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Posted: |
Dec 21, 2014 - 8:05 PM
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By: |
Richard-W
(Member)
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0015FGCII/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=
Capitol Records orchestra conductor Gordon Jenkins is best known for his collaborations with vocalist Frank Sinatra on two albums, Where Are You? (1957) and No One Cares (1959). The songs were about romance gone wrong, life out of control, grief and alienation. The albums were distinguished by the intimacy, conviction and gravity of Sinatra's vocals, and by the soaring and crashing string arrangements of Jenkins. Those albums made history, but not as well known, however, is Jenkins' score for Sinatra's next-to-last last film The First Deadly Sin (1980), a crime noir about a detective on the verge of retirement who searches for a serial killer in New York at Christmas time while his wife fights cancer in the hospital. The film, adapted from a bestseller, was developed by Roman Polanski and then dropped when he had to flee the country. Sinatra picked it up, and found the right director in Brian G. Hutton. The score went to Gordon Jenkins, who proved that he was as adept at composing as at conducting. Jenkins imbues the sombre crime drama with a bluesy score that evokes not only his orchestrations for Sinatra's plaintive ballad albums, but also the classic scores of 1940s and 1950s film noir. Jenkins connects the story threads in unexpected ways. The serial killer's preparations are intercut with the wife struggling in her hospital bed. Jenkins finds an emotional connection between the two seemingly unrelated scenes: a chilly, colorless note of shared pain that will become important later, in the denouement. For the detective wandering the streets at night, arguing with his superiors or working out the clues, Jenkins uses jazz-tinged blue notes that soar on strings or sink with despair into the bleak narrative.
Gordon Jenkins' The First Deadly Sin is one of the great unsung scores of film noir. That should come as no surprise, since and he Sinatra had mined the field already in Where Are You? (1957) and No One Cares. The same elements of film noir were at work in those albums.
Perhaps the administrators at FSM could explore the possibility of releasing this important score on CD.
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Jenkins is also well-known for a sort of concept lp he wrote and produced, called "Manhattan Tower,"
which was a big seller, big enough that I used to see copies of it all the time at every used record and thrift store I checked. Finally gave it a listen, but it didn't appeal to me as much as it seemed to a lot of other people.
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Posted: |
Dec 21, 2014 - 11:50 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Jenkins is also well-known for a sort of concept lp he wrote and produced, called "Manhattan Tower," which was a big seller, big enough that I used to see copies of it all the time at every used record and thrift store I checked. Finally gave it a listen, but it didn't appeal to me as much as it seemed to a lot of other people.
"Manhattan Tower" was turned into a 90-minute NBC television special in 1956. In addition to writing the book, music and lyrics, Jenkins produced and staged the special as well. The story is of a young man named Steven (played by Peter Marshall), visiting New York City and falling in love with Julie (Helen O'Connell). Together they do the town, with music and dance. The cast also included Hans Conried, Tommy Farrell, Phil Harris, Edward Everett Horton, Cesar Romero, and Ethel Waters. Boris Sagal (THE OMEGA MAN) directed.
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Posted: |
Dec 22, 2014 - 8:27 AM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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Gordon Jenkins kept revising and expanding "Manhattan Tower" throughout his career.
The earliest version, recorded for Decca, originally released on an album of 78s, and later taking up a side of an LP, remains the best. It clocks in at under 20 minutes. There are only a few "songs" in the traditional sense.
In the 1950s, he expanded it to a full LP for Capitol, with many more songs. This served as the template for the Robert Goulet version in the 1960s.
Frankly, I don't think "Manhattan Tower" has aged very well, but if you want to hear it, get the original on Decca. It is much more impressionistic. The later versions, with the added songs, are much more literal. For example, you don't know the names of the characters, and it is I think better that way. It gives the impression that their story is just one of many in the Naked City.
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Posted: |
Dec 22, 2014 - 10:22 PM
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By: |
Jim Doherty
(Member)
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For anyone who cares (which probably includes very few on this message board), here's the Robert Goulet version of MANHATTAN TOWER.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZbtqfH1_So
OnyaBirri: I really have no heartfelt feeling one way or the other about Robert Goulet as a singer (although I will say that I found his disco album an incredibly wrong move), but I have to say that in regard to to his recording of MANHATTAN TOWER, his singing is sort of a moot point as he really sings very little on it. He mainly just narrates the piece, and he only sings in the "Party" sequence, which, as I said, was the one sequence I replaced in my own edited-together favorite version.
But I do think he is THE narrator for this piece. I can just picture him as the guy in the tower, with a Manhattan (which is a drink composed of bourbon and vermouth, for those of you who do not know) in his hand, surveying the 1960s skyline.
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