Sunday, July 27, 2014

July 27 - That's The Way The Outtakes Are

Warner Brothers Senior Vice-President of Catalog Marketing George Feltenstein has provided more details on the 12 outtakes included as special features on the "Elvis: That's The Way It Is : Two Disc Special Edition" Blu-ray due out on August 12. As suspected, the content mirrors that of the 2007 2-DVD set, except with a new twist. On DVD, the outtakes were presented in abysmal quality, but on Blu-ray, they will be pristine. 

"The Blu-ray has high-definition, incredible new presentation, [and an] all-new master, but we also have, with really impressive quality, additional songs that were not included in the Special Edition. They were on a prior DVD but with, really, not very impressive quality because that’s the best that we had at the time, and it really was disappointing to fans.

So, we were unable to locate the actual master tapes that had the outtakes that we intended to use in 2007, and, finally, now, that tape was located, and that is now on the Blu-ray. So people will be able to see the – I think there are about ten – additional performances, and they’re going to look and sound much better than they did on the 2007 DVD – which was really a heartbreaker for us because we always want to give the consumers the best thing we can, and now we can do that, and it’s very, very exciting. We are always looking for new ways to make Elvis fans happy".

The outtakes are:
01) 'You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me' (Rehearsal-July 14)
02) Eating Sequence (July 14)
03) 'Cattle Call', 'Baby Let’s Play House,' and 'Don’t' (Rehearsal-July 29)
04) 'Farther Along' (Rehearsal-August 4)
05) 'Oh Happy Day' (Rehearsal-August 7)
06) 'I Just Can’t Help Believin’' (Live-August 11 Dinner Show)
07) 'Walk A Mile In My Shoes' (Live-August 11 Midnight Show)
08) 'I’ve Lost You' (Live-August 12 Dinner Show)
09) 'Sweet Caroline' (Live-August 12 Midnight Show)
10) 'Little Sister' / 'Get Back'* (Live-August 12 Midnight Show)
11) 'Stranger In The Crowd' (Live-August 13 Dinner Show)
12) After Show Party (August 10 Opening Show)

*The 'Get Back' portions of this live medley were edited out of the 2007 DVD release. It is unclear as of yet whether they have been restored for the 2014 Blu-ray release. 

** But the first reviews revealed that the out-takes were still in the " original bad" quality and "Get Back" is missing (update August 20, 2014).

Elvis' Smashed Guitar Strikes Sour Note
 
An acoustic guitar Elvis Presley smashed during his final tour has sparked a custody fight between the South Dakota museum that currently displays it and a collector who insists the instrument never should have ended up there. Now a federal judge must sort out whether blues guitarist Robert A. Johnson even technically owned the broken instrument last year when he donated it to the National Music Museum along with one of Bob Dylan's harmonicas, a guitar made for Johnny Cash and two other items.


The museum - based in Vermillion, N.D. - insists in a lawsuit that it is the legal owner of the Martin D-35, which the rock-and roll king played during his 1977 tour and gave to a fan in St. Petersburg, Fla. after he broke it when a strap and string snapped.

But Larry Moss - who has a long history of litigation against Johnson - contacted the museum, arguing that Johnson agreed to sell the guitar to him before it was donated. Johnson and Moss, both of whom live in Memphis, Tenn., are each listed as defendants in the museum's complaint.

The museum in court filings argues that even if Moss was the owner of the Elvis guitar before Johnson donated it to the facility, his ownership ended when the museum acquired it. The complaint states that if Moss believes he was wronged, he should sue Johnson for damages.

"There are significant issues with his claim including the fact that this guitar was apparently on display for an extended period of time in his hometown and he made no effort to go get the guitar," the museum's attorney, Mitchell Peterson, said Thursday. Johnson, who played with singer Isaac Hayes and The Who's John Entwistle's side project, Ox, in the 1970s, donated the Elvis guitar and other items to the museum in April 2013 and in exchange received $250,000 for his 1967 Gibson Explorer Korina wood guitar. That instrument was formerly owned by Entwistle.

Moss's attorney, Randall Fishman, moved this week to transfer the case from state court to federal court. Moss did not return phone messages left at his businesses and Fishman declined to comment about the specifics of the suit. Records for a libel and defamation lawsuit filed by Johnson against Moss in state court in Tennessee in January 2014 shed light on the collector's dispute over the guitar.

The lawsuit's exhibits include a payment agreement signed by both collectors in 2008, in which Moss agreed to pay Johnson $120,000 for various guitars including the one now on display at the museum. Those records also include an email Moss sent to the museum in December 2013 claiming ownership.

"Johnson did not have the right to transfer ownership of that guitar in any way, via sale, via donation, via trade, via loan, or any other method," the email stated. "(I) will not yet claim that the guitar is stolen, but I paid him for that guitar 5 years ago, and have been trying to get possession ever since." In an affidavit filed in the federal lawsuit in South Dakota, Moss claims that the value of the Elvis guitar is "well in excess of $75,000."

(Source: Warner Bros. / ElvisMatters)