The definitive release of these sessions can be found on Follow That Dream's limited edition The Something For Everybody Sessions (featuring the Wild In The Country sessions) 4xCD set, where everything has been remixed and remastered from scratch, all outtakes are presented in the best possible sound, and the Wild In The Country masters are presented in their original December 1960 stereo mixes.
There may have been another version of 'Wild
In The Country' planned to be recorded. The
released version was marked "Record Version"
on the log and Take 1 is the only take to include
the full group. Interestingly, the booklet with
FTD's Wild In The Country extended soundtrack shows that
six different demo versions of the song 'Wild
In The Country' were sent to Jerry Wald for
consideration to be used in the movie. The version
by "Weiss, Peretti, Creatore" was finally
chosen to be used in the movie, although it was
originally dropped in favour of 'Lonely Man'
(solo) being used instead, as the original title
of the movie was called Lonely Man. 'Lonely Man' was eventually not used at all in the movie.
Take 1 of 'Lonely Man' (record version)
on Close Up has the
left and right channels swapped.
Take 1 of 'In My Way' on Silver
Screen Stereo and Take 2 of 'In My Way'
on Close Up have the left and right channels
swapped.
Takes 1 and 14 of 'Wild In The Country'
on Close Up and the master of 'Wild In The
Country' on Command Performances and the Japanese Complete Single Collection have the left and
right channels swapped.
According to Sessions III, the original stereo
version of 'Wild In The Country' with overdubbed
maracas was overdubbed by Boots Randolph during
the post production of the movie sometime in November,
and can be found on the European vinyl pressing
of Elvis For Everyone.
Another interesting theory is that 'Wild In The Country' with maracas was overdubbed at the same overdub session as 'Santa Lucia' on October 11 1965, and that one of the overdubbed or extended versions of 'Santa Lucia' may have been intended for the UK issue of Elvis For Everyone too.
As the master tape does not exist in the vaults at RCA in the US, a more interesting theory, and a lot lore more likely, is that 'Wild In The Country' with maracas was overdubbed in London by Decca, in early 1965, unbeknownst to RCA in the US, and was used on the UK pressing of the album Elvis For Everyone by RCA UK. The UK version of the album replaced 'Summer Kisses, Winter Tears' with 'Wild In The Country', as 'Summer Kisses, Winter Tears' had only just been released in the UK on the album Flaming Star & Summer Kisses. The UK release of Elvis For Everyone also had a completely different cover to the US equivalent. The version of 'Wild In The Country' here is basically the mono master (even though RCA in the US had the true stereo master), but it has maracas overdubbed in the right channel, thus making it stereo! It appears that Decca had form in doing this sort of thing at that time, as it had also done this with mono recordings by Van Morrison's group Them, as well as others, where they added maracas in one channel, making them stereo recordings.
This overdub
can also be found on the old bootleg LP's From
The Beach To The Bayou and Special
Delivery, among others, where a fake "Take
40" announcement by Elvis from another session,
was sneakily inserted before it.
It is also possible that the overdub for 'Wild
In The Country' was done at the same time as
the overdub for 'Tomorrow Night', on March
18 1965.
Take 1 of 'Forget Me Never' on Close
Up has the left and right channels swapped.
There is a left channel guitar on 'Forget Me
Never', that can be heard clearly on the stereo
master on FTD's Wild In The Country extended soundtrack, Elvis For Everyone, Sony's Complete Elvis Presley
Masters collection and the Franklin Mint package,
and can also be heard on the releases that were
mastered from the mono session tape (Wild
In The Country Sessions bootlegs etc...).
On Double Features however, the guitar has been
left out of the mix.
Elvis and Hope Lange can be heard singing the
duet 'Marching Across The Green Grass' (aka 'Husky
Dusky Day') in the movie,
and this short duet (lifted from the soundtrack)
can be found on FTD's Wild In The Country extended soundtrack.
Interestingly, on the 2002 DVD release of Wild
In The Country, the song 'Marching Across The Green Grass' is in stereo.
On the spine of the cover of the first pressing
of FTD's Wild In The Country extended s oundtrack, "PRESLEY"
is incorrectly written as 'PRESELY'.
The TCB bootleg CD The Complete Wild In The Country
Sessions and the public domain release The
Wild In The Country & Flaming Star Sessions are actually a pretty good sources, although noisy,
for this material if the pitch is corrected and
only one channel kept, although they both run
a little more than 5% too fast, which is a lot.
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 David Jull for information on the possible Decca recording of 'Wild In The Country'.
