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Posted: |
Sep 20, 2009 - 9:06 AM
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By: |
Martial
(Member)
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An official announcement from Universal Jazz Music (French label) :
John Barry / Americans
Universal Music Jazz France
CD release on November the 9th
Walking a tightrope between the wide-screen spectacular and the film d'auteur, John Barry is a sensitive and sophisticated composer whose most famous scores (say, action movies, the Bond films and The Persuaders), were poor camouflage for a more secret form of inspiration whose character was introspective. In Barry's career, Americans stands out clearly. In 1975, Polydor Records gave John Barry the opportunity to freely record a quite personal 12" LP that was his first album outside films, and Barry structured his Americans concept: a vast album that reflected his visual and sound-impressions of The United States in six original compositions, including a sumptuous Yesternight suite some eighteen minutes long. "It's like an imaginary soundtrack," says the composer. "Instead of appearing on a screen, the images come up from inside me." Combining some of the best soloists in jazz (Dick Nash, Ronnie Lang, Tony Terran) with a symphony orchestra, Americans is a permanent firework display that constitutes a peak in the composer's opus, a work whose swing allows glimpses of an overhanging melancholy tinged with lyrical tristesse and disillusionment. With this first issue of Americans on CD, John Barry makes his entrance in the Ecoutez le cinéma! series. More than a simple reissue, it's an event.
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At bloody last. Is there a link?
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The thing about Americans is that while it is recognisably Barry in certain ways, it was a genuine departure and not really like anything else he was doing at the time.
There is one cue near the end which strays close to 'Day Of The Locust' (the burning of Hollywood sequence). And I guess there's some likeness with the jazz version of The Whisperers. (In fact, that's probably the closest thing Barry had done to Americans by that time.)
Apart from that it's basically a John Barry easy listening jazz album.
I suppose it's not a million miles away from Playing By Heart. And you can hear foreshadows of other bluesy scores that Barry did like Hammett, Mike's Murder and Body Heat. But they all came later. At the time it came out, Americans was something pretty much new for Barry.
It's quite bluesy. Not as dramatic as the film scores he was doing at the time. Maybe even a bit 'light' and whimsical. However, it's the kind of soulful jazz you can really get absorbed in. Perfect for a late night by the fireside with a whiskey.
Cheers
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It's a jazz hommage album to the great Americans who pioneered it.
I never liked it.
But if jazz is your thing, delightful.
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BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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they're not out of print because they're not limited.
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