In the Beatles' version, Lennon gets the words wrong, but since he substitutes an-other word that also starts with a J, the effect is actually heightened:  "Well, ev'ry time you go to jive, you find the joint is jammed."

"Carol"

Yester-day, I listened to the first disc of Live at the BBC and noticed a couple things about "Carol," specifically about the line "Well, I've a-gotta learn to dance if it takes me all night and day."

First, "day" is sung with a melisma (B A), musically giving something of a sense of duration (for "all").  Second, "night and day" is a merism.

I referenced Chuck Berry's original and found that the Beatles changed the lyrics slightly (from Berry's "I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day") and that they added the melisma to "day."