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Sunday, September 21, 2008

Kid Galahad revisited

Thanks to my brother I've been listening a lot to the songs recorded for the movie Kid Galahad on October 26-27, 1961. A couple of weeks ago I helped him paint the walls of his new apartment, and last Friday I found a thank you letter together with the two FTD releases Kid Galahad and Follow That Dream in the mail.

Really, that was too much, but it made my day as those are some of the last FTD releases I haven't gotten around to buying yet. I immediately phoned my brother to thank him, and among the things we talked about was that the FTD Kid Galahad CD is kind of an official Radio Recorders Revisited, a bootleg I bought some 20 years ago that contains 21 alternate takes from the Kid Galahad session.

I've always liked the songs from this session and their happy-go-lucky sound. Admittedly, "Riding The Rainbow" and "I Got Lucky" quality-wise are miles away from "Good Luck Charm" and "Little Sister," but Elvis succeeds into turning them to little gems of listening pleasure.

And of course, there is "King Of The Whole Wide World," great stuff, indeed. It's interesting listening to Elvis and the band developing the song, finally settling on a master (take 31), but having another go at it the very next day, ending up with a perfect take. Why the song was originally released without Boots Randolph's second sax solo remains a mystery.

After listening to Kid Galahad I gave my old bootleg Radio Recorders Revisited a spin on the turntable. I also compared the information on the cover with that of the Kid Galahad release and was surprised to discover the LP contained many alternate takes not included on the FTD CD.

In fact, of the 21 takes presented on the LP, 10 are not found on the FTD release: a complete versions of "King Of The Whole Wide World" (take 29) and another of "Home Is Where The Heart Is" (take 20), amongst others. I also have to mention "Riding The Rainbow" (take 2) where Elvis starts laughing after messing up the lyrics, followed by a fun, fast version of the song (take 8).

It was an interesting discovery. I've always thought Ernst Jorgensen included all the available material from the recording sessions on the classic label, at least when it came to complete takes. But with Kid Galahad, this is clearly not the case.

1 comment:

Mike Edwards said...

Good and interesting post. I have been wanting to get this FTD for a long time but have never got around to it. It has some of my favorite movie music on it.