Release Round-Up: Week of September 16

Jimi Hendrix, The Cry of Love and Rainbow Bridge: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Experience Hendrix/Legacy)

Legacy and Experience Hendrix have reissues of Jimi Hendrix’s first two posthumously-released albums, both from 1971; The Cry of Love is long out-of-print on CD, while Rainbow Bridge makes its first authorized appearance in the CD format.  Both titles have been freshly remastered by Bernie Grundman from the original analog masters.

The Cry of Love: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Rainbow Bridge: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack : Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

 

Charles Lloyd, Manhattan Stories (Resonance) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Jazz great Charles Lloyd, on saxophone and flute, is joined by guitarist Gábor Szabó, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Pete La Roca on this set premiering two 1965 New York concerts.  The deluxe 2-CD edition, remastered by Bernie Grundman, features new liner notes by Stanley Crouch, Willard Jenkins, Don Heckman & Michael Cuscuna.

Scruffy the Cat – Good Goodbye: Unreleased Recordings 1984-1990 (Omnivore) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

College radio heroes and alt-country rockers Scruffy the Cat return on this new anthology from Omnivore Recordings featuring 23 songs – one issued on a rare single and 22 never released anywhere – encompassing both live and studio tracks.

James Galway, The Man with the Golden Flute: The Complete RCA Albums Collection (RCA/Masterworks) (Amazon U.S. /Amazon U.K.)

This 73-disc (!) box set chronicles the career of “The Man with the Golden Flute.”  Over  71 CDs and 2 DVDs, Galway tackles both classical and pop repertoire with collaborators including Henry Mancini, The Chieftains, Cleo Laine and John Dankworth, and many of the greatest orchestras and conductors in the world.

The Salsoul Orchestra, Christmas Jollies: The Deluxe Edition (Friday Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Friday Music’s new collection re-presents The Salsoul Orchestra’s first holiday album from 1976, produced, arranged and conducted by the late, great Vince Montana, plus three bonus tracks – “New Year’s Americana Suite” and the single versions of “Merry Christmas, All” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

Ray Price, The Ray Price Christmas Album (Friday Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. )

Friday Music also has the late country crooner’s 1969 Columbia holiday LP on CD featuring “Jingle Bells,” “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” “The Little Drummer Boy” and more.

Barbra Streisand, Partners (Columbia) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Okay, this isn’t a catalogue title, but it’s Barbra Streisand!  The legendary artist returns with her latest studio album, featuring duets with Billy Joel, John Legend, John Mayer, Blake Shelton, Michael Buble, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie and the late Elvis Presley.  Target stores have an exclusive edition with five bonus tracks – four previously released duets with Barry Gibb, Barry Manilow, Bryan Adams and Frank Sinatra plus one outtake with the album’s co-producer, Babyface.  (He’s also heard on Partners with “Evergreen.”)  This edition is also available in the U.K. from general retailers!

Various Artists, Northern Soul: The Soundtrack (Harmless) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Demon Music Group’s Harmless imprint has the soundtrack to director Elaine Constantine’s new film chronicling the U.K. Northern Soul movement that gave new life to classic American soul records; the soundtrack set consists of two CDs (the actual songs from the film on the first CD and other Northern Soul favorites compiled by the director on the second disc) plus an exclusive DVD with Elaine Constantine being interviewed about the making of the film by actor James Lance who portrays Northern Soul DJ Ray Henderson in the movie.  A special limited edition set of vinyl singles is also available.

Henry Mancini / Neil Sedaka / Paul Anka / Harry Belafonte / Aretha Franklin, The Real… (Sony U.K.)

The U.K. arm of Sony Music continues its series of 3-CD anthologies drawing primarily from the Columbia and RCA archives, adding a number of favorite classic pop artists to a series that’s already 25+-titles strong.

