Lost Issue Wednesday:

CD Reviews: Fielding, Bernstein, Duning and other LK favorites

For the past year I have hoarded a variety of new CDs with the intention of reviewing them for the magazine. Then they sat on the corner of my desk in a tidy pile...I was eager to take them home or somehow absolve myself of the responsibility of writing about them, but I couldn't. I said I was going to write about them so here goes, 18 months later in a couple of cases:

RCA Spain Reissues
I wanted these CDs so much I actually bought them. (We are filthy spoiled here at FSM -- this is the case for all magazines, I think -- and get virtually everything for free.) These are all titles that were on RCA Records ages ago at the times of the films and never issued on CD -- until now. Far be it for anyone in the U.S. to care about old film music, but the Spanish branch is a little more enlightened -- or at least feels less pressure to have their releases turn big profits.
Advise & Consent (RCA/BMG 74321720612, 13 tracks, 32:02) was Jerry Fielding's return to Hollywood courtesy of blacklist-be-damned producer/director Otto Preminger -- and appropriately on a movie addressing McCarthyism. Some of you might have seen The Contender a few months back -- it's very nearly the same movie, and Joan Allen even kind of looks like Henry Fonda; but Advise & Consent is better, a star-studded story of political intrigue in the making or breaking of a Supreme Court appointee (Fonda) whose past comes back to haunt him. Fielding's score is melodic and accessible in a way light-years removed from his later experimentation -- it is the score for people who do not like Jerry Fielding scores. But it still has that mad bent that makes Fielding so sui generis; that sense of swirling, twisting ambiguity crystallized into unique patterns of rhythm, counterpoint, harmony -- the building blocks of music. It's like studying for a test when every obscure fact is packed into your short-term memory just long enough for you to recall the answers -- that sense of concentration permeates all of his work. It's especially fascinating here as it is applied to an otherwise tonal and conventional backdrop for the Washington social scene. Interestingly, the main theme is heard as a vocal in the movie (not on the album) by Frank Sinatra -- in a gay bar. Tracks like "Samba Set" show off Fielding's wizardry at big band arranging, this comprising the majority of his career outside film composition and seldom coming to light in his '70s scores. The best track is "Washington Scene" (actually the main title, and probably the start of side two on the LP) where a bombastic fanfare for the capitol segues into a mellower and magical busybody passage -- in a bizarre mixture of time signatures -- before moving to a string version of the main theme.
Summer and Smoke (RCA/BMG 74321720592, 12 tracks, 36:57) is an Elmer Bernstein gem from 1961. The film stars Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey and is based on a Tennessee Williams play set in 1916 Mississippi. Elmer Bernstein has maintained unparalled success over his half-century in the movies but between The Ten Commandments (1956) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) have to be his Michael Jordan championship years, where he was at the forefront of musical invention for virtually every genre, from biblical epic to western to adult drama to city jazz. Summer and Smoke is deliciously atmospheric and haunting -- sultry, American, and uniquely the work of the composer. I can't comment more without seeing the film but the album marks this as primo Bernstein.
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad (RCA/BMG 74321720602, 11 tracks, 25:46) is a short but irresistible Neal Hefti offering from 1966. There is a specific breed of composer/arranger from big band era whose every gesture is melodic; besides Hefti, Vic Mizzy is the best example. They are by definition limited in their symphonic range but like great character actors their every gesture begs attention. Oh Dad, Poor Dad is a black comedy which based on the Maltin movie guide entry sounds like the original Weekend at Bernie's, or an update of The Trouble with Harry. Hefti's scoring is swinging '60s pop with one repeated passage that sounds a lot like his famous Batman theme. The main title song (with a mouthful of lyrics handled by an able children's chorus) is a blast. If you like things like the original Our Man Flint/In Like Flint LPs or zany '60s calypsos -- and don't mind paying a dollar per minute -- this is a must.
The World of Suzie Wong (RCA/BMG 74321720582, 14 tracks, 42:12) is one of the few George Duning scores available on CD. As an early teen Captain Kirk was my hero and his romantic adventures (the serious ones, not the jokey TV convention ones) became the models for my aspirations. Duning wrote the best love themes on the original Star Trek ("Metamorphosis," "The Empath," "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" and "Return to Tomorrow") and so I am thrilled every time I find a feature score in the same mold -- namely Picnic (1955) starring William Holden. The World of Suzie Wong (1960) also stars Holden as a painter in love with a Hong Kong prostitute, with impressive location photography. The album is disappointing only in that side one is upbeat source music -- jukebox stuff often with a standardized "Oriental" backdrop -- albeit arranged by Duning. This leaves side two for his softer, yearning string writing with supple jazz harmonies and one of my favorite devices of his, pizzicato strings as a gentle bass line for moments of tension/development. Here the landscape is colored with pentatonic approximations of the Far East but back then there was no pressure to do anything more formally authentic -- so consequently it all blends together nicely.
Also released by RCA Spain are over a dozen Mancini albums (including great stuff like Experiment in Terror); several television compilations (including M Squad with "Johnny" Williams); the music-and-narration Night of the Hunter album (Walter Schumann); two Max Steiner albums (Marjorie Morningstar and Band of Angels); and two Franz Waxman albums (Peyton Place and The Spirit of St. Louis). They are covering the catalog pretty well and it is just the kind of attention this rich material deserves. Sound on all of these RCA titles is good -- occassionally a little hissy, but that's normal -- with slim but competent packaging often including the original liner notes. These are usually a laugher as far as providing useful analysis but it is fun to see the context in which the music was initially "pitched" to the record-buying public -- and often there's interesting information packed in that people would not think to research today.

