My question concerns the old LP "The TV Music of Bernard Herrmann" The LP is a Cine Sound release (CSR-301) and the jacket text offers no credits (not even for the notes or cover painting). My guess is that it was booted from the production tapes of a 1960s European radio broadcast. I say production tapes because the sound quality is very good. Side A offers The Last Grave at Socorro Creek (an episode of THE VIRGINIAN) and side B is identified only as "Suite from TV Themes". These are not "themes" exactly but rather a series of incidental backdrops. However the suite does feature one lush romantic coda that most likely served as an End Titles scroll for an unidentified TV production, and there is one very eccentric, slightly surreal jazz theme that is a bit unlike anything else I've heard by Herrmann. I would like to know if the specific works on this LP - in the form of the actual Herrmann studio sessions - have ever been released on CD. Maybe not! I suppose that would make this album quite valuable. - JohnB
Bill Wrobel made two identifications of the music in his study of Herrmann's TV music. First notation is Side 2 has the cue "The Journey" from the Indian Suite. The other notation mentions that Side 2 contains 7 of the 14 cues from the pilot for THE RICHARD BOONE SHOW called "Statement of Fact." There is more detailed info about the episode score in the pdf.
The pdf can be keyword searched if you save it to your PC. Or just paste the link in Google, then in the google results, click on the "Quick view" option under it. I searched for "301."
If you upload the specific cue and post it here, maybe someone could identify it for sure.
Your telling me, if it is the one i think it is when i was a record vendor, i search for it, during a Broadway flea market in New York a record vendor had it going for about $70.00 or so, this was in the mid 90's i didn't buy it from him, today i would be curious to know what it is worth?
However the suite does feature one lush romantic coda that most likely served as an End Titles scroll for an unidentified TV production, and there is one very eccentric, slightly surreal jazz theme that is a bit unlike anything else I've heard by Herrmann.
The theme music for "The Richard Boone Show" was called "How Soon" and was composed by Henry Mancini. The series pilot STATEMENT OF FACT was shown September 24, 1963. Mancini re-recorded the theme for RCA Victor:
Side 2 of the LP apparently contained a cue "The Journey" from the "Indian Suite" -- four other pieces from the suite can be found on this CD:
Gentlemen - in the vernacular "You guys kick ass!" and I thank you. Such knowledge is not to be scoffed at nor considered the eccentricities of "outsiders", but rather is a sure sign of profound and undoubtedly hard-won scholarship and commitment to the most deserving corners of the culture of our times. Please be proud of what you know. I am (of both what you know and - the lesser part - of what I know). The text you have here provided will be printed out and the vital sheet kept inside my CSR-301 record slipcase. / To the facts: I am shocked! Benny did not write the "lush coda" found on the B side - it is Mancini's How Soon! Considering this I am now suspicious of more. Could it be that there is no "Klaus Kuse", or even if there is that he and the Werzburg Radio Orchestra had nothing to do with this album? The European context could just be a bootlegger's ruse and the stuff on the LP may be Herrmann's actual session tapes - and Hank's. The version of How Soon must be the End Titles recording as it is shorter, sans chorus, and it builds to a classic Silver Age close out.
When I get home tonight, I can give you a rundown of everything on side two. I can't remember the exact order, but I know it contains music from four different RICHARD BOONE SHOW Herrmann scores ("Statement of Fact", "Wall to Wall War", "A Tough Man To Kill", and I think "Death Before Dishonor"), plus the aforementioned Henry Mancini theme for the show. The jazzy piece with the bongos is from another RICHARD BOONE SHOW episode, but it is not by Herrmann. I can give you the title of the episode and the composer later (I seem to recall that it was Nathan Van Cleave.) The side ends with "The Journey" and a truncated version of "Ambush" from THE INDIAN SUITE.
O.K. I JUST FOUND MY OLD POST ABOUT THS LP ON THE BERNARD HERRMANN SITE:
The scecond side of the TV MUSIC OF BERNARD HERRMANN is mostly from "The Richard Boone Show", plus a couple of extras, and also some mistakenly-included cues by other composers. Except for "Death Before Dishonor", the RICHARD BOONE SHOW scores are not complete.
Side Two is as follows (timings approximate):
0:00-10:31: RICHARD BOONE SHOW: "A Statement of Fact."
10:32-12:17: RICHARD BOONE SHOW: "Wall to Wall War"
12:18-13:50: RICHARD BOONE SHOW: "Welcome Home Dan" (comp: NATHAN VAN CLEAVE) (This is the cue with the bongos).
13:51-16:52: RICHARD BOONE SHOW: "A Tough Man To Kill"
16:54-18:02: RICHARD BOONE SHOW Theme (comp: HENRY MANCINI)
18:03-25:40: RICHARD BOONE SHOW: "Death Before Dishonor" (complete score)
25:41-27:41: THE INDIAN SUITE: "The Journey" (a cue not included on the Cerberus or Prometheus releases of The Indian Suite)
27:42-29:20: THE INDIAN SUITE: An edit of "Indian Ambush" and the beginning of "Indian Fight".
Could it be that there is no "Klaus Kuse", or even if there is that he and the Werzburg Radio Orchestra had nothing to do with this album?
This would be my prejudicial assumption. The same thing has happened hundreds of times in classical music on the super-budget labels (in both the LP and CD eras). It's usually some plausible-sounding central european name like 'Werzburg', often with 'Festival Orchestra' thrown in for spice. The conductor name will sometimes be a complete fiction, but sometimes is a real though obscure conductor.