The Real Henry Mancini: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

The Real Neil Sedaka: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

The Real Paul Anka: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

The Real Harry Belafonte: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

The Real Aretha Franklin: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Elmer Bernstein, Themes from the General Electric Theatre / See No Evil (Intrada)

The Intrada label has two new titles from the composer and maestro Elmer Bernstein including the CD premiere of Columbia Records’ soundtrack to the anthology television series starring future President Ronald Reagan, and the world premiere release of Bernstein’s score to Richard Fleischer’s 1971 thriller starring Mia Farrow, See No Evil!

A Bernstein Bouquet: Cherry Red’s él Label Reissues Elmer’s “Mockingbird” and “Brass”

In a career that placed him among the most legendary of film composers, Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004) penned the scores to more than 200 films in what seemed like every genre conceivable –comedies (Airplane!), dramas (Sweet Smell of Success), musicals (Thoroughly Modern Millie), fantasies (Ghostbusters) and of course, westerns (The Magnificent Seven). But among his most beloved scores is 1962’s Academy Award-nominated To Kill a Mockingbird. Cherry Red’s él imprint has paired the re-recorded soundtrack album, originally released on Ava Records, with Bernstein’s long out-of-print 1956 Decca album Blues and Brass – two things Bernstein certainly knew all about! The two-fer will arrive on September 15 in the U.K.!

Director Robert Mulligan made many inspired choices in his film adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), but chief among them was selecting Elmer Bernstein to compose the score. Bernstein’s sensitive, multilayered score captured the essence of the rich cast of characters– the noble lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), his children Scout and Jem (Mary Badham and Philip Alford), the unfairly accused Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), the misunderstood Boo Radley (Robert Duvall). The music of Mockingbird evoked Americana through the eyes of the children at the film’s heart, particularly via the subtle, gentle piano lines that recur throughout. But the dramatic score, one of Bernstein’s finest accomplishments, also encompasses tension and fear (“The Search for Boo,” “Tree Treasure”), pulse-pounding danger (“Children Attacked”), triumph (“Jem’s Discovery”) and stately beauty (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” the string-laden “Footsteps in the Dark”).

The 11-track album presentation was recorded by Bernstein for Ava Records, of which Bernstein was one of the founders alongside Fred Astaire, Jackie Mills and Thomas Wolf. Conducting his own score at United Recorders for credited producers Mills and Wolf, Bernstein employed many of the same players who actually performed on the original film soundtrack. The orchestrations of Hollywood vets Leo Shuken and Jack Hayes were used for the album, as well. Fans interested in this period of the prolific Bernstein’s career are advised to seek out Intrada’s recent 3-CD set The Ava Collection featuring all six of Bernstein’s LPs for the label. In addition, the Intrada release presents Mockingbird – and the other five albums – remastered for the first and only time from the original stereo session masters.

The él release, however, has been paired with the CD debut of Blues and Brass. With twelve smoky, seductive compositions composed, arranged, orchestrated and conducted by Bernstein and a stunning Saul Bass-designed cover (reprinted in the booklet of él’s new release), Blues and Brass was an extension of the hard-boiled jazz style utilized by Bernstein for his Academy Award-nominated score to 1955’s The Man with the Golden Arm. The West Coast “cool school” of jazzmen turned out in full force for this LP, with artists including Shelly Manne, Bud Shank, Maynard Ferguson, Andre Previn, Pete Candoli, Bill Holman, Dave Pell and Ted Nash all contributing. The original liner notes – reprinted in this reissue – cite the influence of Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton and Count Basie on these sophisticated, urbane “city blues.”

Hit the jump for more, including the complete track listing and pre-order links!

You Must Remember This: TCM, Masterworks Compile “Classic Sound of Hollywood” From Mancini, Williams, Morricone, More

On April 1, Sony’s Masterworks division and Turner Classic Movies marked the cable network’s twentieth anniversary with a new 2-CD collection of vintage Hollywood movie themes. Play It Again: The Classic Sound of Hollywood continues the Masterworks/TCM series that has previously encompassed archival releases from Doris Day, Mario Lanza and Fred Astaire. Composers represented include Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, Maurice Jarre, Elmer Bernstein, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Henry Mancini, Ennio Morricone and John Williams.  Most of the tracks on Play It Again aren’t derived from the original film soundtracks, but rather from renditions played by the likes of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Boston Pops.

