André Previn – Rollerball OST – Executive Party
United Artists Records – UA 36 033 Releaesed 1975
Track A: Executive Party
Track B: Executive Party Dance
Jazz influenced classical music composer-conductor, Andre Previn was responsible for one of the most funkiest spaced out film tracks you will ever hear, called Executive Party, released for the Rollerball soundtrack in 1975. Although I had watched this movie numerous times, the first time I really gave this track some serious and well deserved attention, was when I purchased the The Mighty Mellow (A Folk – Funk Psychedelic Experience) compilation in 1997, from the infamous Sydney record store Good Groove, which was recommended by the owner Tom. The comps linear notes and information was vague, mixed up and song titles were incorrect. I was certain that Andre Previn was incorrectly credited until I discovered it was from his Rollerball soundtrack.
Previn was born in Berlin to a Jewish family, with three children of Charlotte and Jack Previn, a father who was a lawyer, judge, and music teacher. All three children received piano lessons but André was the one who enjoyed them from the start and displayed the most talent. At six, he enrolled at the Berlin Conservatory. In 1938, Previn’s father was told that his son was no longer welcome at the conservatory, despite André receiving a full scholarship in recognition of his abilities, on the grounds that he was Jewish.In 1938, the family left Berlin for Paris, and Previn’s father enrolled him into the Conservatoire de Paris where he learned music theory. In 1938 his family left Paris and sailed to New York City, then their journey continued to Los Angeles, and Previn learned English, his third language after German and French, through comic books, reading the dictionary, and watching films.
In 1946 he graduated from Beverly Hills High School, but had already started working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a composer-conductor, and arranger, after their music department noticed his work for a local radio program and hired him. Previn recalled that MGM was “looking for somebody who was talented, fast and cheap and, because I was a kid, I was all three. So they hired me to do piecework and I evidently did it very well”. Previn focused his attention on film scores and jazz, and stayed at MGM for 16 years, but despite the secure job and good pay, he had come to feel increasingly confined, and consequently desired to pursue classical music outside of film scores. He resigned from MGM at 32, wanting “to gamble with whatever talent I might have had”.
Previn would branch out into classical music, theatre, easy listening music and contemporary classical music. His jazz recordings, as both leader and sideman, were primarily during two periods: from 1945 to 1967, and from 1989 to 2001, with just a handful of recordings in between or afterward. Previn was involved in creating the music for over 50 films and won four Academy Awards* for his work, and in 1966, Previn was the first person in the history of the Academy Awards to receive three nominations in one year. Some of his releases that I lean towards to, are two collaborations…Ravi Shankar & André Previn – London Symphony Orchestra Concerto For Sitar & Orchestra, from 1971, and the Valley Of The Dolls soundtrack, which was conducted by John Willams, and feature song composing by Previn and his then wife Dory, who was a poet, lyricist and singer song writer. I’m also a admirer of his Holst release of The Planets, Op. 32, in 1974.
Rollerball is a classic seventies sci-fi action film, with a large cult following and a very iconic look. It was directed by Norman Jewson, who had also directed The Cincinnati Kid (1965), In The Heat Of The Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), amongst others. These all did well for him, and taking on this dark, futuristic, violent action film, must have been a challenging curve ball he was looking for.
The Storyline: In a futuristic society where corporations have replaced countries, the violent game of Rollerball is used to control the populace by demonstrating the futility of individuality. However, one player, Jonathan E., rises to the top, fights for his personal freedom, and threatens the corporate control (IMDB – Jeff Hansen). The film is based on a short story by William Harrison’s “Roller Ball Murder”, first released in Esquire magazine in 1973. Although Rollerball may first look like a science fiction sports movie, it’s actually a deep philosophical look into a dystopian future, and looks into government control versus free will. James Cann plays the hero Jonathan, the ultimate champion and hero of Rollerball, and is adored by masses of fans of the blood sport. But he is getting on, well for a demanding sport that is evolving by becoming increasingly more violent. However the head of the energy corporation who runs society, wants him to retire, but when Jonathan refuses, things get intensely dangerous, and the game becomes a fight for his life. The film demonstrates that the individual can triumph over insurmountable odds and cautions against corporate control of society.
