Eddie Heywood "Soft Summer Breeze"

My copy resembles the first one you posted, Pat: a maroon-label Mercury 70863X45 Capitol Scranton pressing; deadwax matrix "45-YMW-11954-3", with five tiny, indecipherable hand-etched figures across from it, and the International Association of Machinists "anvil" logo (characteristic of the Capitol Scranton plant at the time) machine stamped between them. The deadwax area is wider than the playing area, so those big. machine-stamped matrix numbers really stand out.

The printed time is (2:42); actual is (2:41.9).

Going from the "2F" matrix number suffix on your copy, I'm going to guess that yours is a black-label RCA pressing, with the matrix numbers machine-stamped in a straight line. Is there a single "I", "R" or "H" letter stamped opposite it? That would indicate which RCA plant pressed it.

Since the printed label matrix number should be "YW11954" on both Capitol and RCA pressings, might the two dots on your "YW ..954 2F" deadwax number be a case of the two "1" numerals being stamped too lightly to show anything except their bases, resembling dots?

As for your shorter (2:30) playing time, here's what I suspect happened: Mercury contracted out both the mastering and the pressing to Capitol and RCA, supplying each with a tape. It's likely that the mastering engineer at the RCA plant erroneously assumed that the long, repetitive ending was intended to be faded out earlier during the mastering stage, and did just that. Any (2:30)-length 45s likely came only from RCA plants.

I have a Mercury Celebrity Series reissue 45, bought in 1972 (mastered and pressed by Mercury) and a Mercury Wing budget line reissue of the Eddie Heywood LP, and the timings on those were (2:41.4) and (2:41.6) respectively.