The first disc is drawn entirely from RCA Red Seal’s series of Classic Film Scores as recorded by conductor Charles Gerhardt and London’s National Philharmonic Orchestra in the early 1970s. It includes three suites from composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold featuring his themes from Of Human Bondage, Between Two Worlds, and The Sea Hawk. Underscoring the diversity of this set, the disc also contains cues from the sensationally steamy Peyton Place (Franz Waxman), the creature feature The Thing (From Another World) (Dimitri Tiomkin) and even the Biblical epic Salomé (Daniele Amfitheatrof).  In 2010, Masterworks reissued this series as it originally appeared on LP, orphaning a handful of recordings.  The three of these “stray” recordings are the Peyton Place main title, the “Dance of the Seven Veils” from Salomé and the suite from The Thing.  In addition, the Korngold suites for The Sea Hawk and Of Human Bondage are different edits from those contained on the reissued Korngold CD in the Gerhardt series; this disc marks their first appearance on CD in over a decade.

What will you find on Disc 2?  Hit the jump for that, and more – including the full track listing and order links!

Keeping Score with New Releases by Intrada and Kritzerland

The last few weeks have seen some great catalogue soundtracks released, including a set of LPs from a beloved Golden Age composer and a pair of heavy hitters at 20th Century-Fox.

Last week saw Intrada release two score titles. The first is the world premiere of Maurice Jarre’s score to Distant Thunder, from the 1988 John Lithgow-Ralph Macchio film about a Vietnam War veteran uneasily returning to his family after a decade spent in the American wilderness. Jarre’s small-scale electronic ensemble balances the tentativeness of Lithgow and Macchio’s burgeoning father-son relationship with sudden bursts representing the fear and violence that Lithgow’s Mark Lambert so often lived with.

Elsewhere, Intrada unleashes no less than six albums on three discs from acclaimed composer Elmer Bernstein’s tenure on the MGM-distributed label Ava Records. Recorded and released between 1962 and 1965, The Ava Collection features original soundtrack albums from such classics as The Carpetbaggers, To Kill a Mockingbird and Walk on the Wild Side, as well as a compilation of stray movie and television themes by Bernstein. Not only is this the first collection of all six of these releases, it’s also the first time all six of them have been mastered from the original first generation stereo masters! This mix of quality and quantity make it a must-have for not only Bernstein fans, but for fans of great ’60s film scoring.

Last, but certainly not least, Kritzerland uncovers two classics from the scoring sessions of 20th Century-Fox: Alfred Newman’s O. Henry’s Full House (1952) and Cyril Holdridge’s The Luck of the Irish (1948). Full House is quite an interesting picture: five adaptations of short stories by the popular American author, including “The Last Leaf,” “The Ransom of Red Chief” and the enduring “The Gift of the Magi” – all put on by five different directors and five different casts (including Charles Laughton, Marilyn Monroe, Farley Granger and others) and narrated by John Steinbeck, in a rare film appearance. Newman’s five mini-scores, ably arranged by Ken Darby, are treats for any fan of his work. Full House is paired with the score to The Luck of the Irish, a fantasy about a man (Tyrone Power) torn between his wealthy fiancé in New York and a beautiful stranger he met on the Emerald Isle. His journey is guided by Cecil Kellaway as Horace, an honest-to-goodness leprechaun he also makes the acquaintance of.

The Kritzerland two-fer is limited to 1,000 copies, while the Intrada sets are available “while quantities and interest remain.” Make your orders and check out the track lists after the jump!

Kritzerland Promises Swashbuckling Adventure With Elmer Bernstein’s “The Buccaneer”

Kritzerland’s final release of 2013 is sure to be one of its most talked-about.  Today, the label announced an expanded and remastered CD presentation of Elmer Bernstein’s score to The Buccaneer.  The 1958 Paramount Picture starred the King of Siam himself, Yul Brynner, opposite Claire Bloom, Charles Boyer and Charlton Heston in a rip-roaring adventure tale loosely based on real life and set during the War of 1812.

