So, you just bought a Capitol LP, and you want to know when and where it was made. Not just when the LP went into print and went out, or what years a label variation lasted, but when your particular LP actually rolled off the presses and into the stores, and where it actually was made. Here, I hope to help you out. This is research in a VERY early stage, and is likely flawed, but it is something I will continually be working on, verifying, and changing. Hopefully there aren’t too many errors, but this one is hot off the presses, without very much time to work on substantiating it, so some errors likely will crop up. All that said, on to the fun stuff!
Where was my record made? Here are some general rules:
1. Scranton, PA. made LPs which had a stamped master groove number.
2. Los Angeles, Ca. made LPs which had a hand written master groove number.
3. After August 1965, the Jacksonville, IL. plant opened, and made LA clones, but without a small triangular marked “IAM” in the inner groove area. Sometimes, though, they just used LA plates, making them totally identical. Other times, just to be frustrating, they may have used Scranton plates. Thus, Jacksonvilles are almost unidentifiable.
Now that you can roughly figure out where the record was made, what about when it was made? By looking at the label, you can, to some degree, roughly determine this. Here’s the pattern:
1. Glossy labels were the standard label from 1964-July 1965.
2. Flat labels are all from after July, 1965.
3. THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE: Some LA “Knight In Rusty Armour”s and "In London For Tea"s have glossy labels. For no apparent reason, these were being pressed at the same time as flat labels. For some strange reason, one of the factories was making glossy labels for a short time in late 1967!
4. ALL Canadian pressings have glossy labels.
5. Copies of “The Best Of...” with an all black label are from 1966-1967, but were made in small quantities, and concurrent with regular “colorband” label copies.
6. “Best Of...”s made after mid 1967 have a “red and white target” label. These went out of print in 1971. It would return to print a few months later, missing one song.
7. “Best Of...”s that are reissues from 1972 have a yellow label. Some of the very early copies are in covers just like the originals, but Capitol very quickly changed the cover, getting rid if the back cover LP ads, and correctly listing 10 tracks, not the original 11. It went out of print around 1976.
8. “Best Of...”s with a dark green label are 1981 reissues.
Okay, so you’ve looked at the label but that’s not good enough for you. Does your copy have it’s original sleeve? Then you’re in luck. If it doesn’t, then you’re out of luck. Here is the rough run down on when it is from, based on Capitol’s advertising sleeves.
1. A blue sleeve, which advertised the necessity to check your needle, was the standard Capitol advertising sleeve starting before the British Invasion (Jan 1964’s “Meet The Beatles” was first issued with this sleeve). By January of 1965, it had been superseded by the next sleeve. ‘A World Without Love” and “I Don’t Want To See You Again” were first issued with this sleeve.
2. A red sleeve, advertising the “Teen Set”, was used from December 1964 to July 1965. Concurrent with blue sleeves, this sleeve saw the debut of “I Don’t Want To See You Again”. “I Go To Pieces” also was first issued with this sleeve.
3. A transitional white sleeve, with “Capitol Records” written in a box around the corners of the sleeve, was used from June 1965 to August 1965, and only housed copies of “I Go To Pieces” from Los Angeles.
4. A green sleeve, advertising Capitol’s “new improved full dimensional stereo”, was first used for initial copies of “True Love Ways” in August of 1965. This sleeve stayed in use until March 1966.
5. The orange “Capitol ‘66 Sounds Great” sleeve was introduced in March 1966, just in time for the issue of the “...Nashville” and “Woman” LPs, though both also were in leftover green sleeves at the same time as the first oranges were being used. This one was used widely, until November 1966.
6. Capitol then shifted to a white sleeve, without a hole in the center. From this point on, this would be the standard Capitol sleeve until late 1968. “Lady Godiva” was first issued in this sleeve.
7. The gold sleeve, which states that the “hits by the stars are on Capitol” replaced the “Capitol ‘66 Sounds Great” sleeve, but not until February of 1967. The “Knight In Rusty Armour” LP was first issued with this sleeve, but was concurrently in a white sleeve. Early copies of "In London For Tea" were the last new P&G records to be in this one, which was always less common than the plain white sleeves, and, late 1967, was no longer in use. Some initial copies of the "red and white target label" "Best Of..." also had this sleeve.
8. A white sleeve with a plastic liner was occasionally used during 1967. Too bad Capitol didn’t stick with this one, as it is a lot less hard on the vinyl than paper is!
9. Late 1968 saw a new sleeve, a white sleeve with a hole in it (but no plastic liner). This one stayed the standard Capitol sleeve for ever (until near the end of the vinyl era).
10. By 1982, Capitol sometimes packaged their LPs in plastic bags, without any kind of paper sleeve. This sleeve became standard by 1985.
REMEMBER: These rules are not set in stone, and LPs that were originally issued in one sleeve later would appear in other ones. P&G’s Capitol LPs went out of print in 1969 (except “Best Of...”). Also, this research is in an embryonic stage, but I’m pretty darned positive that this stuff is quite accurate. Still, I’ll keep looking to try to bolster (or disprove) these conclusions. Hope it helps for those of you that want to know as much as possible about your lovely little 12 inchers.