Beatles For Sale: Smiths Falls’ little known connection with The Fab Four

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When the RCA Victor record plant in Smiths Falls pressed Love Me Do by the Beatles in February 1963, the plant became part of music history.

The manufacturing town west of Ottawa was ahead of the pop culture phenomenon that would become known as Beatlemania. It was almost a full year before the Beatle wave would sweep North America.

The Smiths Falls-pressed Beatles’ single Love Me Do was not an instant success, selling only 170 copies shipped under the Capitol label, noted Piers Hemmingsen in his 2015 book, The Beatles in Canada, The Origins of Beatlemania. The next two Beatles singles, Please Please Me and From Me To You, didn’t do much better.

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The Fab Four were already a hit in the United Kingdom in 1963. Beatlemania hopped across the Atlantic after the four mop tops appeared the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964.

But collectors in Eastern Ontario already knew about the Beatles, often because their records were manufactured just down the road.

“It was like a pre-Beatlemania cult following,” said Megan McIlvenna, communications officer at the Smith Falls Heritage House Museum.

“Everyone either worked (at RCA) or knew someone who worked at RCA.”

Beatlemania and the role the Smiths Falls plant played in it are the subject of a summer-long exhibit at the museum that kicked off Saturday with music from the Beatles cover band Beatlejuice and a visit from a taco truck.

RCA Victor introduced vinyl long-playing records around 1930. (The “Victor” in RCA Victor stood for victrola, the first consumer phonograph, first demonstrated in 1925) 

RCA purchased two buildings and a vacant lot on Cornelia Street in Smiths Falls in the early 1950s. In the days when music was sold through radio play and fans who bought records, Smiths Falls was considered a strategic spot to press records, halfway between markets in Toronto and Montreal.

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The plant, which opened in 1954, employed as many as 350 people at a time, sometimes using three shifts a day, said McIlvenna. About three-quarters of the employees were women. 

The plant also pressed specialty records with images of the artist to be distributed as promotional items. Over time, the plant churned out records by Elvis Presley, The Monkees, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Led Zeppelin.

The first Beatles 45s that were pressed in Smiths Falls included Love Me Do with P.S. I Love You on the B side; Please Please Me with Ask Me Why; From Me to You with Thank You Girl and She Loves You with  I’ll Get You.

Staff at the museum, along with local volunteers, worked together, calling out to collectors for memorabilia of the plant and CJET, the local radio station. A statue of the RCA mascot “Nipper,” the dog listening intently with a cocked head, holds a prominent place in the exhibit.

Collectors also shared photos of the Beatles from their personal collections by Lynn Ball, a retired Citizen photographer who was a photographer with the Canadian Press when Beatlemania hit Canada.

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On Labour Day 1964, Ball was assigned to cover the Beatles concert at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

“They had two shows and in between, they had a press conference,” recalled Ball this week. “We didn’t know what it was going to be like.”

Fans who couldn’t get inside were crowded around outside Maple Leaf Gardens, he said. Inside, fans were screaming so loudly, it was impossible to hear the band. Another news photographer borrowed two bullets from a police office to plug his ears.

St. John’s Ambulance workers helped fans who had collapsed in hysterics out of the building.

“It wasn’t until years later that you realized you were at a historic event,” said Ball.

The RCA plant closed in 1979. The RCA plant building is still there, but it’s now home mostly to medical offices.

“Smiths Falls was a victim of its success,” said the exhibit’s project coordinator, William Manhire. “Where it was located became less important as transport became easier.”

It has been a long and winding road for vinyl, Manhire explains.

There’s been a resurgence in interest in the format, with audiophiles arguing that vinyl has a more nuanced sound. But there is also the pleasure of having a product you can hold, said Manhire.

“To hold something in your hands, that’s something to enjoy.”

The Beatlemania exhibition runs through Sept. 1 at the Smith Falls Heritage House Museum, 11 Old Slys Road. The museum is open Wednesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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