The Best Of Blue Hawaii Sessions

The tape for the soundtrack of "Blue Hawaii" started rolling on March 21 - 23, 1961 at the Radio Recorders. Hollywood within a few days filming started on one of the most significant Elvis movies. According to the producers of this CD the purpose is to show the best of the alternate versions and the studio banter between takes recorded during these March ´61 sessions. They have chosen alternate takes from each of 14 songs.
This CD has as advantage that often more takes of the various tracks are presented, so you can hear a song come to life or you hear the team experiment on various versions. The sound quality is good although we hear some hits which seem to come from an LP (the source ?). As we said for the "From The Vaults vol. 3" CD goes here too, but this release has more studio-talk between the tracks giving you the idea of being there and listening inn. Especially the enthusiasm on "Rock-A-Hula" is fun. Too bad the sound quality on this track is lesser. Also fun is the home recording of "Moonlight Swim", too bad the tape suddenly ends. It sounded like somebody was having fun.
The cover art is done in the same style as the original "Blue Hawaii" and contains facts about the movie and some memorabilia on the inside.
Overall we our conclusion is that these CD's are interesting to those who collect out-takes and missed the import releases from the past, or those who stick to "official" CD's only and do want to have these out-takes. These CD's are legal until the end of 2000 when Czech legislation changes.
For the real collector, there's probably not too much he hasn't already got on these CD's. Although the thematic presentation of the out-takes is a great idea which makes the tracks come together as a whole.