It was the Summer Of Love ... that incredible Summer of 1967. In Canada during June and July, Expo 67 was in full swing in Montreal ... and that was "where it was at". Man And His World. Terre Des Hommes. You just had to be there in Montreal.
The Beatles new Pepper LP was a gas too. At the very same time, Capitol was in the midst of moving their offices from Queen Street East in downtown Toronto, to brand new spacious digs on American Drive to the north-west end of Toronto. A new building with new possibilities.
In the better Hi-Fi shops across the country, hi-fi buffs were listening to Stereo copies of SPLCB and re-assessing their impressions of The Beatles. In fact, the album was partially responsible for a whole new generation's acquisition of vastly improved record playing equipment. Koss, Sony and Sennheiser were staring at an entirely new market for studio headphones. Pepper was the first great headphone experience !
Capitol was issuing a ton of 45s that summer, and the bulk of these were being pressed by Compo in Cornwall Ontario where they are also madly pressing the Beatles long awaited Pepper LP . Some good examples of "Pepper singles" were the three new Capitol 45s which were all unique and excellent covers of SPLHCB tracks - all of these were released during the week of June 23rd, 1967.
5933 Bernard Cribbins - When I'm 64
5934 David And Jonathan - She's Leaving Home
5943 The Young Idea - With A Little Help From My Friends
All of these cover songs were recorded at Abbey Road as well.
The Family Way LP soundtrack album was also released in Canada in June 1967 by London Records Of Canada as London MS 82007 STEREO. It is often regarded as the first Beatles solo album and that LP is described in more detail in the Beatles Canadian Discography Part 3 book. The film would be screened at theatres across Canada in the late summer and early fall of 1967, but Paul McCartney had actually written the score in late 1966, before starting work on the Sergeant Pepper album.
Capitol already had rights to their own music from The Family way film, and these two new tracks were not included on the London soundtrack LP. So a brand new Canadian Capitol "soundtrack" 45 was issued during the first or second week of July 1967. Capitol 5957 Sounds Sensational with The Mike Sammes Singers "Love In The Open Air" c/w Murray Head with The Blue Monks "Someday Soon" An odd coupling yes, but a great 45 for Beatles fans that summer. And perhaps something that was not going to make the charts. In fact, it was pretty much forgotten about and was not even mentioned in the Capitol Sizzle Sheet when it was issued. Murray Head had appeared in the film The Family Way as a character named Geoffrey Fitton, and he also composed the B-side and it has a very Zombies like feel with a really cool jazz sax solo.
The A side was the Paul McCartney track and is different to the track on the Canadian London album. It features vocals by the Mike Sammes Singers who would just a few weeks / months later add the "Oo Goo Ga Joobs" to I Am The Walrus.
Both tracks were taken from the film The Family Way, but what Canadian Beatles fans did not know, was that this Canadian Capitol 45 was a hybrid of two British 45s from EMI a few months earlier in 1967.
Columbia DB 8102 Murray Head with The Blue Monks "Someday Soon / You Bore Me" (January 13, 1967)
HMV POP 1584 Sounds Sensational with The Mike Sammes Singers "Love In The Open Air / Night Cry" (March 9, 1967)
This Capitol 5957 45 is interesting and important for Canadian collectors of Beatles recordings in the 1960s because it includes one track by Murray Head that was not included on the London soundtrack album, and one different version of the title song Love In The Open Air sung by a group of singers who would be used by The Beatles on I Am The Walrus, Good Night (White Album) and Let It Be (Spector version). And a couple of years later in 1970, Murray Head would achieve fame as the character Judas Iscariot in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.
Just two week after the release of Capitol 5957 in 1967, The Beatles were back in the charts with "All You Need Is Love" (Capitol 5964, issued July 17th, 1967).
It was indeed the Summer Of Love ... and Love (was) In The Open Air !
Earlier this week, I came across a second combination of matrix information for the Beatles only Canadian Capitol EP which I was not previously aware of.
The EP was issued in Canada in May of 1964 and this new matrix information belongs to an Ep that had found its way to the US south-west (Phoenix, Arizona). We have heard of birds flying south, but not Beatles EPs !