Jewson was a big fan of A Clockwork Orange, and used the film as a reference point for defining a world of concrete and steel imagery. He also adopted the idea of using classical music for this fierce movie, because of Clockwork, and also 2001 A Space Odyssey, and believed the timeless score would less likely age the film in the future. Previn composers The London Symphony Orchestra to perform Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 movements to establish tone, mood, and atmosphere for certain scenes, and also cunningly uses Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Waltz for action and drama. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor plays during the opening title sequence and again at the final scene, book-ending the film. Previn wrote the space jazz track Executive Party and it’s lounge accomplice Executive Party Dance, and as isolating as they may seem on the album, they sit well within the more laid back dining scenes in the movie. Unfortunately Executive Party, one of my most favourite soundtrack instrumentals of all time, clocks in at only 1. min 47sec. But there’s also something nice about that.
These two tracks may feel odd or misplaced on the LP, amongst Previn’s composed The London Symphony Orchestra works. And I’m sure many like myself, that knew this track, before finding a copy of the soundtrack, were expecting and hoping for more wigged out grooves, like these featured tracks. But it shows us the diversity and dexterity of Previn’s mind, and how he was an artist of all musical styles. After learning more about Previn and this soundtrack, I like how the tracks sit amongst the classical tracks on film and on vinyl. I do admit I wish there was more of this to be found in his extensive catalogue, but I’m ever so grateful that these tracks not just made their place onto the LP, but also were released as 7″ singles.
* Previn won four Academy Awards for Gigi (1958), Porgy And Bess (1959), Irma La douce (1963) My Fair Lady (1964) and was nominated 11 times.
Previn was married four times which included 9 years with Mia Farrow.
Newsom has been nominated for the Academy Award Best Director three times in three separate decades for In the Heat of the Night (1967), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Moonstruck (1987).
Japanese and French movie poster releases.
If you like this kinda stuff, check out some other soundtrack titles I’ve dug into….
Berto Pisano featuring Doris Troy – Kill! Them All!
Patrizia Pellegrino – Automaticamore
CGD 10322 Italy Year 1981
Track 1 : Automaticamore
I’m a bit of an Italian “disco” victim and can go weak at the ginocchia (that means knees apparently) when I hear that particular chemistry of new wave electronica, a breathy Italian voice, and a polished spaced out production, combining as one beautiful moment of sound. This lovely track from Patrizia Pellegrino, came out in the early 80’s when this sound was in it’s element. It is a specific genre from a particular time, with a tone I’ve always loved, maybe because it takes me back to my very early teen days, when this “new” exciting style was emerging. While I never had access to this particular Italian style of new wave synth disco back then, it somehow still feels like it fits in to the hair gel scene was I discovering in the early eighties. I’ve been obsessing over this era of Italian dance music for some years, and thought this track from Patrizia, would be a good one to share.
Patrizia Pellegrino was born on July 28, 1962 in Torre Annunziata, Campania, Italy. She is an actress, producer and TV presenter, and today is still a much admired celebrity figure. She released 6 singles between 1981 and 1991, on various Italian labels, and most to me, feel very aimed towards the commercial pop dance floors. It’s very difficult to find any sales numbers for any of these singles, as it was such an inclusive euro market and scene, but that’s not to say her songs weren’t popular. I’m sure they were well loved sound tracks to many.
The stand out for me in Pellegrino’s catalogue is this track Automaticamore, which happens to be the flip side of her debut single Beng!!!. Arranged and directed by Jean-Pierre Posit (real name Claudio Gizzi), a name unfamiliar to me, but after looking up his credentials, looks like he was responsible for releasing quite a number of “easy listening” instrumental recordings throughout the seventies and eighties. After a bit of a dig into his library, Saint-Blas from 1975 would be my top pick which has a really nice synth jazz percussive soundtrack feel to it.
The production on this beautiful mid tempo track is clean and bright, and has a classy Giorgio Moroder feel to it. Pellegrino’s distant whispery voice is mixed so nicely with the defined bass lines and the period correct staccato muted guitars, along with the bright and saturized keyboards and synthesized choir lines. It’s so beautifully eighties and a perfect journey into the stars! This is a nice one to play over a cocktail in a dark room, or late into the night to a beautiful chilled out room.
