Great New Releases From The Sound Capitol Of The World - February 1964

This album was the first promotional compilation featuring The Beatles in North America. No Canadian pressing was ever made but copies were sent to Canada with special stamps that marked "Not Available in Canada" because the featured Meet The Beatles albums was had not been released in Canada before 1967. The compilation featured two Beatles tracks: This Boy and All My Loving.

Availability

This variation was available in February 1964 as a monthly promotional effort. It was never repressed.

General Information

The "Great New Releases From The Sound Capitol Of The World" series was a promotional effort by Capitol that sent monthly selections of tracks to radio stations to promote their catalog. These were marked as "balanced for broadcast", meaning they were ready to be aired by DJs around the country. As Capitol's explanation went, these records were specially prepared in a sequence allowing DJs to play an entire side at a time, without any interruptions.

The cover was marked as "Balanced For Broadcast" on the front and the back cover:

Copies sent to Canada were also marked with "NOT AVAILABLE IN CANADA" stamps on designated albums. Only two albums were not available here at the time: Dick Weissman and Meet The Beatles:

Note that although these two Beatles tracks were not available in Canada on the "Meet The Beatles" LP, they were available on the 5" reel that was released as early as 1964, and on the Beatlemania! album that was readily available since November 1963.

Pressing Information

This pressing features hand-written matrix numbers, and they seem to have been pressed in only one factory: Los Angeles. Matrix numbers have a smal * which is the L.A. plant marking:

PRO-2537 H1 2 *
PRO-2538 H1 1 *

Cover

The cover of this variation features the "ST-6051" catalogue number back on the top right of the back cover, and the Modern Graphics printer logo found on the spine. The information on the back cover also features the same legal information as well as the target logo.

The front slick of this release used a textured matte paper, highly contrasting with the smooth glossy back slick texture.

Balanced For Broadcast Series

This monthly series of releases prepared by Capitol used different sleeve design concepts, often using the Capitol Tower building in different settings and colors. In late 1963 and early 1964, Capitol used a different "black frame and yellow monochrome" design. A few of these therefore have a similar cover design, where a historical monochrome image is underlined by a humorous quote.