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Posted: |
Dec 28, 2013 - 12:40 PM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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I remember the days, about 50 or so years ago, when all of the great composers were working. It was just an amazing time for great music; Steiner, Herrmann, Rozsa, Bernstein, Tiomkin and many other composers. It was a great music life back then. But the great thing is, we still have the music from the 60s and the 70s, both on disc and increasingly on bluray, which are as good quality as I'll ever need them. You and I might not enjoy ALL the same things, but at least it's all still there. Giacchino, Desplat, Murphy and a few others are putting some stuff out that I enjoy almost as much, and Morricone, Schifrin, Legrand, Williams and other legends from my preferred "silver age" may not be as prolific as they once were but might still surprise.
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It's been nearly a year, and I gather there's been a Goldsmith release or three. First of all I'm happy to have been prescient... And secondly, what's been YOUR favourite? My favorites for this year: 1) Psycho II 2) Deep Rising 3) Night Crossing 4) The List Of Adrian Messenger
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Great and good-natured thread Tall Guy, and I thank you for originally starting it as well as bumping it now. It's great to reflect on all the Goldsmith riches we've received in the past decade. The three year period from 2020-2022 was especially notable for an insane concentration of Goldsmith goodies (including quite a few total premieres, some of which we never thought we'd get!) 2023 has been very light on Goldsmith, likely the lightest year EVER for Goldsmith releases if we are talking about the era of film music specialty labels. Only City Hall from Varese and the ongoing General Electric Theater re-recordings by Leigh Phillips, a successful recording project which he will be finishing in mid December by recording "The Committeeman" and the two-parter "My Dark Days" (plus a bonus of Goldsmith's "Autumn Love" CBS Music Library score). But instead 2023 was the Year of Horner, with him getting the amazing frequency of great expansions and premieres which Goldsmith had been enjoying the previous three years. I love Horner too of course, and I was also thrilled to see my friends so happy who count Horner as their #1 composer of all time as I do with Goldsmith. Okay, so in answer to your question... what Goldsmith is left that I want most? Well, the big largely untapped frontier of Goldsmith is his television output. The six excellent scores he wrote for Gunsmoke we know survive and would make an amazing packed single CD, either released on its own (Goldsmith western premieres disc would have great sales potential I think) or as a quarter of a 4CD Gunsmoke set which also represents the other great composers who worked on that series, from western masters Elmer Bernstein, Bruce Broughton, and Jerome Moross to other legends like Franz Waxman and Bernard Herrmann, to less well known masters like Leigh Harline, Leith Stevens, Nathan Van Cleave. (And that's just scratching the surface of what could be tapped in terms of original music from this long-lived series.) Thanks to LLL's Jack Marshall TV collection earlier this year, now we know that Universal Television (aka Revue) might be accessed by the specialty labels. Maybe Goldsmith's sixteen complete scores for Thriller could be released in a box set. That would be amazing, because while I am grateful for the two Tadlow albums, they left off many cues and four fine scores entirely. And in some cases I strongly prefer the original recording/performance, with the incredible "Late Date" being the most significant example. Other Goldsmith scores for Revue include two Wagon Trains (John Williams did at least half a dozen so imagine how well THAT release could sell!), one 87th Precinct (Morton Stevens was the main composer so his work could fill out a disc), and three Destrys (it was a short lived series and Goldsmith wrote more than half of the original music for it)! And there are some one-off projects for anthology series, plus the feature length TV movie Indict & Convict (starring William Shatner and Eli Wallach) and the early unsold pilot score Jerry wrote for Crime Classics in the mid-50s (cheating on his CBS contract at the time to write his very first work for locked film). There are still a couple TV scores he wrote for 20th Century Fox which I'm still hoping to see if a music source can be found: "The Man Who Was" (The Legend of Jesse James) and "A Score Without Strings" (Bracken's World). But since these weren't on LLL's great 20th Century TV set, they might be lost and require re-recording, just like the half dozen fine scores Jerry wrote for The Waltons. And speaking of re-recording, that brings us to the *real* unexplored frontier of Jerry Goldsmith: his 1950s work for live TV and radio. He wrote a bunch of great scores for feature-length Playhouse 90 episodes in particular which would be amazing to newly record. Some of these we only have in written form but they could still be restored and recorded for our listening pleasure. And while we have had selections from "Tomorrow" and "A Marriage of Strangers" on album, those were library re-recordings themselves, and a small fraction of the complete scores (the latter in particular is over 35 minutes in film!) so expanded new recordings would be more than welcome. Goldsmith wrote at least nine scores for the hourlong Studio One anthology series in 1958, and those could sustain 2-3 volumes of releases too. A disc each of his creative work for Climax and CBS Radio Workshop would be amazing as well. Really, the sky is the limit in terms of Goldsmith TV re-recordings. And speaking of which, there are at least four other feature length Goldsmith TV movie scores which remain totally unreleased. Crawlspace and Pursuit (well, there was a single two minute cue re-recorded by Silva Screen years ago) are my favorites of these and would make an amazing pairing on a newly-recorded album, since the original recordings are likely lost. I'm less in love with the scores for 1968's The People Next Door (CBS Playhouse) or 1971's Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate... but if the original recordings are lost maybe they could be used to fill out the disc. Then there are at least two substantially written but never recorded rejected scores in the final decade of his career: Babe, the Gallant Pig (1995) and Disney's The Kid (2000). I would LOVE for these to get premiere recordings from the written music. I've heard the mockup Jerry produced with Bruce Botnick for the latter and it's actually pretty darn good, and would sound MUCH better with an actual orchestra joining the guitar soloist. And last but not least there are still some incredible Goldsmith feature film scores which have been released on album, but in very truncated form or poor sound. Chief among these are Ransom, The Chairman (which I hope Intrada will eventually tackle as it dominated their recent re-recording poll) and In Harm's Way. The album for the latter in particular contained less than half of what Goldsmith wrote for the film. And while the film itself features a great deal more unreleased music, it badly hacks up the score and omits entire cues he wrote (some of which were also left off the short album). I think I may want a new complete In Harm's Way even more than The Chairman, which is really saying something.... Yavar
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I think I have most film scores Jerry Goldsmith ever composed, certainly all I ever really wanted. This past year I was especially happy with the wonderful new recordings of the General Electric Theater scores by Leigh Phillips. Goldsmith has been well served on CD. I remember when I started collecting film music, and there were Goldsmith scores I really wanted to have that seemed impossibly out of reach, and now I have all these scores in excellent editions. I have over 200 Goldsmith albums, I don't really "miss" anything. Whatever comes now, is "bonus" for me.
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