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I had about 2 minutes of buyers regret after I put the order in for this but another listen to the clips made me realize how silly that was.
While I"m at it, I'll ask once more of those in the know--are the masters for Waxman's last great major score, THE LOST COMMAND (1966), lost to the ages? I have arrived at a listenable disk made from the old "Cinema Records" boot LP from the mid-to-late 70's but would love to hear this in pristine stereo.
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I know that there is still a lot more of this kind of material in the WB/Turner vaults to be exposed, but it will require that fans speak up, promote it, and then actually purchase it, if Intrada or someone else takes a flyer on it. There's certainly more Kaper, Stothart, Snell, Ward, Amfitheatrof, Hayton, Salinger, and others at MGM----including Oscar nominated scores---for major and minor films---and, of course, Korngold and Steiner elements from Warners. Modern mixing and mastering technology has also made much of this rare old material sound surprisingly good, too.
OK FSMers - speak up & promote & spend money on these musical materials as described above via manderley.
Will guys such as Last Child be allowed access into WB/Turner/MGM vaults?
If Last Child has finished working inside the Lyn Murray archives, then he has my permission to commence work on unreleased Amfitheatrof music for future albums we can buy - right? 
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Posted: |
Dec 6, 2017 - 3:27 PM
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By: |
Last Child
(Member)
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I know that there is still a lot more of this kind of material in the WB/Turner vaults to be exposed, but it will require that fans speak up, promote it, and then actually purchase it, if Intrada or someone else takes a flyer on it. There's certainly more Kaper, Stothart, Snell, Ward, Amfitheatrof, Hayton, Salinger, and others at MGM----including Oscar nominated scores---for major and minor films---and, of course, Korngold and Steiner elements from Warners. Modern mixing and mastering technology has also made much of this rare old material sound surprisingly good, too.
OK FSMers - speak up & promote & spend money on these musical materials as described above via manderley.
Will guys such as Last Child be allowed access into WB/Turner/MGM vaults?
If Last Child has finished working inside the Lyn Murray archives, then he has my permission to commence work on unreleased Amfitheatrof music for future albums we can buy - right?
Gee, thanks, zardoz. Of course I'll have to foot the bill to access these places...
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Posted: |
Dec 7, 2017 - 12:37 AM
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By: |
Jim Doherty
(Member)
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This is an amazing archival project and, of course, anyone who has an interest in Golden Age scoring will likely be picking it up. Certainly I will.
In some unexpected way, I guess I'm only "one degree of separation" from a group of these music tracks. Lukas, Doug, Roger and the others have been working on this project for many years, but in a warp of time, I'm probably the first one in the greater FSM clan to have heard some of this music in session master form! ......I'm old now, and the occasion was, by my reckoning, more than 50 years ago!!!
I think I've told this story before, but with the release of this wonderful box set, it's worth recounting again. I believe the year was 1966. I was then working at Saul Bass in the film wing, and our project of the moment was MGM's big roadshow film, GRAND PRIX, which was then in post-production at the studio.
Every day during this period I would drive over to MGM from our offices on Sunset in Hollywood, and deliver to MGM's optical department the workprints and timings for the latest batch of opticals Bass was creating for the titles and racing scenes of the film. At this point in time, the late fall of 1966, the studio was way behind on the post-production of the film, so there were crews in the optical, editing, sound mixing, and negative cutting departments working throughout the night.
Once I had our daily footage elements delivered to optical, I had to wait several hours until the previous night's optical work that had been done for us was finally delivered from the Metrocolor lab on the lot to the optical department. It was set up in the small screening room nearby for us and I and all the optical people made notes regarding their previous night's work--- what was OK, or what needed to be re-done---and then the work print of the opticals would be handed to me and I carried it back to the Bass offices where we screened it again, and I wrote out our comments to accompany the next day's delivery of new material to MGM.
So.....when I was at MGM for hours on end, waiting for the footage to come out of the lab, I had relatively nothing to do. So I'd visit with various people I knew in some of the technical departments and chat with them. I was about 26 then, so there was plenty of information I was eager to soak up!
On some days I took my lunch and in these off-moments I wandered around the lot. One day, I found myself on the MGM music scoring stage, Stage 1. No one was recording that day, but of course, the whole studio was always running, and the doors were rarely locked. So I wandered in.
Entering the scoring stage (in those days) you first stepped from the outside into a very small chamber, which was probably a sound baffle from outside noises. The door within the chamber led to the sound recording mixers room which ran nearly the full length of the building and adjoined, with a glass partition, the scoring stage. Another heavy door led from the mixing room into the scoring stage, so the stage itself was fairly well sound-proofed from outside noises.