Pellegrino also had an acting career that started in the early eighties, appearing both on the TV and the movie screens. In 1984 she starred in Breakdance Sensation ’84, about a an Italian dance group that travels to a break dance competition in New York (Pellegrino plays Sharon, one of the key dancers). Directed by Vittorio De Sisti, the film came out to exploit the current break dance craze, but actually featured very little break dancing other than some (presumably second unit) footage of the notorious breakdancer, Mr. Robot. I was able to discover one clip only of the Disco dance contest sequence, which features the “break dancing” contest. See the link below…it’s pretty fun! While Pellegrino wouldn’t appear on any of the recordings, the songs included on the soundtrack including Shannon’s Let The Music Play, make it a respectable record to get a hold off. The film has heavily promoted in Germany, and is sometimes referred with the title Dance Music.
Pellegrino would also star in Italian Boys, around the same time, a film about a group of young DJs who embark on a disco challenge to win the money they need to save their radio channel, Trip Radio. Due to a total economic loss, the rebellious group decides to kidnap the popular DJ Umberto, so as to gain an audience for the broadcaster. However it is soon feared that given Umberto’s success, radio station owner Doctor Viganò decides to keep only him and fire the others. Anyway, reading various descriptions (I have yet to see this film), it seems to get a bit twisted with different parties running scams to either suit their own advantages or save the station. But again, the finale looks like it has another contest of sorts, between a popular rival station and a dj challenge thrown down, to see who can gain the bigger audience. Whoever wins will be rewarded with a lot of money and a flamboyant classy car.
Pellegrino looked like she had a pretty good run with film appearances around this time, starring in Se tutto va bene siamo rovinati (1983), and also being included in the film Final Justice (1984) aswell as starring in Vacanze d’estate (1985). You can see a full list of her film and TV appearances on her current official website (see link below).
As far as further recordings, Pellegrino would release only a small number of singles in the following years, with her final release in 1992. If this feature track is doing it for you, I do suggest have a listen to Musica Spaziale, released a year later in 1982. It’s pretty great. However while none of the later recordings are really my cappuccino, they seem to all be highly sort today, proving she still has a strong fan base, and probably not just in the vinyl collecting world. But I myself, am very content on playing the timeless Automaticamore on endless rotations, for many years to come!
Breakdance Sensation ’84 – Disco Dance Contest (Movie Scene)
Zeudi Araya (Piero Umiliani) – Oltre L’Acqua Del Fiume
La Ragazza Fuoristrada OST Piero Umiliani – Bla Bla – BBR 1338 Italy 1973
Track A: Oltre L’Acqua Del Fiume
This is a pretty special one, among my beloved mountain of 7″ soundtracks, and these tracks are in fact the only recordings by Eritrean-born Italian actress Zeudi Araya. The A track is fascinating and quite a hypnotizing piece, that pulls you right down into the beautiful deep dark water of sensuality. Composer Piero Umiliani recorded the soundtrack for La Ragazza Fuoristrada in 1973, which starred Zeudi in the lead role as Maryam, but for some reason the two vocal recordings for the film, did not end up on the soundtrack LP. But instead, and thankfully, they did end up on this Italian released single!
Piero was much more than a talented piano player and composer. He truly was one of the top master and pioneer composers of cult Italian films of the 60’s and 70’s. Providing soundtracks to films such a Il Marchio Di Kriminal 1968, Paranoia (Orgasmo) 1969, Five Dolls For An August Moon (5 Bambole Per La Luna D’Agosto) 1971, My Darling Slave (La Schiava Io Ce L’Ho E Tu No) 1973 and of course Sweden Heaven and Hell (Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso) 1968 in which Umiliani composes his famous Mah Nà Mah Nà, made famous by The Muppets.
Umiliani also founded his own label Omicron in 1964, where many more of his soundtrack works would be released. As he would also compose a lot of way out compositions that would not appeal to the Italian producers, this became the perfect outlet for him to release some of his incredible abstract, experimental and library albums such as Preistoria, Atmospheres, L’Uomo Nello Spazio and Psichedelica (Umiliani was also a great collector of music instruments from all over the world, and was one of the first in Italy to experiment with the Moog and other electronic keyboards). Some of his releases were under the alias Moggi, including my favorite Tra Scienza E Fantascienza from 1980, and also Omaggio a Einstein, Tensione and News! News! News!. By the end of his career he had written more than 150 soundtracks, without considering the music composed for documentaries, theatre and television.