Previously, I had only been aware of one combination of matrix stampers and this was recorded in the Matrix Booklet. So I was pretty surprised to see a new stamper code given the limited numbers of Beatles Capitol EPs that were actually pressed by RCA in Canada in 1964.
This newly documented, second combination of matrix stampings is as follows:
Side 1 - Roll Over Beethoven / All My Loving - F1-2121-G 4 # 2 machine stamped with IAM triangle
Side 2 - This Boy / Please Mister Postman - F2-2121-G 6 # 2 machine stamped with IAM triangle
Both combinations that we have documented in the booklet share the same B-side stamper, which was sent to RCA from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
This is very interesting news, as we now believe that RCA in Smiths Falls received at least 3 different stampers for the EP, and as they were generally used in pairs, we may be able to further assume there is possibly another different stamper code for Side 1.
For all of you who have purchased the Matrix Booklet (thank you !), please record this information in your booklet on pages 8 & 9.
And for those who would like to order the updated Matrix Booklet, please place your order here:
(7$ + 5% tax)
Today, June 18, 2013, Paul McCartney celebrates his 71st birthday. Still in great shape, he will be touring Eastern Canada in a few short weeks, playing venues like Ottawa's Scotiabank Place on July 7 (Ringo's Birthday!) and Québec City's Plains of Abraham on July 23rd (for the second time since 2008). Canada can't wait to see you again!
Also, on June 20th, only two days later, is Brian Wilson's Birthday. also 71 years old.
Today, we have the pleasure of introducing a new column designed especially for you, the readers! It is called F.A.V.E. (Feedback Alternative Viewpoints Expressed). More and more readers are joining the capitol6000.com community and we are receiving some very interesting feedback on the material we publish. This is always greatly appreciated and our members have some great ideas to contribute. We want to share them with you through the means of our new FAVE column.
FAVE is not only meant for technical articles, but also for ideas and view points that might trigger among our readers, a reflection or a debate on a subject specific to the material published on this website. We are happy to hear from you, and if you have an article to contribute, make sure to contact us with the proposed material and we will see if we can find a place for you in our monthly FAVE column! We would like to hear from both our English readers, et nos lecteurs francophones !
To start this new section, Fred Young has prepared a very interesting reflection on markings that may or may not add to the sentimental value of an item. This was in response to Piers' latest article on the CBC library records. This article will be stored in our archive section along with all new FAVE columns we will publish in the future. Enjoy this FAVE from Fred, and please keep new ones coming. We look forward to hearing from you.
After reading Piers' recent article about the CBC artifacts being sold off, I found myself questioning whether these types of markings actually do make a record more collectable or even desirable. For Piers, who has a keen interest in the history of the Canadian music scene as a whole, they represent an important part of history. They are an artifact of a bygone analog age, and therefore, museum worthy and worth preserving. For a person like myself, who's primary interest is t racking down the most pristine of copies for my collection, it's not such a big deal.
So just when does an alteration or embellishment add or detract from an object's value on the collecting market? It's my opinion that it can be broken down into four different categories.
A: An embellishment or alteration that in no doubt, would make the item more desirable to the majority of collectors.
B: An embellishment or alteration that neither enhances, nor reduces the desirability of the item to the majority of collectors.
C: An embellishment or alteration that in no doubt would make the item less desirable to the majority of collectors.
D: An embellishment or alteration that makes the item more desirable solely on personal preference.
Going through my collection, I tried to find items from each of these four categories.
Here are some items that I feel would fall into category A.
Here is a copy of the 1982 release of the 10" "Savage Young Beatles" disc. This item, even sealed, is not a highly prized item among collectors. The addition of signatures by Pete Best and Roy Young, musicians who actually played on the record, make this a very desirable item.
John Lennon's 1972 release "Sometime in New York City" is a fairly easy to find LP, and not worth a lot, but how many do you see autographed by John Sinclair over the lyrics of the song John wrote about him?
A final vinyl copy of the classic Canadian LP "Long Tall Sally" on the 80's retro rainbow label is hard enough to find, but try finding one signed by its Canadian producer, Paul White!