On an opposite wall, in a large area behind the scoring mixer's consoles there was a storage area that looked interesting so I checked that out. There were many, many heavy wooden crates stored and piled in this area. It turned out these were all 16" Vitaphone discs for many of MGM's early sound films from the 1928-1931 period. I recognized some of the titles and was impressed that they were still extant. On other shelves there were rows and rows of 16" radio transcription discs. In the '40s and early '50s MGM was involved in producing radio shows based on some of their films, including the "Maisie" and "Andy Hardy" series, and other guest star driven dramatic shows.....and these were master discs, stampers, etc.
Around this time I heard music emanating from a small room nearby, also off the mixing room.
I looked in and there was a guy sitting in a chair reading a newspaper and having his lunch, too, while the music played. He was surrounded by optical 35mm film playback machines, 16" disc cutter and playback machines, and quarter and half-inch mag recording machines. He seemed surprised to see anyone around, but was very friendly and willing to answer questions.
I asked him what he was doing. He told me that he was one of the recording mixers, but when no scores were being recorded on the stage, his fill-in job was to transfer the raw session master music tracks pulled from the vaults onto new magnetic protection masters for archiving. Some of the optical nitrate material had already deteriorated by the 1960s, but, like the picture material, MGM was making an effort to transfer and save as much as they could of the ancillary elements beyond the actual sound and picture reels of the final product. And so he was transferring these music tracks, just as they were originally recorded. This day it was optical film, other days it might be Vitaphone discs, acetate playback discs, or whatever.
The music sounded glorious---it was vaguely familiar---and, upon questioning, he told me these were the surviving tracks from Franz Waxman's score for CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS. I had time to burn, and so I remember sitting down, having my bag lunch, and listening to nearly all of Waxman's score for the film. Probably all of what we'll hear on Intrada's new CD.
In 1966 I was impressed by the quality of these original sound elements which had been recorded 30 years earlier and was stunned that they still existed. He told me that MGM still had a great deal of its music library and was moving as fast as they could to transfer the material before the originals were totally lost to deterioration.
In retrospect, what we are able to have on CD today is the result of the day-to-day work of now anonymous technical people who expended their hours saving the elements.
I know that there is still a lot more of this kind of material in the WB/Turner vaults to be exposed, but it will require that fans speak up, promote it, and then actually purchase it, if Intrada or someone else takes a flyer on it. There's certainly more Kaper, Stothart, Snell, Ward, Amfitheatrof, Hayton, Salinger, and others at MGM----including Oscar nominated scores---for major and minor films---and, of course, Korngold and Steiner elements from Warners. Modern mixing and mastering technology has also made much of this rare old material sound surprisingly good, too.
I look forward to hearing the Waxman MGM/WB/RKO materials on this new CD set---and the COURAGEOUS bit of it will even revive memories for me of a wonderful day more than 50 years ago when I first heard it.
As an audio engineer and film music lover of many years, I cannot tell you how much your post here made me incredibly envious of your experience. Thanks for sharing that memory!
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Jekyll is very enjoyable. I'm sorry the sequence that anticipates the Jaws theme is lost (according to the notes), but yes, I too have longed for this to be released for so many years, it seems almost surreal to now have it in my collection. Superb work by Lukas, Intrada and everyone else involved. I look forward to getting acquainted with The Devil Doll over the weekend.
My greed now demands a similar multi-score set in 2018 featuring Webb or Buttolph.
I'm right there with you, particularly for everything of Webb's that survives from his RKO years. (Obviously some of it does, or it wouldn't have appeared on that Cloud Nine CD...and Bruce Kimmel once on this very board indicated that he thought Sinbad the Sailor, my biggest holy grail which only had a short suite on that CD, survived in some fashion.) But for now let's focus on how amazing this release is, in the hopes that it will be successful enough to lead to further volumes.
I'm also amazed that no one has yet commented on the price. Considering the restoration efforts that must be involved in making material from the 30s sound this good (!!) and the fact that there are 11 Waxman scores substantially represented on this jam-packed 4CD set, it is remarkable that Intrada is only charging $39.99! I mean, their 5CD set (one of which was not a unique recording and duplicated other material) for ONE Golden Age score, The Ten Commandments, was $69.99! I would have expected this Waxman set to be at least $49.99 (the price of LLL's Titanic 4CD set, which included a full disc of source music). But they are selling these four packed discs for the price of TWO! If they had released this material in successive Turner/Rhino Waxman volumes, it would have cost us around twice as much money...even more considering they sometimes price a single disc at $21.99 now. In fact, the amazing Damnation Alley restoration released at the same time as this was 34 minutes of music for that price, while the Waxman set with four *packed* discs of 75+ minutes each was only $18 more! That is a LOT of bang for your buck.
Yavar
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(It's not meant to be contrary to your point, Yavar (you're absolutely right) but the TEN COMMANDMENTS set includes 6 CDs.)
D'oh. I must've been originally thinking 5 discs of unique material, due to the original mono Dot LP program being taken from the film recording. Thanks for the correction.
Yavar
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