Norwegian singles: All My Loving

Starting a series of Beatles records from Norway, I thought I’d focus on differences between editions. 

The Beatles’ and other EMI records were distributed in Norway by a company called Carl M. Iversen A/S,until early 1969, when a norwegian subsidiary of EMI was set up as “EMI Norsk A/S”.

All norwegian Beatles singles were released in picture sleeves. Norway followed the UK Parlophone R-series, but in addition ND (norwegian catalogue number prefix), SD (swedish cat. no.),  DK (danish cat. no.) were released, usually on the Odeon label.   As you may gather, the scandinavian countries cooperated across the borders.  Even two releases used the UK export series prefix DP.  Still, all of these were manufactured in Norway. 

Some singles were continuously reprinted due to popular demand, and in 1966, several of the old singles were given a new release, often with small differences on the cover.

Very often, norwegian singles were issued with Black/white/+ one extra colour on the sleeve. The extra colour varies between singles, but also within the different editions of one single.

There are also several minor colour variations within each colour, due to uneven printing technique. 

The most common rear side of the sleeve is an advert for other EMI singles, under the heading “10 Topper”.   

Like this one, SD 5958 “All My Loving”/”I Saw Her Standing There”. There are at least four collectible variations of this 45. This was the seventh Beatles single to be released in Norway, some time in March 1964. 

The variation depicted above is the rare 1966-reprint of the single. Note that while earlier editions seem to have the catalogue number and the “I Saw Her Standing There” title written by typewriter, this has been replaced in 1966 by another typeface. Also, while all other variations of this single has the record “Under Mexicos sol” advertised as the first “10 Topper” on the back, this one has “Yesterday”.

Another phenomenon that seems to appear is the “carbon copy”-cover. These covers appear to look as if the manufacturers have just photocopied an original and used this as a basis to print new sleeves. Below is an example of this single in such a sleeve.