Category B usually involves point of purchase alterations, such as price tags or store promo stickers on LP shrink wrap or 45 sleeves that have been there since the item was newly purchased. Here are a few samples of these. Of particular interest to me, are the price stickers from Canadian store chains like Sayvette and Woolco.
As for category C, I think we can all agree that personal writing or stickers on labels, sleeves, jackets are a sure fire detriment to an item's value and desirability. These kinds of alterations usually make a collector cringe. Here are a few sorry examples. Particularly annoying are the markings on the extremely hard to find "Four By The Beatles" EP and the otherwise pristine 1967 "And I Lover Her" reissue. Arrrghhh!!
Category D involves alterations that make an item interesting and desirable in the eyes of the beholder. It is purely subjective. This is where I would place the CBC artifacts that Piers wrote about, and here are a few examples from my collection that I feel would also fit this category.
The first example is an item that I consider one of my most prized possessions. It is a very early copy of T-6054 that is missing the Parr's logo on the front slick. It is signed and personalized to me by Paul White. I would never consider parting with it, but if I were to, it would probably only appeal to someone named Fred!
Also shown are two early Canadian Beatles 45's purchased from their original owner, who was then a smitten young female fan. She had adorned the sleeves of her newly purchased copies of "She Loves You" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" with hand written messages about them performing these songs on the February 9, 1964 Ed Sullivan appearance. To a vinyl historian like myself, there is valuable information here that makes these records very important.
For 72125, we can instantly tell that some early copies of this single were sold in the glossy black Capitol stock sleeve. Looking at the matrix numbers on the 45, the A side has a dash 2 at the end. This indicates that sometime between mid-September of 1963 and the first week of February 1964 that something happened to the original side A stamper. It is my experience that copies with the dash 2 on side A are quite common. Copies without the suffix on side A are few and far between.
For 5112, the first conclusion we can draw, is that early copies were distributed with the U.S. east coast straight cut picture sleeve. This was the first Canadian Beatles single to actually feature a picture sleeve. Looking at the label we see that initial copies had Walter Hofer as the B side publisher.
It's examples like these that enable us to extract certain details relating to the history of a particular record, and more importantly, make the hobby fun!
Carry on collecting!
It is this time of the month again! As the last recent sales column was published, some experimental coloured vinyl pressings were up for auction - the blue album had just sold for 400$ and Love Songs was still for sale. It turns out its price rocketed from 102$ to 1025$ in the last few moments of the auction; a very interesting price for a very special record! Another rare item sold around the same time: a very first pressing of Twist And Shout with the very scarce orange sticker promoting the insert picture, this, along with a few other first pressings of Beatles albums found a new home for 50$. Still in the Beatles department, another no dash Love Me Do sold for 98$, while a hard to find retro rainbow pressing of Beatlemania sold for 50 Euros and a beautiful copy of Do You Want To Know A Secret sold for 140$.
A very nice copy of Very Together sold for 33$, a CBC stamped Beatles 65 (see previous article) sold for 25$, and cool Dr Ebbetts CD version of Beatlemania sold for 23 UK pounds. An extremely nice copy of the Canadian EP Four By The Beatles, still in the original loose shrink wrap sold for 280$, while sealed copies of 70s pressing of Rubber Soul and Meet The Beatles sold for 15$ and 79$ respectively. Rare target singles of Lady Madonna (round logo) and Yesterday sold for 10$ each, and a complete Let It Be box set sold for 167$ while a rare first pressing Parr's cover stereo Meet The Beatles sold for 14.50$. Finally (for Beatles related records), the rare Canadian Thrillington album sold twice this month: a promo copy reached 78$, while a slightly damaged regular stock copy sold for 22.50$
Even though the Beatles are a very popular band in terms of sales, they are not the only band we are tracking for our column! An extremely hard to find Jack London And The Sparrows album was offered at 220$, but has not found a buyer the first time around. Being so rare, we will keep an eye to see if it is relisted, and hopefully, this collector's gem will find a new owner soon. The Yardbirds are also all time favorites, with their classic albums like Having A Rave Up selling for 15$ and 80$ in passable condition, or Heart Full Of Soul for 138$. Another classic: The Pink Floyd's Pipers At The Gates Of Dawn sold for an astounding 373$. Cliff Richard's 1967 Mod Mood also sold for 20 UK pounds, Chad & Jeremy's What Do You Want With Me reached 10$ while Freddie And The Dreamer's Reddy Freddie sold for 13$. Finally, the Canadian Apple pressing of Chris Hodge's Goodbye Sweet Lorraine 45 sold for a very decent 46$!