Director Anthony Quinn’s film was a remake of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1938 movie of the same name.  The legendary DeMille had planned to direct himself, but with his health failing, he turned to his then-son-in-law Quinn to take the reins.   Both versions tell the story of Jean Lafitte, a French privateer who aided General Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans.  For his sole film as a director, Quinn’s company was led by Brynner as Lafitte, with Heston playing the key supporting role of Jackson.  (This was Heston’s second motion picture portrayal of Jackson; he previously played him in 1953’s The President’s Lady.)  The score was written by the prolific Elmer Bernstein in the same year he also scored pictures including Kings Go Forth and Some Came Running.  A fixture on Kritzerland, Bernstein just appeared on the label’s recent John Wayne at Fox compendium which featured his 1961 soundtrack to The Comancheros.

Kritzerland describes Bernstein’s score as “a beauty…filled with big and bold music and classic Bernstein themes.  The ‘Main Title’ begins with a wonderful Bernstein fanfare leading into a glorious and heroic theme, more fanfares, and then an exquisitely beautiful theme followed by more fanfares – it’s everything you’d want in a main title from a time when composers really knew how to set the tone of the film in its first minutes.  The rest of his marvelous score is loaded with drama, romance and intrigue, all in the unique and colorful Bernstein style.”

After the jump: what never-before-released music will you hear on the new Buccaneer?

Kritzerland’s Holiday Bonanza Includes Hepburn and Wayne Classics, Herrmann’s “Christmas Carol”

Kritzerland has just jumped headfirst into the holiday season with three exciting releases on the soundtrack front.  Continuing the label’s commitment to the Golden Age of Hollywood and beyond, the label has just made these three titles available for pre-order:

• John Wayne at Fox: The Westerns – Two CDs and three scores for the price of one CD!  This double-disc anthology brings together three classic scores from films featuring The Duke: Elmer Bernstein’s The Comancheros (1961), Lionel Newman’s North to Alaska (1960) and Hugo Montenegro’s The Undefeated (1969)!   Though all three titles have been previously released, they have been fully remastered for Kritzerland’s release.  North to Alaska features vocal performances from Johnny Horton and Fabian.   A 1,000-unit limited edition, John Wayne at Fox is available for $19.98 from Kritzerland.

• Sabrina / We’re No Angels – Following Intrada’s recent release of Henry Mancini’s original soundtrack to Blake Edwards’ Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Kritzerland premieres another memorable score from an Audrey Hepburn film from an iconic director.  This time, the film is 1954’s Sabrina and the director is Billy Wilder.  Frederick (The Blue Angel) Hollander’s score to Sabrina is paired with another Hollander treat: his score to the 1956 Humphrey Bogart Christmas comedy We’re No Angels!  As a special bonus, the disc is rounded out with vintage Hollander cues from a number of his other films.  This 1,000-unit limited edition is available from Kritzerland at $19.98.

• Finally, Kritzerland re-presses its sold-out release of Bernard (Psycho, Taxi Driver) Herrmann’s scores to two vintage television specials: a 1954 adaptation of A Christmas Carol starring Fredric March and Basil Rathbone; and the next year’s A Child is Born starring Nadine Conner and Theodor Uppman of the Metropolitan Opera.  These two scores show another side of the renowned suspense composer’s immense talent.  This 1,000-unit limited edition is available at the low holiday price of $14.98 from the label.

Kritzerland indicates that “our hope is that CDs will ship by the last week of December or hopefully even sooner, but this is the busiest time of year for pressing plants, so there is the off chance that it could be early January.  But the hope is to have them out the door before Christmas.”  In addition, the label’s annual Christmas sale is on!  You can sample the many bargains right here!

After the jump, we have the full contents of Kritzerland’s press release, plus track listings and pre-order links!

