Review The Follow That Dream Sessions (Updated)

Hot on the heels of their ‘King Creole’ LP, the Miracle Surface import label has released another alternate take soundtrack set, ‘Follow That Dream - The Complete Sessions’. More importantly, the label claims this CD contains the Master Takes in real stereo. Until now, the stereo versions of these Masters were thought to be lost, Ernst Jorgensen only recovered the empty tape-box.

 
Are we in for a unique listening experience, or is it too good to be true (stereo)?


Design

The design of this CD is appealing, thanks to the classic look and typography on the front and the film-reel design on the back. 

The 8-page booklet is filled with illustrations and liner notes detailing the movie and the songs from the soundtrack. However, next to the very small font size, one thing is missing: the details of the DAT tape the label found and used for this album. The disc itself is a golden CD, a nice extra from the label. 

 
Content
 
The main reason to buy this CD is the real stereo version of the Master recordings, which are supposed to make their debut here! We already had the Outtakes in Stereo, but unfortunately, I don’t believe these are the missing Stereo Masters. Sorry for the spoiler.
 
Listening to the CD - which presents the songs as a session, complete with chatter and count-ins, some new to me - it becomes obvious that the material comes from various sources. There’s simply too much variation in audio quality between the Alternate Takes and the so-called ‘Stereo Masters’, as well as between the different songs recorded during the same session. The audio presentation isn’t consistent. Here are some examples to illustrate this:
 
On ‘Follow That Dream’, the piano moves from the left in the Outtakes to the center in the Master. In the Extended Version of the song, which is included as a bonus, the backing vocals shift to the left.
 
The sound of the Alternate and Master Takes differs too much for them to come from the same tape. It’s possible that the DAT tape the producers found contained only the Outtakes, and they added the Masters to create a complete session. However, the information provided doesn’t clarify this. It appears that the count-ins before the Masters, and a short False Start before 'Sound Advice' are in new to this set. It doen have the complete session running at the correct speed for the first time, where it was running slightly too fast on 'Keep Following That Dream' and the Memory (Czech fan club) CD. On those CDs, the tapes used had the count-ins for the masters, along with the masters, all cut from the session tape, which is what existed in RCA's vaults at that time, but here even those count-ins are here. So the producers did find something new. 

For the Masters the producers stated online: "I can tell you that the Masters are not DES created. The sessions is taken from a DAT tape. A copy of the tape. With some bits not on the bootlegs and die is right speed. The Masters we have taken from a real tape. But in not a good shape. We have tried to  clean it. It was  unbalanced in quality." 

Note: Picture from producers. William is the first name of Owen Bradley. Together with Chet Atkins and Harold Bradley he founded the RCA Studio A in Nashville. Owen Bradley was associated with what was known in Nashville as the A-Team. Members included Harold Bradley, Grady Martin, Bob Moore, Hank Garland, and Buddy Harman. Bob Moore, Hank Garland, and Buddy Harman were all at the "Follow That Dream Session.

That said, the Outtakes do sound like they came from a DAT tape; the sound and feel are similar to several import releases from years ago that featured Outtakes from various studio and soundtrack sessions, like ‘The Pot Luck Sessions Volume 1’ (Bella Records, 2004, the same label that did a ‘Follow That Dream Sessions’ CD in 1993, but which can’t match the audio on this new CD) or ‘Avventura In Oriente’ (Victorola, 2018). Therefore, it’s possible the producers of this CD found a DAT tape containing transfers of the Outtakes - without the Master Takes - that somehow escaped the RCA, BMG, Sony vaults back in the day.
 

On ‘I'm Not the Marrying Kind’, you can hear digital artifacts or an echo on Elvis' voice, something that can happen when using Digitally Extracted Stereo technology (DES). Just like in the title song, the piano moves from the left to the center in the Master after the Alternate takes.
 
From the ‘Angel’ session, Take 3 seems to be missing, but that’s not an error here; it simply wasn’t announced during the original recording session. However, some songs do contain errors, such as brief skips. For example, listen to take 3 of ‘Follow That Dream’ or take 6 of ‘What a Wonderful Life’.

The Master of 'What A Wonderful Life' (Take 7) used on this release does not match the Master as released originally in the Mono version we know. On that Master, at two minutes in, Elvis sings "I’ve got neighbours, I’ve got friends, (just about) anywhere the rainbow ends". If you listen to the lyrics you'll hear that "just about" is missing on this release. And before the fade Elvis sings "it’s a crazy life" that is also missing here. On the fade out, here he sings "oh what a life" on the original Mono Master he doesn’t.

Keith Flynn concluded: Apart from the False Start before the Master of 'Sound Advice', which they stated in the blurb for the CD, and the take announcements, we also now get a new False Start before the Master of 'I'm Not The Marrying Kind' and we get the complete Take 7 of 'What A Wonderful Life', and it now confirms that the Master we know was a splice of Takes 7 and 6.

This alone would have been a great selling point for the CD, if the producers had even realized what they had!

The word "six" before the Master of 'Follow That Dream' has been spliced in from another take. Sounds like the word "six" from Take 6 of "What A Wonderful Life".

 
It’s possible that the producers used the recently created Stereo Masters by the Memphis Recording Service (‘Follow That Dream’ CD / vinyl EP, 2024) for this release, as we hear a knocking sound in the intro that only appears there. The acoustic guitar in ‘Sound Advice’ also moves around, although it should remain centered as it was during the original session. For comparison, listen to the outtakes of ‘Follow That Dream’ on the FTD collector’s label.
 
Conclusion
 
So yes, the publicity was too good to be “Real Stereo”, unfortunately. However, the compilation itself is a complete package, and both looks and sounds good. And without realizing it, the producers gave us the complete Take 7 of 'What A Wonderful Life'! 

The lingering question remains: “Who recorded what on the DAT tape that the label found, and what did the label do (or not do) with these recordings?”

 
Thanks to Rogier van Luyken for the input and investigative work for this review. 

The CD can be ordered by mail from the >>> Miracle Surface.