Well not really, but sort of. There is a catch to be explained, so please read on.
Way back in 1973, I made the pilgrimage to New York City's Greenwich Village and took an armload of what I thought were some of the rarer Canadian Beatles albums and 45s along with me for trade purposes. A well known record dealer on Bleecker Street howled with laughter when I showed him the heavy bag of vinyl treasures that I had lugged all the way from Ottawa. In a snarky Brooklyn accent, he told me that "Canadian Beatles records are not worth anything ...". Well I really did not want to carry them all the way back to Canada, so reluctantly and sadly, I handed them over to those Village oldies shops at ridiculously low prices. Gone were minty copies of some great and rare Beatles and Beatles solo discs like Life With The Lions, Very Together, This Is Where It Started, My Bonnie etc.
That Bleecker Street experience of loss has lingered with me over the years, and today I am very much an evangelical proponent of the original Canadian vinyl first pressings as being among the best sounding records ever manufactured in the world. Especially where The Beatles are concerned. Hence this web site. And now in the last few years, there has been some acknowledgement that the original Canadian pressed vinyl discs from the 1960s are indeed collectable - especially when they have the provenance of having once belonged to the mighty Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aka "the CBC" for those outside Canada.
Fast forward 40 years. Now last year I was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, one of our greatest Canadian cities, and visited a few of the terrific new and used record shops there. My good buddy Scott told me exactly where to go for the best vinyl. To my amazement, I saw a batch of rare 1960s jazz LP records with the stamp " Property Of CBC Record Library" adorning their jackets - front and back. Now that is "provenance", as these were the very records that the CBC played on air when they sampled tracks for their various CBC programs starting in the 1950s. Way Kool with a capital K.
So I asked the Winnipeg record shop owner about them, and he told me that the CBC in Winnipeg was disposing of its own record library, starting in early 2012. A few days later, I found out the added info that the CBC was in fact centralizing its record library in Toronto and was rationalizing it's libraries in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal and Halifax, with the idea of having one BIG library. Saving money. Going digital. That made sense to me. But it was sad at the same time to think that these vinyl artefacts were being divested by our national broadcaster.
Other record collectors have subsequently come across similar divestments in Vancouver, Toronto , Montreal and Halifax. Pop records, folk records, soundtracks, jazz records, spoken word, country and western, bird sounds, locomotive sounds, and on and on. And apparently the jazz album collection in Winnipeg was particularly impressive; the result of many years of diligent acquisitions by CBC during the best years of Blue Note and Columbia for example.
With Beatles in mind, we here at Capitol6000 have kept all eyes open and have spotted a few of these original CBC "Beatles" discs offered up for sale in recent months. These have been offered up for sale all across our great country, both far and wide, "as it happens" (a great CBC program by the way)…
For the albums, the letters CBC are heavily stamped / embossed right into the record labels. There are usually date stamps on both the labels and jackets. By examining the records themselves, we can pretty much determine to the month when they were acquired for their libraries. From what we have seen so far, the CBC took great care of their records.
This is Canada's history on vinyl and it is being sold off, one disc at a time. Perhaps we have only seen a subset of their Beatles discs so far. With at least 5 record libraries being whittled down to one, it is possible that there are multiple copies of some discs.
So far we have seen an early 1970s stereo copy of Yesterday & Today from the Halifax library, a Graham Newton mastered early mono 1965 copy of Beatles 65 from the Toronto library dated from April 1967, and a post 1966 brackets copy of Long Tall Sally from the Toronto library dated July 1969. This last one was logged in to the CBC record library just as Apollo 11 was landing on the moon ! From the Vancouver library we have seen 72101 From Me To You, 72159 Do You Want To Know A Secret, and 72162 Sie Liebt Dich (2 copies). All of these were 1964 copies. Some of the dealers who bought these records have attempted to remove the stickers, and some have not. The Vancouver copy of 72101 had the sticker removed before the dealer realized that maybe the sticker added some value from it's heritage. Most of the Vancouver CBC Beatles singles appear to have been acquired in the summer of 1964 just after Beatlemania hit these shores.
