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The Elvis Acetates Volume 1: Fun in Acapulco

September 01, 2002 | Music
After two bad releases the Czech Elvis Presley Fan club is back with two new CD’s. These CD’s are the start of a new series titled ‘The Elvis Acetates’. The CD is presented as ‘study material, not for commercial sale and for fan club members only’. A limited number of CD’s will be made.


Design

The design of this CD is okay. A lot of pictures from the movie from which the CD contains the music. A lot of screenshots from the movie and inside a collage of the acetate labels. The front cover is a bit blurry and they picked a picture of Elvis looking sad. Why not the Elvis toreador image which is used inside for a real different Elvis cover, but still matching the movie. The CD itself is presented as acetate. Inside the booklet we find the story behind the acetates and this series.

Content

Acetates are the finished studio products which are sent to the record company for approval and production. The CD contains fourteen acetates of songs Elvis recorded for the movie ‘Fun In Acapulco’ in two versions, the remastered acetate and the original acetate recordings. The remastering could not remove the scratches, clicks and hiss from the acetates of course, but with a theme like this series has that’s part of the charm. The remastered sound is good, Elvis sounds more clearly and up front than the acetate versions.

First we get the fourteen remastered acetates and after that, for vinyl lovers, the ‘originals’. Looking at the discussions on the remastering on the Czech releases in the past and the limited amount of material available for this release a good choice.

The CD has the same feel as any out-take release with a little studio chat before the songs stating the take. We get twelve songs with Elvis singing, from ‘Guadalajara’ only the backing group and choir and the instrumental version of ‘ Marguerita’. Three songs are presented in two versions, ‘Mexico’, ‘I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here’ and ‘The Bullfighter Was A Lady’, the dubbed film version of ‘Mexico’, the boy singing with Elvis is really off-key.

Some takes are released for the first time according to a check on Master And Session like the complete take 10 of ‘I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here’, complete take 9 of ‘The Bullfighter Was A Lady’ and the second take of ‘El Toro’. Most takes presented here were used to create the masters in some way. Just like the producers we’ll leave the studying of the various takes on this release and the masters you have at home to you.

Conclusion

This CD is a nice initiative which added a few takes to our collection. We hope the Czech fan club keeps up this line and next editions in this series will contain new material from more interesting movie soundtracks.