While there’s so much to know and discover about the great Umiliani, unfortunately there’s not a lot out there regarding Zeudi. No official website and all the general film and music go to sites are very brief and unhelpful. Which is a real shame of course. Thankfully there’s one or two Italian websites that share a few details, that I’ve hopefully translated correctly.
Zeudi Araya was born on the 10th of February, 1951, in Asmara, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and is a former actress, singer, model and currently a film producer. Zeudi was the daughter of a politician and granddaughter of an Ethiopian ambassador to Rome. She graduated in 1969, and the same year she was elected Miss Eritrea. She is one of the best-known actresses of the Italian erotic cinema of the seventies, thanks to films such as La Ragazza Dalla Pelle Di Luna, La Ragazza Fuoristrada, and Il Corpo, and was second only to Laura Gemser, another icon of that particular Italian genre of cinema.
A trip to Italy opened the doors of Cinecittà to her almost by chance. In 1972 Araya starred in a commercial for a coffee, where director Luigi Scattini noticed her, and would cast her along with Beba Lončar, in his film La Ragazza Dalla Pelle Di Luna, shot in the Seychelles. The film is noted as being quite successful with the Italian audiences. The role was that of a girl from the Tropics who screwed up the marriage of a middle-class couple, with her overwhelming eroticism. Alberto, an engineer, and Helen, a magazine photographer, had been married for a few years, but their marriage was in crisis and they would betray one another. This debut film launched Araya as an up and coming actress. Mass media interest followed, as did other erotic films roles, mostly directed by Scattini from 1973 to 1975.
So the plot in her follow up film, that includes this feature track, La Ragazza Fuoristrada, again really circles deeply around Zeudi and her stunning model looks. Giorgio Martini, an advertising journalist who went for a shoot in Egypt, falls in love with the beautiful Maryam. He takes her with him to Ferrara, Italy, introduces her to his perplexed (perhaps disapproving) parents and marries her. Maryam’s ingenuity, spontaneity and sincerity burst into this provincial town and collide with a hypocritical, mean and racist environment. He will then be the victim of the cruel game of a former mistress of the journalist and of a joke combined by two rejected friends. Giorgio, thinking that Maryam has betrayed him, begins to neglect her. After having an abortion, she abandons him and returns to her people. Umiliani’s score throughout this film is wonderfully suited and at times just breathe taking (I’m basing this from the clips I have seen and knowing the official soundtrack). Zeudi sings two songs in the movie, Oltre l’acqua del fiume in Italian and Maryam, in Amharic. If you spend most of your life tracking down this rare record, and you do happen to get your hands on it, you’ll likely not be disappointed that it doesn’t contain the two vocal tracks, although you will then need to track done this featured single.
After Araya’s marriage with the film producer Franco Cristaldi, she would go on to star in the films Mr. Robinson in 1976, Atrocious Tales of Love and Death in 1979, and staring Marcello Mastroianni and Ornella Muti, Tesoro Mio also in 1979, than a fantasy film called Hearts and Armour in 1983, and starring the late Tanya Roberts as Isabella, and finally in Control in 1987.
In the early 1990s, Araya withdrew from the film scene. After the death of her husband, Araya became an active part of film production work, and still today produces several films for cinema and television, always remaining behind the scenes (she returned to television only in 2001, interviewed by Daniele Luttazzi, for the program Satyricon), with her new partner, the director Massimo Spano, with whom she had a son.
As is the case with a lot of these obscure Italian films, they are difficult to source, and therefore I have not had the privilege to enjoy many of them, including the film that has this featured track. But for me, that doesn’t really matter so much as I love the music enough and that’s where it holds that special place. I will continue to try and find these obscure films ofcourse but it is a challenge, trust me.
Zeudi Araya also also appeared in the Italian version of Playboy magazine in March 1974, which I may have to track down, to you know, maybe find out more information about her.
Araya’s starring films…
1972 La ragazza dalla pelle di luna – Also known as The Girl With The Moon Skin, Sex of Their Bodies, Moon Skin and The Sinner
1973 La ragazza fuoristrada
1974 La Preda – Also known as The Prey
1974 Il Corpo – Also known as The Body
1975 La peccatrice – Also known as The Sinner
1976 Il signor Robinson, mostruosa storia d’amore e d’avventure – Also known as Mr. Robinson
1979 Giallo Napoletano – Also known as Atrocious Tales of Love and Death
1979 Tesoro Mio
1983 Hearts and Armour – Also known as I Paladini: Storia d’armi e d’amori
1987 Il giorno prima – Also known as Control and Mind Control
Websites and referencing…
Piero Umiliani official web site
Mitiche attrici anni 70 – ZEUDI ARAYA
Top photo taken from Umiliani’s official site (link above). Director Luigi Scattini, Zeudi Araya and Piero Umiliani in the studio for the La Ragazza Fuoristrada sessions.