Hip-O Tri-O
Everybody at the label denied it, but it was hard not see how Universal's "Hip-O" label was not a shameless rip-off of Warner's Rhino brand.
The Best of Shaft (HIPD-40152, 16 tracks, 66:00) was originally going to be the '70s Shaft Trilogy -- this came out a year ahead of the new remake -- except they couldn't clear the license for Shaft's Big Score. So it ended up being almost the entire Shaft in Africa LP by Johnny Pate (minus one track which was just a shorter reprise of an earlier cue), five cuts from the original Isaac Hayes Shaft album ("Theme from Shaft," "Café Regio's," "Ellie's Love Theme," "Soulsville" and the monstrous "Do Your Thing") plus the Bernard Purdie instrumental cover of the famous theme. It's fortunate that Shaft in Africa was the available sequel score; Johnny Pate had been Curtis Mayfield's arranger on Superfly and he turned in a lively and groovy sequel score for the third and final original Shaft film, where Shaft becomes a type of James Bond superagent uncovering a slave trade in Africa. The elements of funk and drama blend well, as do the references to the urban and African settings; in contrast the score to Shaft's Big Score was by Gordon Parks (the director) with a dozen arrangers and is a hopeless attempt at "faking it," even including a shameless rip-off by O.C. Smith of Hayes' "Who's the man who's a private dick...?" routine. Shaft in Africa is back to the real thing and also features a title song by The Four Tops, "Are You Man Enough?" Unfortunately Hip-O's CD has nearly random sequencing in an attempt to make this seem like a compilation when it's really just two scores interlaced.
The Reel Quincy Jones (HIPD-40168, 18 tracks, 58:36) features a track that ended up being played 200 times at the FSM office: "Money Runner" from $, a pulsating, mindblowing bit of '70s chase music, all electric guitars and hi-hats with amazing vocal work by Don Elliot. The CD overall is harder to classify as Jones has done so much over his enormous career: there's more '70s music (such as They Call Me Mister Tibbs, "Poppy Girls" from The Wiz, the classic Sanford & Son Theme and the mysterious synth melody from The Anderson Tapes); earlier, more jazz-based cues (from The Pawnbroker, Mirage, In the Heat of the Night and the newly famous "Soul Bossa Nova" used in Austin Powers); and then a few things having nothing to do with jazz or pop, like the lengthy and hymn-like "Cañon del Oro" from MacKenna's Gold and "Many Rains Ago" from Roots. Quincy Jones is deservedly a legend and this CD is a fine sampling of some of his most interesting film compositions; however, it flows practically randomly as a CD and is far from the last word on him as a composer.
Similarly, The Best of Burt Bacharach (HIPD-64566, 17 tracks, 56:52) is terrific simply by virtue of the compositions contained within; however, for the definitive Bacharach collection go for the 3CD box set from Rhino, The Look of Love: The Best of Burt Bacharach, featuring all the original artists. Hip-O's CD has the film benchmarks (from Butch Cassidy, Casino Royale, Arthur, What's New Pussycat?, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) with only "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" being a cover version; and there's fun secondary material like "Something Big," "Made in Paris," the title theme from the ill-fated 1973 Lost Horizon, and Richard Chamberlain crooning "Rome Will Never Leave You" from Dr. Kildare. Actually, that last one is awful, but a good novelty item. B.J. Thomas does show up singing "Long Ago Tomorrow." Jon Burlingame contributes good liner notes; in fact all of these Hip-O collections have good booklets.

