Apart from being slightly edited, the most complete release of these sessions can be found on Follow That Dream's book and 4xCD set The Making Of Blue Hawaii, where everything RCA have, has been restored, remixed and remastered from the original 3-track tapes.
When the master takes were cut from the stereo session tapes, so were some of the take slates and count-in's, which is why some of the remixed masters appear without the take slates and count-in on The Making Of Blue Hawaii. They all remained intact on the mono session tapes.
A remixed version of 'Can't Help Falling In
Love' can be found on
Elvis 30 #1 Hits (E1).
An extended Take 24 of 'Can't Help Falling In
Love' can be found on the cassette version
of the box-set Elvis Aron Presley.
Takes 13 to 28 of 'Can't Help Falling In
Love' on the bootleg Alternate Gold Award Hits Volume 3 have the left and right channels swapped.
On FTD's extended soundtrack of Blue Hawaii all outtakes and masters have had the left and
right channels corrected as opposed to other releases
of this material, where they were reversed (i.e. Japanese 24 Bit, BMG '97 Collectors Edition, Today, Tomorrow And Forever and Close Up).
The second pressing of Alternate Gold Award
Hits Volume 3 includes an unlisted Take
1 of 'Beach Boy Blues' in stereo after 'Can't
Help Falling in Love'.
The re-recording of 'Can't Help Falling In
Love' can found on the 2015 album If I Can Dream, which contained Elvis' original vocals but with new backings by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and which actually went to number one in the UK album charts.
Take 3 of 'Rock-A-Hula Baby' on the 1997
collectors edition of Blue Hawaii also includes
the count-in for Take 1 that is not listed.
Elvis can be heard singing a few lines of 'I
Went To Your Wedding' before Take 1 of 'Rock-A-Hula
Baby'.
Bootleg sources for this session are the 4 TCB LP's Blue
Hawaii / The Complete Session (TCB 21-23-3-61)
and the Laurel 3-LP Blue Hawaii Box (BPM 501-A).
The latter is not as complete and seems to be
slightly noise reduced and compressed. The TCB
LP's have more noise and some pitch problems (>4%
too fast), but it is the most complete collection
and even has some takes in stereo. Not listed as source is the Venus set Mele Mai Ka Lani Mai! as it is only put together from different other sources, although for the first twelve takes of 'Can't Help Falling In Love' in stereo Mele Mai Ka Lani Mai! does appear to be the best source available.
Although not listed as a source, the Memphis
Recording Service release Blue Hawaii - The Expanded
Alternate Album contains the usual masters in
stereo but with the count-in (mostly in mono)
edited in before the masters.
The song 'I'm Yours' was submitted for the wedding-scene (scene 251) in the movie but rejected at the pre-selection stage. It was later recorded for RCA on June 26 1961.
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.
Thanks to Ernst Jørgensen and Erik Rasmussen for providing
information regarding the missing production numbers.
