There Are No Trumpets in Contract on Cherry Street

by Lukas Kendall

I just got a copy of Contract on Cherry Street (Jerry Goldsmith, 1977 TV movie, Prometheus Records) and have to point out an annoying error of the liner notes.

Repeat after me:

There are no trumpets in Contract on Cherry Street.

The unusual orchestral color of this score comes from the fact that Goldsmith replaced the various instruments of the brass section with a trombone choir. In other words, the stuff that a trumpet would USUALLY play is in this score played by a trombone. It sounds different and strange and cool. It's one of Jerry Goldsmith's ten million brilliant scoring decisions of his amazing career.

So... the instrument that plays Sinatra's theme in the main title, a couple of minutes in? That's a trombone. (Just picture the scene in Airplane! where the stripper is on the bar, and we pan up and she's playing a trombone. The tones slide because the valve is going in and out.) NOT a trumpet. Because there are no trumpets in Contract on Cherry Street.

I see that Gary Kester wrote these liner notes, and I don't mean to pick on him particularly, because I used to correspond with him when he was editing the Goldsmith Society magazine, Legend. But for goodness sake, if you only mention ONE THING about the music to Contract to Cherry Street, it has to be its use of a huge trombone section. (Which, by the way, is why it sounds so similar to Capricorn One, which Goldsmith wrote the year after.) We've certainly made some goofs, or been accused of doing so, in the liner notes to our FSM CDs, but we usually have the wisdom to check things with educated people -- like WHAT INSTRUMENTS WE'RE HEARING.

In any case, Contract on Cherry Street is a dynamite, "lost" TV movie score that sounds like the Capricorn One you never knew existed. It's highly recommended.

By the way, the cue "Equal Partners" underscores a scene where Frank Sinatra's character is in bed with his wife; he's noticeable preoccupied (with his work), but doesn't want to discuss it. She needles him that they're "equal partners" in this, their marraige, the man and the woman. He says sure baby, but sometimes the man is more equal than the woman, that's all. A little slice of '70s domestic life. Track 12, the best action cue, is the stunning Telephoto Lens Car Chase Through an Open Field.

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