"The Score" Vol.1

 

Here's an internet radio show I did recently of all soundtrack music. 

Fade In:

The pulsating rhythms and punchy brass of David Shire's title track of "The Taking of Pelham, One Two Three" sets the stage. One of the great, gritty and under-appreciated New York films of the 70's, the music perfectly fits the action and tension of this subway-heist caper. 

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The ominous and iconic image of Jack Torrence's VW Bug winding its' way up twisting mountain roads to the haunted Overlook Hotel accompanies Wendy Carlos' music for Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece, "The Shining". Her use of creepy Moog synthesizer and ghostly, disembodied voices suggest evil around every curve.

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From "The Conversation"; a classic watergate-era thriller, we have more music from David Shire. His Erik Satie-meets-Bill Evans spare and elegiac piano score perfectly captures the loneliness and alienation of Harry Caul, the haunted and paranoid "bugger" played by Gene Hackman. 

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The maestro, Ennio Morriccione is best known for his work with director Sergio Leone. This has to be one of greatest most recognizable themes; from "For a Few Dollars More", this classic Spaghetti western starring Clint Eastwood reprising his role as the man with no name features the superlative guitar and whistling of the improbably-named Alessandro Alessandroni.

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Among the greatest of hard-core British gangster films has to be Mike Hodges' "Get Carter". Roy Budd's evocative jazz-tinged opening credit theme featuring a funky fender rhodes perfectly compliments Michael Caine (never better) as Carter, the London hitman taking the train home up to Newcastle to avenge his brother's murder.

Jules Dassin was one of the great American directors on the 40's and 50's, creating classic film noirs such as "Thieves' Highway" and "Brute Force" before emigrating to Europe in the wake of Macarthyism. One of his later works, "Uptight" was essentially a remake of "The Informer" in a late-60's African-American setting. It featured the music of Booker T. and the MG's, the great Memphis soul band from the Stax label playing one of their signature tunes, "Time is Tight".

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From the mean streets of America to the snow-covered fields of Russia, we next have the main title music from David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago". Maurice Jarre's beautiful and romantic score won an Oscar, and "Lara's Theme" became an international sensation. If you get the chance, watch how well the theme plays during the title sequence over a slowly changing series of paintings.

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"Black Caesar" starring Fred Williamson was a 1973 blacksploitation update of "Little Caesar", although Edward G. Robinson didn't have the Godfather of Soul, James Brown singing "Down and out in New York City" like we have here. Too Funky.

What if we to fuse the last two entries into one? How about Russian gangsters in New York? That's exactly what James Gray's "Little Odessa" is about. A very underrated and little seen gem, the director uses Russian choral music like the Rachmaninioff vespers to underscore the hopelessness of the characters and the bleakness of a Coney Island winter. Haunting yet beautiful.

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As if you haven't had enough New York bleakness already, let's up the ante with not only one of the greatest films ever made, but one of the greatest scores from one of the greatest composers. Hyperbole? Not when Bernard Herrmann is in the mix. Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Psycho are only a few of the masterpieces that Herrmann, (known most notably for his collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock) penned thru his life. This selection is from his final score, "Taxi Driver". The seething violence in the mind of Travis Bickle  comes thru in the menacing brass and percussion (you can echoes of it from his "Vertigo" score) along with the loneliness  and melancholy in the jazzy sax passages. His last score it indeed was. He passed away on the night of the final mixing session. The master will be missed.

Okay, let's lighten the mood a bit.

Many of the Hal Roach comedy two-reelers from the 1930's were scored by Leroy Shield. And while hardly a household name, If you spend any time from your childhood watching The Little Rascals or Laurel and Hardy, you'll instantly recognize his sunny and swinging big band music. Amazingly, none of his music at the time was released on vinyl. Give credit, then to Amsterdam-based "documentary orchestra" the Beau-Hunks for meticulously recreating Shield's music using vintage-era recording techniques and bringing his music to a new generation of fans. The selection offered up here is from The Little Rascals' "Streamline Susie".

If we could delve into the mind of Humbert Humbert, watching nymphet Delores Haze swinging a hula-hoop around her nubile hips, the accompianing music to his dirty middle-aged thoughts would most certainly be "Lolita Ya-Ya" by the great Nelson Riddle. Best known for his arrangements for such Capitol records luminaries like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Peggy Lee, his soundtrack work was just as memorable.

The sequel for the 1968 film "In the Heat of the Night", was the obviously-titled "They call me Mister Tibbs!", and while being a forgetful cash-in of the original and provocative thriller, it did boast a great early-70's score by Quincy Jones.

Long slow smoke-filled dissolve to...

Director Barbet Schroder's best known films were from the late 60's and early 70's and dealt directly with the hippy-era aesthetic and themes of alienation, personal exploration and  freedom. It didn't hurt that he contracted Pink Floyd to score two of his movies. Here we have "Mudmen" from "La Valley", and while many of the Floyd's tracks on this collection worked sonically and thematically as rough drafts for their "Dark Side if the Moon" album, this selection recalls their earlier, spacier tones.

"Swagger" is the best way I could describe "Frankie Machine" from composer Elmer Bernstein's "The Man with the Golden Arm". One of the best jazz soundtracks of the 1950's, Otto Preminger's study of drug addiction featured arguably Frank Sinatra's finest performance. If you're digging the blustery horns and deep rhythms heard here, try checking out Bernstein's score to "Sweet Smell of Success" as well.

Between the twin R&B masterpieces of "What's Goin' On" and "Let's Get it On",  Marvin Gaye wrote, arranged and performed the soundtrack to 1972's "Trouble Man". Like his contemporaries Curtis Mayfield and Issac Hayes, Gaye utilized blacksploitation material to explore his own musical ideas while exercising more creative control within the Motown system. While most people are familiar with the vocal title track,  "T plays it Cool", with it's slinky rhythm and funky synthesizer is exemplary of most of the compositions.

Finally we have Jerry Goldsmith's brilliant score to Roman Polanski's "Chinatown". Story has it that Goldsmith was given just ten days to do all of the composing, which makes it even more astounding. Melancholy, glamour and romance all come out at once from Uan Rasey's trumpet on "Jake and Evelyn", a love theme for doomed lovers Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.

Fade Out.

That's All Folks!!