'Anton Nanut' is the most famous example: there is a real Anton Nanut who really did conduct a large number of super-budget recordings with the Ljubljana Symphony Orchestra (Ljubljana being the modern name for the city formerly known as Laibach). However, there are many many super budget label CDs out there credited to Nanut/Ljubljana which he had nothing to do with.
(The only reason anyone has even done the detective work on the above case is because the real Anton Nanut's recordings of Mahler symphonies are in fact superb, though not very well engineered).
This subject is actually pretty fun. There are classical nerds who have devoted whole articles to this strange twilight world of the same crappy batch of orchestral recordings appearing over and over again under innumerable fake conductor and orchestra names... can the real 'Alberto Lizzio' please stand up?
An A/B comparison of the LP to the TV shows themselves confirm that the LP contains the actual music tracks heard in the shows. They are not re-recordings.
Dan, a mint copy is currently up for sale on eBay for $25.00. I'd grab it NOW if I were you. I imagine that sweet price stems from a current state of obscurity born out of Herrmann and vinyl both having drifted off the general radar of music dealers under 30 years of age (remember it is 2012 and the Me channel - showing programs scored by Benny - caters to viewers now collecting pensions). I'll bet you my next meals-on-wheels that if SAE or RTS were selling a copy it would be for much more than 25 bucks. Personally I would put the value of this LP - specifically based on the info shared on this thread - in the hundreds of dollars. / Jim, your post is amazing. How do you guys do this? It is so cool that such details are not completely lost under the clutter of corporate and political crap, noise and paranoia. There are still solid folk in America (like us) who care about things that don't have to do with greed or fear. It takes a stable mind to focus in on wonderful realities such as the fine art preserved on obscure record albums of score for 1950s / 60s television programming. THE RICHARD BOONE SHOW for God's sake! I've been a TV nut since I became cognizant of stuff beyond my crib bars, probably around 1960, and I have never even seen this show (I've read about it and it was supposed to be quite good and even ahead of it's time). But here we are keeping the historical flame alive (vital) in some of the more remote corners of the arena of popular culture. Very, very cool, and this sort of thing makes me proud to be, like you fellows, more than just a collector but also a scholar of the art of film and TV music. Some of you people could probably be teaching courses!
Dan, also a seller at MusicStack is offering the LP along with an audio mastered CDR (with artwork) for 80 bucks. I bought one of these "package deals" just last year - the Annie Ross end titles ballad on 45 from the Hammer thriller STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING. The film is not so great but the song is quite lovely and haunting.
Thanks for the kind comments. I have been a Herrmann fanatic since grade school back in the '60s. It all started with seeing sci-fi and fantasy films like THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and MYSTERIOUS ISLAND on TV. Even then Herrmann's music got to me. I count myself lucky that I was alive at a time when you could still go to theatre and see a brand new Bernard Herrmann film.
Over the years, I bought every Herrmann record and CD I could lay my hands on. Then, through ways I can't even remember (WAY before the internet), I got in touch with other collectors and researchers, and we happily traded info, tapes, VHSs, etc. In those pre-database days, it was always a thrill when someone would discover some new information (like TV and radio shows Herrmann scored). Everybody gained from it, and slowly, most Herrmann mysteries were solved, such as the contents of the Cine-Sound LP.
Jim, same basic history for me! It was Herrmann and Barry who got me hooked on film music, and Herrmann and Frontiere on TV. Herrmann's music for Harryhausen and DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and Barry's early Bond scores, and the TV music of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE OUTER LIMITS and THE INVADERS all obsessed me! As a little kid, before I could even start buying records, I would work very hard at catching my favorite movie and TV themes on TV. By the late 60s / early 70s I began my LP collection, even though it would still be a few years before I had saved enough money to buy my own record player. Until then I would lug my albums around to relatives homes and use their record players - those (by now vintage) cabinet console jobs! My aunt Blanche was a saint who never complained about my always being in her living room blasting THUNDERBALL or THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD as she sat and did her knitting! Blanche is now 100 years old and she still has that console! I finally saved 700 bucks (a fortune back then) and bought myself a pretty nice component system - I loved that stereo (now long gone of course). I spent countless hours in my bedroom immersed in the ravishing art of Barry (THE IPCRESS FILE, THE LION IN WINTER), Herrmann (SISTERS, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR and DePalma's OBSESSION and Concerto Macabre - the last two would frequently overwhelm me and bring me to tears) and Goldsmith (THE PLANET OF THE APES and OUR MAN FLINT). Certain pieces of score effected me so strongly that I will probably never forget the first time I experienced them - Herrmann's main title and Baghdad for SEVENTH VOYAGE, main title and GORT from DAY, Mountain Top-Sunrise from JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, Barry's main titles for THE LION IN WINTER and THE IPCRESS FILE and especially ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE - that main title utterly blew me away! To this day I still feel damn lucky to have been a teenager sitting in a darkened movie theater and hearing Barry's music as it played for the first time - I actually new I was living a special moment in the history of popular culture! I have managed to collect the nearly complete Herrmann and Barry on both vinyl and CD and I am very grateful to have such a wonderful music library in my home. I will be listening to this stuff until I kick the bucket. The Silver Age of the 20th Century - the best time to grow up on planet Earth and be a soundtrack fan! / My story continued as later I discovered the incredible world of the Italian Silver Age - amazing!
