RCA received tapes from Sam Phillips in December 1955, and where no tapes existed they used dubs from Sun singles for their masters (see below).

With the release by Follow That Dream of the ultimate Sun collection - A Boy From Tupelo, we get the complete 'Harbor Lights' session for the first time.

According to Steve Sholes' hand written notes the master should be Take 2, but since the tapes were rediscovered they have been re-analysed and each false start has now been associated a separate take, which now makes the master Take 3.

'Harbor Lights' as released on Elvis - A Legendary Performer Volume 2 has added echo and it was issued a new matrix number (OPA1 4193) when released on A Golden Celebration.

The RCA master of 'I Love You Because' was spliced from takes 3 and 5 on January 20 1956 by producer Steve Sholes. Takes 3 and 5 are listed as tracks 2 and 4 of Sun box #13. Take 1 is also on the same tape, but was probably ignored since it is a short false start.

Some versions of The Sun Sessions CD contains take 3 (whistling intro) instead of Take 2 (guitar intro) of 'I Love You Because' as track 18.

In May 1985 a mono pop album was released entitled ROCK & ROLL- The Early Years (AFM1-5463).
The twelve selections all received "new" master matrix numbers from PPA1-2710 to PPA1-2721. The Elvis selection 'That's All Right' on Side B, Track 1 was assigned PPA1-2716 (changed from F2WB-8040).

Thanks to Kurt Rokitta with regards to the change of matrix number for 'That's All Right'.

In March of 2007, Sony decided to go through all of Elvis' masters. They retransferred everything and remastered all tracks including repairing as many clicks, pops, bad edits and dropouts as they could. They have used these newly mastered recordings on their new releases since 2007 including budget soundtracks, Legacy releases, the 30 disc Complete Elvis Presley Masters collection and the Franklin Mint package. These 2007 remasters were not used on FTD's A Boy From Tupelo, the masters were all remastered again from scratch on that set.

Elvis At Sun - Restoration (Courtesy of 'Master & Session')

Being an early take of an abandoned recording, from the first session on July 5, 1954, the opening track 'Harbor Lights' is the weakest performance of Elvis' Sun recordings. Unexpectedly it also stands out as being one of the few recordings where the actual SUN master tape has been recovered. The most audible difference is that the out-of-place 1976 Legendary Performer echo is gone. The new straight transfer actually reveals Sam Phillips' own, more subtle use of locally miked tape echo. In this case, a delayed signal from Scotty's guitar is mixed with the live signal coming from all microphones. This leaves the vocal almost dry, but with a touch of leakage into Scotty's microphone. The result is a very full sound overall and a very natural sound of the vocals.

The above is best illustrated by comparison to the second track, thought to be from the same session but recorded dry using just one tape machine.

Recording of country ballad 'I Love You Because' was abandoned after 5 "takes". RCA spliced "takes" 3 and 5 for their LP master in 1956, but the first complete attempt, "take" 2 is the only consistent full take without major errors and therefore appropriate to include on a genuine Sun collection like this. Here we get a very recent Sony transfer of the original Sun tape. The main characteristics seem to be in the 1-track head of the tape recorder picking up signal from the entire width of the tape. This also results in a high signal / noise ratio and may almost be interpreted as truncation of noise, since random noise is likely to vary along the width of the tape. Apart from that, neutral amplifiers and careful NAB tape curve calibration seems to characterize the Sony transfers. The technique is thus optimised for flat transfers of original album masters or anything else that was mastered for release in the first place. 'I Love You Because' is a dry, flat recording and as much as the Sony transfer of theoretically is as good as it gets, some might find it sound a little hard compared to the full sound of 'Harbor Lights' that actually was transferred by BMG. 

Sadly, the Sun master tape of 'That's All Right' is lost forever. It was used to produce the original single in July 1954 and then once more in November 1955 when RCA transferred it. Since 'I Love You Because' and 'That's All Right' were recorded on a rehearsal or session that had failed so far, there either was no time for Sam to setup or rewind the slapback tape before recording to produce the characteristic Sun echo. (Only the latter would support 'Harbor Lights' actually being the first recording)

The original R&B side of SUN 209 was dry, just as the outtake that survived on the same session reel as 'I Love You Because'. To prepare it for re-release RCA added compression and an entirely different type of echo when Sun Box #2 was played back for the last time in November 1955. Nevertheless, the RCA tape copy that still exists, is by far the best remaining source in terms of signal. The only other option would have been to transfer an inferior source, a 50-year-old SUN 45 or 78 RPM. Something that couldn't be justified on a major release aimed at the general market now that a tape source does exist. Thankfully, 'That's All Right' is the only alien on Elvis At Sun and as such it is considered a slight improvement over what has been released before.