The session tapes are lost.
Otis Blackwell's song Roustabout (which
is referred to as "No.2") was the only
song of his that the songwriter knew was recorded.
It was eventually released on 'Second To None'
as I'm A Roustabout, where it was taken
from Otis Blackwell's own acetate.
The movie version of It's Carnival Time
is an unknown vocal overdub take. That same version
appears twice in movie, one with instrumental
overdubs of the intro and one edited version.
The book "Inside Roustabout" shows
a music sheet for the song Carny Town,
and this has an extra verse that may have been
recorded, and then edited out of the final master.
The original version of Carny Town that
appeared on the 'Roustabout' LP is faded. The
complete version can be found on 'Double Features'
and has Elvis singing "We gotta end"
at the end of the song.
An edited version of There's A Brand New Day
On The Horizon taken from an acetate source,
can be found on the bootleg "Memphis Tennessee".
According to an interview with Sonny West:- "Elvis
and John Rich (director) had their problems. Elvis
wanted to do a song with the Jordanaires callled
"Wheels On My Heels", but Rich argued
that since Elvis was suppose to sing the tune
when he was alone on his bike, the backup singers
would be out of place. Elvis won that one, but
Rich got him back by making him do take after
take when Elvis had a temperature. The master
of Wheels On My Heels does not contain
any backing vocals by The Jordanaires, but it
could be possible that earlier takes did include
them.
The movie version of Little Egypt is a
composite of the record version and the remake,
but also has extra overdubs that were presumably
recorded on the movie set, and is spliced as follows:-
0:00-1:17 of record version Take 15
1:21-1:38 of remake Take 21
1:33-2:19 of record version Take 15
The song Shout It Out was originally submitted
to be used for the movie, but was eventually dropped
in favour of Hard Knocks being used instead.
Other songs with demo's submitted, but not used
were I Never Had It So Good and Carnival
Of Dreams.
Shout It Out was eventually recorded for
the movie 'Frankie & Johnny' in 1965.
The last production number used at these sessions
is "LO", which was for Wheels On
My Heels, and the next number used is "NO",
which is for the rhythm Track for Roustabout
on April 29. It is unknown what the missing "MO"
production number could have been for but it is
unlikely that it's for the Remake of Little
Egypt as the master is Take 21, so it's assumed
that the take numbering of "AO" continued
from Take 16 to 21 for the Remake.
An EPE auction in July / August 2010 has thrown
up some questions regarding these sessions, as
one of the lots has some of Elvis' personally
owned acetates of demo's presented to be used
in this movie. Looking at the acetates, an interesting
thought has emerged that the missing "Track
MO" from these sessions could have been for
Shout It Out. When you look at the acetate
it has "USED" written on it, where the
others - Carnival Of Dreams and I Never
Had It So Good clearly has "Demo - Not
Elvis" written on them. This indicates that
Shout It Out could have actually been recorded,
but not used in the movie 'Roustabout', but as
the tapes are still missing from these March sessions
apart from the masters and takes used for masters,
there is no way of knowing exactly what was recorded.
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.