Chapter III Records
It's terrific that someone is delving into the MGM Records catalog, which of course is not to be confused with the M-G-M films catalog released via Turner via Warners via Rhino, or the United Artists catalog released via the current MGM studio via Rykodisc -- whew! The MGM Records catalog are those titles released on MGM LPs in the 1960s and '70s -- Westworld, The Last Run, Logan's Run and more. We've reviewed these thoroughly in FSM but I wanted to add a few words.
I was prepared never even to open Brewster McCloud (CHA 1004-2, 15 tracks, 31:50) until I saw that the late Gene Page (1940-1998) worked on it. Page did the classy blaxploitation vampire score to Blacula, released on CD by Razor + Tie and one of my favorite album of the last couple of years. I was right! Page's instrumental tracks from Brewster McCloud (a bizarre Robert Altman film about a boy yearning to fly inside the Astrodome) sound like Blacula -- even his tender arrangement of "Over the Rainbow." "Two in the Bush" (5:12) is noteworthy as one of the closest imitations of Lalo Schifrin action/suspense ever.

My moviegoing has never been less now that I am in the movie capitol of the world. My favorite movie of 1999 was The Limey (Flash Cut/Artisan 2-54352-P, 16 tracks, 73:58), a hip updating of '70s gangster revenge movies directed by Stephen Soderbergh and written by Lem Dobbs. Terence Stamp is an English career criminal avenging the death of his daughter in Los Angeles at the hands of wealthy record producer Henry Fonda (sort of playing himself). The movie was designed as a straightforward narrative but was fleshed out into a Point Blank-type of overlapping flashbacks after it proved too slight in its original cut. Soderbergh and Dobbs both contributed to the DVD's commentary track where they actually get in an argument over their creative decisions. The score by longtime Soderbergh collaborator Cliff Martinez (around 15 minutes on the CD) is built around a ticking-clock idea for piano (think Wait Until Dark) slowly enveloped by strings -- a deft analogue for the movie's visuals of blurred memories. On the flipside are excellent source music selections of The Who, The Hollies ("King Midas in Reverse," introducing Fonda's character) and The Birds -- representing the main characters' mutual heydey of the '60s -- and instrumentals ranging from "Limey Shuffle" to a sitar groove to hip-hop to a "Moog Symphony," representing alien, modern-day L.A. Terence Stamp himself performs "Colours," which may be from Poor Cow, the 1967 Ken Loach movie featuring a young Stamp ingeniously spliced into The Limey. Don't be fooled by the 74-minute running time; the last track ("Wanna Take Me Out?") is three minutes of reflective piano, 28 minutes of silence, and then a funny line from the movie.

Great Personalities
Doctor Zhivago: The Essential Maurice Jarre Film Music Collection (Silva Screen SSD 1108, Disc One: 14 tracks, 71:02; Disc Two: 12 tracks, 71:57) has one track I have been dying to hear since I saw a snippet of the movie: El Condor, a 1970 Mexican western starring Jim Brown and Lee Van Cleef. It joins Red Sun and Villa Rides -- also represented on this collection -- as a great insane Jarre western theme: exuberant while basically driving on the wrong side of the road. Unfortunately it is played poorly, like a rushed first take, which is the story with virtually all film music re-recordings -- less so for Silva recently than in their original Prague projects, but nevertheless the case. The album overall is okay but El Condor suffers from the fact that Jarre's writing has strange key changes as it is; with the intontation off, they sound like wrong notes.

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