I have a 12” LP of “The Elvis Tapes” on Redwood Records label RWR1001. For those who are not familiar with this release, The Elvis Tapes are a recording of a pre-concert press interview of Elvis Presley by Red Robinson, who was master of ceremonies at the concert at the Empire Stadium in Vancouver in 1957. In the sleeve notes, Robinson asserts that this recording is the complete, unedited version of the interview. So far, so good.


Now the point of this post. My copy of this pressing was the sample copy sent to the company that I worked for, Gallo Africa Ltd, by Redwood Music Inc, for evaluation and consideration for local release in 1976. The label is marked “Sample Copy Only - Not for Sale or Broadcast!”


On this pressing, the last section of side one has been redacted. This has been accomplished by pressing a series of diagonal grooves into the disc to make it impossible to play that section of the pressing. In fact, if one did allow a pickup to track into this area, it would probably severely damage the stylus. See the images below. The grooves have been pressed into the disc by a purpose made die of some sort, not cut by hand. This is a lot of trouble to go to when the alternative would obviously be to destroy the pressings in question and do a re-release without the offending section.


There are many versions of this release, spanning many countries. None are particularly valuable. However, I have not been able to find any reference anywhere to pressings with a redacted section. The version released by the Gallo subsidiary, Trutone Music, under the Trutone label, obviously did not contain this redacted section. Does anyone here have any knowledge of this? What is on the section that could not be allowed to be heard? Was any other release in any other country redacted? I would love to know the answers.