If you’re interested in more Italian 7″ soundtrack singles, see links below…
Placebo – Balek
CBS 1647 Netherlands 1973
12 years ago today we lost the legendary Marc Moulin, so I thought this is a nice opportunity to post the one and only seven inch Placebo ever released, in his honour. I was hoping I’d be able to dig up and share some hidden knowledge about this great man, but despite his legendary cult following even to this day, still not much out there that hasn’t really been shared before. I will however link to some rare footage and interviews that I have sourced and referenced below post.
The Belgian musician, producer and journalist was without a doubt a pioneer to experimental electro jazz funk. An absolute master on keyboard and synthesizer, his pre-hip hop rhythms and sound experiments was more than high end musicianship, but was also luminescent artistry at it’s peak.
Moulin began his career in the 1960s playing the piano throughout Europe and in 1961 won the Bobby Jaspar trophy for Best Soloist at the Comblain-la-Tour festival. In the early-mid seventies, Moulin formed the jazz-rock group Placebo with his close friend, guitar player Philip Catherine. They released three LP’s from 1971 to 1974 and were widely played on the alternative scene in the early 70’s. The first two Lp’s Ball Of Eyes and 1973 are the real blazers, but all 3 releases are believed to have very low pressing numbers, resulting in big money exchanges for original copies. But of course the allure comes down to every moment in between every groove.
Balek is a deep dark and cosmic journey and thankfully runs it’s entirety on this 7″, however it’s beautifully sedated flip Phalène II, is understandably an edited down version due to it’s running time on nearly 8 mins on the LP. As a music blog, I prefer not to try and describe sounds, moods and feelings, and instead would prefer the listener to appreciate their own ears and interruptions. But if I was too try and describe Balek? Balek is a dark light. It is science fiction in it’s sexiest form. It is flesh made up from electric energy. Creeping and slithering, seductively, enticing the soul. It is an ageless composition that has not lost any lustre since conception, and will continue to be sampled and held up in high regard by music enthusiasts and record collectors around the world. The LP 1973 as a whole, is a trip of syncopated moods and Balek is quite the pleasant disturbance. Even with everything that has happened in music from the then to the now, this instrumental album still engages defiantly. The excitement Placebo must have stirred up among the underground hipster jazz heads, with their groundbreaking and captivating musical explorations, must have been at the height of praise at the time.
In 1975 Moulin would release another underground showpiece entitled Sam’ Suffy, this, his premier solo album. A compelling and unique mosaic of jazz, soul, and electronic elements, it now has become highly influential, especially in acid jazz, hip and trip hop circles around the planet. Many fans say this is Moulin at his best. It’s a stunning piece of work, comparable to a cinematic dream.
Following Placebo’s breakup in 76, Moulin went on to become a member of the avant-rock band Aksak Maboul in1977 and also formed the space pop group Telex in 1978. Alongside programmer/sound engineer Dan Lacksman and vocalist Michel Moers, Telex would release five albums between 1979 and 1988 and would end up with some big sales in Europe, UK and in the US, with their unique quirky computer electro dancers.
During the ’80s, Moulin worked as a radio producer, and was the big shot of a revolutionary FM radio station in Belgium, Radio Cité. He would interview greats such as Miles Davis, and also wrote for various Belgian publications, including ‘Télémoustique’. I highly recommend you check out the link below to witness the live recording of Placebo in Bruxelles (Belgium, 12th April 1973).
Moulin died of throat cancer on 26 September 2008. He was 66 years old.
