[78-L] Capitol Compact 33s

[Steven C. Barr]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Van Landingham" <danvanlandingham at yahoo.com>
>I had an album on Capitol that dated from 1972 which was part of their 
>"Capitol Jazz Classics" series and
> some of the dates,according to them,dated from 1948 such as my old copy of 
> "That's Right" with "I Got it
> Bad" on the reverse with a great Mary Ann McCall vocal and a nice alto 
> solo by Herman himself.My copy
> of the latter is on a 78.It was the purple label with the silver band 
> around it.As I recall,the silver band was
> gone by then:I had a Capitol 78 of Kenton's "September Song" back in the 
> late '60s and it dated from 1951 according to the discographic information 
> that was in the late Art Pepper's semi-autobiography
> "Straight Life" from 1982.Pepper left Kenton around 1952 according to 
> him.The silver banded Capitols
> had black labels from '42 until '47.I left a number of them back in Lometa 
> which included my copy of
> "Travelin' Light" by Billie Holiday with Paul Whiteman conducting an 
> orchestra.Al Hendrickson once told
> me that he was offered stock in Capitol in '42 and turned it down.He also 
> claimed that Capitol used to do
> their recording at C.P. McGregor's recording studio when the label started 
> out.I still have a number of those early Capitols here but I need to get 
> the rest out here.I also had many of Freddie Slack's first reco-
> them plus a number of Capitols by trumpeter Billy Butterfield's failed big 
> band from 1946.Speaking of
> Kenton,I also had what may have been an original issue of "Eager 
> Beaver".As I recall,the word "Capitol"
> was in large cursive script and the outline of the nation's capitol was 
> also quite large.The later black label
> Capitols had smaller print and I had a few Slack reissues from then.
>
A lot of the early Capitols were recorded in what had once been Columbia's 
"west coast" plant (IIRC
MacGregor also used that?!). They are identifiable by the "font" used for 
the matrix numbers in the
runouts...it is the same as other Columbias, but very slightly larger...!

Steven C. Barr