Well this is the twenty-first century last time we checked, and the CBC is moving ahead in the digital world in a very big way and I guess it has never been better. Surely the CBC has the entire Beatles catalogue in re-mastered digital format, so their old vinyl discs are no longer needed.
It is nice to remember all of the hard working folks at the CBC many years ago who maintained top-notch record libraries in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax. Filing new releases, pulling out discs upon request for on-air programming, colour coding the metal racking and shelving, etc. CBC hosts like Glenn Gould were known to browse the grey-metal racks of records at the old CBC building at 354 Jarvis Street in Toronto. Gould wrote and produced many shows for CBC radio and television. Perhaps he popped in there frequently to check out the CBC's Petula Clark collection. Who knows. Oddly, Clyde Gilmour was never a client of the CBC record library back in the 60s, 70s, 80 and even 90s, although today the Toronto Public Library maintains Clyde's personal collection of vinyl records that he used as the source for his long running and very popular CBC weekly radio show Gilmour's Albums. That is a nice touch. Gilmour's Albums was an audio treat every week but now we have new shows like the Vinyl Tap and Saturday Night Blues to keep us musically happy. And we do very much appreciate those radio shows and they must have to access the consolidated CBC record library from time to time.
Now a few years back I was told the story about the BIG MOVE of the record library from the old building at 354 Jarvis Street to the new building at 250 Front Street in Toronto. There were two "career record librarians" at the old building and they had to arrange to pack up and move all of the records. This at a time perhaps when they were retiring from the CBC. At the time of the move in the 1990s (circa 1992 and afterwards), many old records and tapes were discarded into containers (78s, 45s and open reels) and lots of those ended up at the Goodwill Store at Adelaide and Jarvis. Some of us lucky ducks found some real gems there, including a complete 1-hour taped episode of "The Action Set" from 1967 hosted by Al Maitland which featured a preview of the new Beatles album Sergeant Pepper in glorious MONO. Nice.
This large-scale music divestiture that began in 2012, of at least 4 huge record collections from the CBC libraries across Canada, into the used record marketplace, was perhaps the "Haley's Comet" for record collectors in Canada. We can't wait to see what else will turn up. We will extend our vigil and would very much appreciate any updates or details on interesting finds. Of course, these will be noted in the Recent Sales postings.
But today we will take a few long overdue moments to salute all of those wonderful CBC record librarians who have worked, past and present, at the various CBC record libraries across Canada. Their legacy is a great stack of vinyl discs that are uniquely denoted by their CBC stamps, CBC labels, and their original CBC library dates. All filed properly, and neatly, and ready to be placed upon turntables at any time.
Happy collecting.
Jim McCarty, an original and founding member of The Yardbirds rocks and rolls into Toronto tonight, and along with him will be legendary British keyboardist John Hawken.
They will be playing tonight at 8 PM at Toronto's famous El Mocambo Club on Spadina Avenue, which is a great place to see live bands. The Rolling Stones, The Flaming Groovies, Willie Dixon, The Blues Band, Elvis Costello, and many others too numerous to mention have all played there.
Now fans of the Capitol6000 web site will be interested in tonight's show because the Yardbirds are one of the best bands on the famous Canadian record label from the 1960s.
Jim McCarty has drummed for Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page - all one time members of his group. McCarty co-wrote many of The Yardbirds great tracks along with his fellow band members. While he was with The Yardbirds, his group supported The Beatles as well.
If the name John Hawken is also familiar to you, then you may not realize that Hawken was a key member (keyboards) of the British Invasion group The Nashville Teens (think their great 1964 hit Tobacco Road !) and he was also in the progressive group Renaissance with Keith Relf and Jim McCarty, in the late 1960s, just after The Yardbirds splintered into Led Zeppelin and Renaissance.
If you can come on out tonight to the "El Mo" and support these Rock And Roll Pioneers, they have traveled here all the way from England to entertain their fans.
More information on "The Yardbirds in Canada" is right here:
The Yardbirds