Singer in Mel Tormé's Mel-Tones; “Music Out of the Moon” & "Perfume Set to Music" – music arranged for Theremin; “Ritual of the Savage” – first jungle Exotica recording and just one of many amazing Exotica albums to follow; ”Quiet Village”  – the most famous and oft covered work in all of Exotica; “Voice of the Ixtabay” – vehicle for Peruvian singing sensation Yma Sumac; “The Poor People of Paris” – Billboard number one hit orchestral arrangement of the popular French song "La goualante du pauvre Jean". All of these are what composer, arranger, conductor and performer Les Baxter will probably best be remembered for by most. What many may not know about the oft labeled godfather, father, grandfather or whatever-father of Exotica is that beginning in the 1950s and certainly in the 1960s (after the end of the Exotica craze), Baxter turned his attentions to writing music for films and television.

 

Often forgotten or unknown even by many film score fans, due mostly to his scoring of low budget films for American International Pictures, Baxter scored in the neighborhood of 100 plus films and TV shows during his career. Of those, only a few had recordings that were released and are still widely remembered today. Master of the World, Black Sunday and Baron Blood are probably some of the most notable of those. 

 

Baxter was called on to compose music for two series of films for AIP, Roger Corman’s Poe films and the beach movies starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. The beach movies were filled with a lot of campy comedic mickey-moused cues usually employed for biker gang leader Eric Von Zipper’s shenanigans along with some easy listening styled cues supported by 60s’ back beats. It all was fairly conventional in approach. On the other hand, the Poe films afforded Baxter some of the best scoring opportunities of his career for which he rose to the occasion delivering chilling scores filled with atonality, harsh dissonances and eerie electronically processed echo effects. These progressive, modernistic scores added great atmosphere to the proceedings. Sadly little of this music has ever been released and various reports seem to indicate that much of it is now lost to time.

 

Dateline 2009, the film music of Les Baxter makes a surprising return as 3 new releases of his scores popped up seemingly out of nowhere. It is for this reason that I’ve dubbed 2009 as the (breakout return) Year of the Film Music of Les Baxter.

 

Master of the World and Goliath and the Barbarians (Intrada) - More than just a CD reissue of Master of the World, this release includes tracks from both the original score and the re-recording. This is probably the main fan favorite of Baxter’s scores and the CD was gobbled up pretty quickly because of it. Personally I was more taken by the other score on the CD, Goliath and the Barbarians, as it contained a lot of colorful, muscular writing and boasted several cues that could have easily come from one of Baxter’s exotica recordings of which I’ve been a huge fan of for many years now.

 

The Dunwich Horror (La-La Land) - Written for an early seventies AIP HP Lovecraft horror film starring Dean Stockwell and Sandra Dee. The score is lots of fun filled with pop flavored psychedelic cues and a catchy pop-baroque styled recurring main theme. Early synthesizer sounds dot the landscape of this trippy score which has quickly become one of my all time favorite horror film scores.

 

Panic In Year Zero (La-La Land) - This post apocalyptic film starred and was directed by Ray Milland for AIP. The main title is probably the most addictive cue of the year for me and is a swinging affair fixed firmly in the vein of crime jazz. The album is filled with driving jazz fueled cues, some that call to mind the film/TV music of Nelson Riddle. Probably just a coincidence as both men did extensive arranging and composing in 50s when the jazz sound was being integrated into popular music and film and television scoring.

 

So with these three releases I wonder if we will see any more in 2010. I’m not sure what the availability for Baxter’s scores is in regards to masters, original elements, etc. or what demand there might be for them, but there certainly was a market for these three small number issue limited releases of last year as two of the three sold out rather quickly.

 

It’s nice to have what is essentially a “new voice” in film scoring from the past getting a chance to be (re)discovered by many and is yet another reflection of the boon in film music releases that we have been privileged to experience in recent years. More Baxter please!

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                                                 Epilogue

                   The place for quotes, trivia, links, etc.