Intrada Conjures Up Magic, “Miracle”; Kritzerland Returns to “Alien Nation”

This week has seen some great archival soundtrack releases courtesy of Intrada and Kritzerland – all featuring some big names in the film score world.

Kritzerland’s latest title is already shaping up to be a hot one: a greatly expanded double-score reissue from the cult classic Alien Nation. This 1988 film featured James Caan and Mandy Patinkin as partnered cops in a future Los Angeles where a race of aliens, called Newcomers, have landed on Earth and have done their best to fit in with our planet’s culture. The catch, of course, is that Patinkin is the first Newcomer detective on the LAPD. The unlikely pair eventually have to solve a case that takes them into the criminal underbelly of the Newcomer culture. The film was successful enough to spin off a short-lived TV series, five subsequent TV movies and a host of comics and novels.

The music of Alien Nation has an intriguing pedigree: Jerry Goldsmith originally wrote a strongly thematic, electronic-dominated score for the film before it was significantly re-edited. Composer Curt Sobel stepped in to record a new, somewhat darker and noir-inspired score, while Goldsmith reused his Alien Nation theme for the 1990 spy film The Russia House. (The theme was in fact rejected once before, for Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.)

While Varese Sarabande released Goldsmith’s score years back, Kritzerland’s double-disc set remasters and presents both scores, with Sobel’s appearing on CD for the first time anywhere. (The score on this release was prepared in part from a cancelled album.) Limited to 1,200 copies (and likely selling fast), Alien Nation is shipping now.

After the jump, find out what Intrada’s scared up from Elmer Bernstein and The Walt Disney Company!

La La Land Has “True Grit” With First Release Of Complete Elmer Bernstein Score with Four Glen Campbell Vocals

When directors Joel and Ethan Coen adapted Charles Portis’ novel True Grit in 2010 for its second big-screen adaptation, one element was noticeably missing: the Academy Award-nominated title song by Elmer Bernstein and Don Black, so winningly introduced by Glen Campbell in the 1969 film version.  Campbell’s recording yielded a Top 10 Country and AC/Top 40 Pop single, and remains one of his most beloved songs today.  “True Grit” appeared on a brief, 10-track album in which two renditions as sung by Campbell bookended eight tracks of Bernstein’s stirring score.  But that was just the tip of the iceberg for both the orchestral score and songs of True Grit.   Happily, nearly 45 years later, La La Land Records has just delivered the first complete soundtrack to Henry Hathaway’s original film including six vocals by Glen Campbell and one by country songwriting great John Hartford.

John Wayne received his only Academy Award for his portrayal of the irascible, one-eyed U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, starring opposite Campbell as the young Texas Ranger named Le Boeuf and Kim Darby as 14-year old Mattie Ross.  Mattie enlists Cogburn and Le Boeuf to track down the outlaw that murdered her father in the western adventure.   True Grit was so successful that it spawned a sequel, 1975’s Rooster Cogburn, with Wayne reprising the title role opposite another cinema legend, Katharine Hepburn.  And one of the elements of True Grit’s success was the score by Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004).  Though he was a versatile composer in any genre, the Academy Award-winning Bernstein became a western-movie legend thanks to his instantly recognizable theme to The Magnificent Seven.  He also had a long history with Wayne, scoring films such as 1961’s The Comancheros, 1965’s Hathaway-directed The Sons of Katie Elder and later, 1971’s Big Jake, 1973’s Cahill U.S. Marshal, 1974’s McQ and 1976’s The Shootist (Wayne’s final film role).

What will you find on the deluxe new True Grit?  Hit the jump for more details, the complete track listing and order link!

Soundtrack Watch: La-La Land Issues a “Challenge,” Intrada Premieres Goldsmith, Bernstein, Jarre Classics

Here’s some recent soundtrack news from the last month to keep you up to date on two of our favorite score labels: La-La Land and Intrada.

