This month's record feature is Help! by The Beatles .... Capitol of Canada 5476. The 45 was issued in Canada on Monday, July 26th., 1965. While all previous Capitol of Canada releases had been pressed by RCA, this 45 RPM disc was the very first Beatles Capitol disc to be pressed at the newly opened Compo pressing plant in Cornwall, Ontario. Compo had pressed the Hard Day's Night Lp the previous summer but this was the first time they had pressed singles for Capitol of Canada.
A few thousand copies of 5476 were shipped with the imported Capitol USA colour picture sleeve. The most unusual feature of these early Compo pressings is that while the matrix numbers are "machine stamped" (not hand-etched), the master was actually made in Canada and not in the USA. The markings on the A side are pronounced and look somewhat "clumsy" when compared to the stampings on the USA version.
On most of the early Canadian copies the matrix numbers for Side B are actually spaced too far away from the run-out area and are actually stamped into the label. This was actually an error with the stamper that should have been caught but it is probable that Compo was under real time pressure in July of 1965 to get the singles pressed and shipped. You will notice that the fonts used for the record title, group name, publisher etc. are quite different from the usual RCA fonts. In fact, RCA in Canada never pressed this single.