I think it’s probably because it’s a compilation album that ‘Bing Sings The Hits’ has never had the ‘Deluxe Edition’ treatment. I take your point about ‘New Tricks’ and ‘Some Fine Old Chestnuts’, though...

The Wikipedia entry is for the US release. Decca DL5520. Confusingly, the UK equivalent 10” LP release - Brunswick LA8674 - has a different track listing. Three of the JST tracks originally destined for the GE show are there, together with a duet with Gary, ‘Down By The Riverside’ -also from GE but not on DL5520 - and the two Perry Botkin items. The remaining two tracks are the commercial releases of  ‘Hello Young Lovers’ and ‘I’ve Never Been in Love Before’.

Anyone got any idea why the content is slightly different..?

It was certainly a compilation album, in character little different from several dozen early LPs, apart from the fact that it was picking up on some recordings that were fairly recent. They were never conceived as a single entity.

New Tricks and Some Fine Old Chestnuts were conceived as albums, though the tracks used were taken from radio recordings. 

As to differences between the US and UK issues, the British Decca label Brunswick sometimes showed a degree of independence, varying things to suit the British market as they saw it.
This independent streak reached a peak some years later when they issued a whole new range of LPs under the sub - label Ace of Hearts.   

It's clear that Decca considered it to be a compilation, and the fact that the UK release differed seems like further evidence of that. 

In my mind, I guess the question is, could it, should it have, been considered a studio album?

"Bing Sings The Hits" seems to be almost the same concept as "Songs I Wish I Had Sung The First Time Around", or Bing Crosby Sings The Great Country Hits" - both studio albums.

And while I get that these songs may have had a life as a single before being included on an album, Perry Como had a huge hit with the song "It's Impossible", which resulted in RCA rushing Como to record an album's worth of material to accompany the already released single. I think the same thing happened with "And I Love You So". 

It seems the only thing that kept this from being classified as a "studio album" is someone didn't say "Let's have Bing do an album of recent hit songs and call it  Bing Sings The Hits!"

 

LOL, I think your puzzlement is justified! I have "Through The Years" Vol. 5 & 6 which as those tracks and I agree a "Bing Sings The Hits" deluxe edition would wind up being a messy affair. 

I think I'm just puzzled to why Decca made the decison to put this together as a compilation and looking at it in hindsight. The reality when this came out people probably bought it as a "new album" and whether it was a "studio" or "compilation" didn't matter.

I tend to favor listening to albums all the way through vs. pulling apart singles so I guess for me it is the irration that some of this albums, compilation or otherwise have been ignored. Like this could be released with another compilation as a two-fer. 
 

I think the reason that "Bing Sings The Hits" had some different songs on the UK release is that three of the songs were from shows that hadn't opened in Britain yet in those years a commercial recording of songs from from a Broadway show could not be released in an overseas territory until the show opened in that country the three songs were "No Other Love" from "Me And Juliet", "I Love Paris" from Can-Can" and "Stranger In Paradise" from "Kismet".

Strangely enough that policy was changed when Louis Armstrong had a surprise hit with "Hello Dolly" the record came out in the UK a few months after it was a hit in America although it was another two years before the show opened in the UK in London in 1966.

Meant tp say the former co-star was Mary Martin.