• La-La Land’s released several archival scores in the past few weeks. First there was The Challenge, a film written by John Sayles and directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Scott Glenn and Toshirō Mifune as two unlikely partners tasked to obtain a rare sword in Japan. Jerry Goldsmith provided a fine action score for the flick; first released on Prometheus Records in 2000, this release features one bonus track, the original film version of the end credits (Goldsmith requested an alternate take be used on the last release; that track closes out this CD program). The disc is available for sale, although fan requests about the initial pressing’s sound quality have prompted LLL to work on replacement discs, the details of which will be formally announced next month.
• La-La Land also released a pair of Elmer Bernstein Western scores on one CD, including The Shootist (1976), the final film of John Wayne, and a CD release of the original soundtrack LP from The Sons of Katie Elder, featuring a song by Johnny Cash. In that same batch, they also expanded James Newton Howard’s score to Grand Canyon, a 1991 drama by Lawrence Kasdan (writer/director of The Big Chill).
• And Intrada’s been busy as well: their second most-recent batch also featured Bernstein (The Carpetbaggers (1964), based on the Harold Robbins novel – featuring both original film score and re-recorded album debuting on CD) and Goldsmith (the brief but fascinating score to the political thriller Seven Days in May (1964)). Seven Days was paired with a Maurice Jarre score for Warner Bros., The Mackintosh Man (1973), a John Huston thriller starring Paul Newman.
• Intrada’s most recent batch, announced Monday, features an expanded edition of Bill Conti’s score to Five Days from Home (1979), starring The A-Team‘s George Peppard (who also directed) as an escaped prisoner. The label also prepped more Goldsmith: the premiere of the complete score to the WWII action film Von Ryan’s Express starring Frank Sinatra, as well as a remaster of the jazzy score to The Detective, another Sinatra vehicle. (Fun fact: Sinatra’s character in this film was sourced from a novel by Roderick Thorp; a sequel to that novel, Nothing Lasts Forever, featured the same protagonist taking on terrorists in a skyscraper. It was later heavily adapted as Die Hard in 1988.)

Everything described above is available now, with full track lists and artwork, after the jump.

Intrada Premieres Three Rugged Scores on Two Discs

The latest haul from Intrada is three ’60s and ’70s scores for some tough-guy pictures, each from three different, classic composers and all making their debut on any format.

First up, Elmer Bernstein scores Cahill: U.S. Marshal (1973). Bernstein obviously had some Western chops – The Magnificent Seven, anyone? – and he certainly had quite the opportunity to flex those muscles for this film. The title character, a black-hatted lawman pursuing a bank robber (George Kennedy) and his accomplices (who happen to be the marshal’s sons), was played by none other than John Wayne. The score to this Warner Bros. picture – which included a song, “A Man Gets to Thinkin’,” with lyrics by Don Black – is notable as one of the first recorded on multitrack tape (2″, 16-channel tape, to be exact), meaning a new stereo remix could be constructed just for this disc. Jeff Bond provides detailed liner notes for the set.

Intrada’s other release this week is a two-fer: first, there’s Hell is for Heroes, a 1962 film about an Army squad’s near-impossible task to hold the Siegfried Line against German forces for two days straight in 1944. Despite an all-star cast, including Steve McQueen, Bobby Darin, James Coburn, Fess Parker and Bob Newhart (in his first film role), budgetary restrictions and on-set conflicts (namely between McQueen and writer Robert Pirosh, who created the TV series Combat!) sank the film; Leonard Rosenman’s short, active score, though, is a highlight, and presented in full on the first part of the disc.

Hell is for Heroes is paired with Jerry Fielding’s score to Escape from Alcatraz, an adaptation of J. Campbell Bruce’s book starring Clint Eastwood as Frank Morris, who in real life did escape the maximum security prison and was never found since. Working for the fifth and final time with director Don Siegel (who helmed Coogan‘s Bluff and Dirty Harry with Eastwood starring), Alcatraz features a unique, experimental “musique concrete” score by Fielding written to reflect the harsh conditions of the prison, newly remixed in stereo.

All titles are available “while quantities and interest remain”; hit the jump to read the track lists and place your orders!