CD Review: The Carry On Album

The Carry On Album: Music from the Films

BRUCE MONTGOMERY AND ERIC ROGERS

ASV White Line Digital Classics CD WHL 2119

21 tracks - 51:12

With Cinephile's recent (and hopefully ongoing) release of Roy Budd's '70s scores and Hammer's uncovering of things like Twins of Evil, fans of British film music of the '60s and '70s are likely to get spoiled. But, excellent as the Budds are, no release is as welcome or long overdue as this winning compilation from Carry On, the greatest comedy series the world has ever know -- yes, even better than the Police Academy and Ernest films (but what isn't better than the Ernest films?).

One of the mainstays of British cinema, the 31 Carry On films have never really caught on with, nor even been understood by American audiences or critics. When actress Joan Hickson died a few years ago, her L.A. Times obituary referred to the series as popular art-house satires, a curious label for a series best remembered for single-entendres, sexual and racial stereotyping, crude puns, pratfalls and the frequent accidental exposure of real-life cockney gangster's moll Barbara Windsor's breasts. Politically incorrect, distinctly hit-and-miss and about as subtle as a loud fart in a Trappist monastery, the Carry On films are a joyous and unique part of British heritage, and if you Colonials don't see the joke, that's your loss.

Along with its cherished ensemble of British comic actors (Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Bernard Bresslaw, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Jim Dale, Hattie Jacques, Peter Butterworth, et al), a previously unsung element of the series' success and longevity is the enthusiastic scoring by Bruce Montgomery and, for the later offerings, Eric Rogers.

Montgomery's output is presented on this album in an impressive seven-minute suite of the first three entries in the series -- the stirring Carry On Sergeant, and the more overtly sentimental Carry on Teacher and Carry on Nurse -- plus, Montgomery's Carry On theme that continued as the series' anthem long after his departure.

Producer Peter Rogers has claimed that the late Montgomery's strong attraction to alcohol would often lead him to rely on Eric Rogers (no relation to Peter) to pad out his sketches. Therefore Rogers, always with a ready eye on the bottom line, fired Montgomery and hired his assistant to save needlessly paying two salaries for the same score. (A few Hollywood producers might want to look into this approach...) The fact that classical music lover Peter Rogers had also commissioned and paid Montgomery in advance for a classical clarinet concerto that never materialized only added to his resolve.

Prior to the Carry Ons, Eric Rogers had produced a number of incidental jazz and dance cues for British films, as well as assisting and transcribing songs for Lionel Bart (who, like Irving Berlin, was unable to read or write music). Rogers had nearly worked with the producer back in 1958 on an original screen musical version of Oliver Twist starring Tommy Steele as the Artful Dodger with music and lyrics by Bart. However, having made two films with the difficult star, Peter Rogers refused to work with him again under any circumstances and recommended they try the project as a stage musical instead.

Eric Roger's initial involvement in the series was almost accidental, coming about when he scored a non-Carry On comedy fro the producer. On completion, Call Me a Cab was released as Carry On Cabby in order to capitalize on the series' early success. The original title can still be clearly discerned in the score, musically incorporated in the harmonica line of the main title included on the album.

Rogers would score all but two of the remaining films in the series (an impressive total of 23 films), before refusing to score the all-but-unwatchable Carry On England when the producer cut the size of the orchestra from the composer's preferred 40 players to a more economical 20. (Rogers' death in 1981 naturally prevented him from scoring 1992's disappointing Carry On Columbus, which went to John Du Prez.) Not surprisingly, it's Eric Rogers' output that dominates the rest of this album.

The superb disc includes music from the four finest entries in the series: Carry On Cleo (shot on the discarded Pinewood sets from the Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra), Carry On Up the Khyber (Khyber Pass being a British euphemism for arse/ass), Carry On Camping (the biggest UK box-office hit of 1968, beating such also-rans as 2001, Bullitt and Oliver!) and Carry On At Your Convenience (a surprise flop, the series' first). The album also features music from two of the worst entries: Carry On Behind and Carry On Again Doctor. However, if the films proved increasingly inconsistent, the music remained of a uniformly high standard throughout. (The jaunty main theme from Behind was actually written by the producer and built around the initials of his wife, Betty E. Box, the producer of the rival Doctor films.)

Over the course of more than 20 years, the Carry On series progressed from the gentle good-natured character-based comedy of the Norman Hudis-scripted entries to the lavatory humor (literally in At Your Convenience, set in a toilet factory) and sexual innuendo of the Talbot Rothwell-penned films. The scores followed suit, with Bruce Montgomery's warm comic camaraderie quickly giving way to Eric' Rogers' boisterous and earthy efforts -- a veritable musical equivalent of series mainstay Sid James' memorably knowing cackle. However, both approaches are unified in their reliance on comics musical references lost on both foreign audiences and, one suspects, younger British fans. Carry On Camping (that's a reference to tents, by the way) is punctuated with pastiches of music hall pastoral "One Man Went to Mow and Meadow"; Convenience is driven by the school playground favorite "Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be? (Me Old Lady's Locked in the Lavatory)"; and Again Doctor skirts around working-class staples such as "Riding Down to Bangor."

It's surprising how subtle and detailed some of these scores were; there's even an occasional intricacy that rivals the sheer busy-ness of Miklós Rósza's work at MGM. Getting away from the slightly mocking pomp and circumstance of Cleo and Up the Khyber, there are also genuinely touching moments, most notably the simple and affecting theme for Sid and Joan's unconsummated love in Convenience.

And the re-recordings themselves? If you heart sinks at the sight of the dreaded credit of "City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra," don't let it! This is a million miles away from the Silva re-recording philosophy -- visions of Czech musicians cruelly penned up in unsanitary barns, being forced to churn out 12 cues by lunch time spring only too readily to mind. Thanks to conductor Gavin Sutherland this is a truly outstanding re-recording without a single duff note -- it genuinely captures the originals and the spirit of the films. This is way up there with Marco Polo's The Egyptian and the recent Georges Auric and Alan Rawsthorne compilations. What's more, it's also a lot of genuine fun that can't help but bring a smile of recognition to your face.

The only real minuses are the inevitable omissions -- and with 31 films in the series, how could there not be? Hopefully a second volume will see a suite from Carry On Abroad (cinema's most astute and incisive portrait of the British on holiday) and the swinging party music from Convenience that sporadically reappeared in later entries. And while it's a shame that the original tracks for the title songs from Cowboy and Screaming are unavailable, this at least means that we don't get Malcolm McLaren's execrable never-ending title song from Carry On Columbus.

What we do get are three different incarnations of the Anglo-Amalgamated logo (AA was the company responsible for the first set of Carry Ons before they ditched the then-hugely successful series to go respectable and promptly went bankrupt when the multi-million dollar Far From the Madding Crowd bombed). Better still is a brief snatch of Bruce Montgomery's non-Carry On entry, Raising the Wind (which he also scripted, based loosely on his own experiences at music college), an energetic orchestral fantasia that leaves you hungry for more. Throw in surprisingly well-informed sleeve notes for good measure and the result is 51 minutes and 12 seconds of heaven. Oogle!

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