Below are links of sourced material and related interests…
Placebo extract from the 55 minutes documentary “Three Days In April”
Jazz en Belgique- Three Days In April
Miles Davis interview Marc Moulin
La fabrication de Moscow Diskow (Telex)
Placebo credited line up
Marc Moulin Arranged By, Composed By, Keyboards, Synthesizer
Drums – Garcia Morales
Guitar – Francis Weyer, Philip Catherine
Percussion – J.P. Oenraedt
Saxophone, Flute, Accordion – Alex Scorier
Trumpet – Nicolas Fissette
Trumpet [Electric], Flugelhorn – Richard Rousselet
Bass – Yvan De Souter
Christy – Deep Down (Danger: Diabolik OST)
Parade PRC 5052 Italy 10 Jan 1968
For many years I’ve been a huge fan of those dark Italian cinematic soundtracks from the 60’s and 70’s, but If I had to specify a period in my life where it all started, I have to honestly say it was way back in my childhood. Growing up in the 70’s, occasionally those great spaghetti westerns were screened on the TV, if very late, on a Saturday night. And while I was most of the time permitted to sit alongside and experience these great films with my papa, I somehow doubt I would have lasted the distance at that time of night. However the dramatic opening titles definitely pulled me in, and they stuck and still are quite memorable for me today. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly was one of those films, and it so happened that my papa also owned the picture sleeve 45 (the Hugo Montenegro version) which I would play over and over.
But it wasn’t until many years later, as I was growing up and started to dig deeper into the heart and soul of music, did I start realising the great names and achievements of these composers. Nino Rota, Armando Trovajoli, Piero Umiliani, Piero Piccioni…these and many more were true masters of the genre. But there is no argument that it is Ennio Morricone who is the ruler of the castle, who stands tallest without a doubt, on that high cinematic mountain.
One of Morricone’s strongest elements of his work has to be depth and atmosphere, and in the 60’s, there was a plenty of it. Many of his compositions and film scores were immersed with very deep, haunting and many times sensual flavours. Moody female vocals would be key, and were often used as background instruments rather than lyrically. Now while this Morricone sound is famous today, and those vocals are such an important and recognisable ingredient, it’s still difficult to find out a real lot about these incredible singers, as is the case with Christy (and also Edda Dell’Orso from previous post). Luckily I have a few friends who are big fans (such as Brendan Young aka dj Diabolik) who have been able to give me a few leads to follow.
Maria Cristina Brancucci was born in Rome on April 20, 1940. In 1966 Morricone took her into the recording studio to lay down some vocal tracks for Sergio Sollima’s feature La Resa Dei Conti. It was a big spaghetti western that deserved a big opening title track, which she provided so appropriately with Run Man Run. The film falls under the subgenre called Zapata Westerns (spaghetti westerns with some political context usually concerning the Mexican revolution) and was co-written by long time Sergio Leone collaborator Sergio Donati. With Tomás Milián who plays Cuchillo and bounty hunter Jonathan Corbett, who is played by Lee Van Cleef, it is today considered as one of the best Italian Westerns ever made due to its tightly directed staged scenes and genius score. The English release, The Big Gundown, would also provide an alternate English version of “Run”, but I definitely lean more towards the more pure Italian version.
In 1967, Christy calibrated with Morricone for the spy spoof OK Connery (re-titled Operation Kid Brother for the US). The plot involves an evil criminal named Thanato, who is bent on taking over the world, using a magnetic wave generator that will cause all metal-based machinery to grind to a halt. However, the secret agent normally assigned to such tasks isn’t available, so they engage his civilian brother, Neil, who is a world class plastic surgeon, hypnotist, and lip reader, which turn out to be precisely the skills required for thwarting Thanatos. Sean Connery’s brother Neil, actually plays the role of the surgeon, and the film includes a bunch of familiar bond faces including Bernard Lee, the original M from the Bond series, and the original Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell. Former Miss Rome and Miss World 1960 runner up Daniela Bianchi, is also starring in the wild romp and she sizzles just as you would hope and expect from an Italian beauty queen!
In 1968 Christy would be called upon again for another western, Tepepa (also known as Long Live the Revolution and Blood and Guns), this time directed by Giulio Petroni. The film stars Tomas Milian as the Mexican revolutionary leader, Jesus Maria Moran a.k.a. Tepepa, and in opposing roles, Orson Welles as Colonel Cascorro, and John Steiner as Doctor Henry Price, who saves Tepepa from the firing squad in order to exact personal revenge for the death of his fiancée. Christy provides the fitting dramatic Al Messico Che Vorrei, again with Morricone at the wheel.
In the late sixties, Christy’s 7″ release Deep Down was recorded for Mario Bava’s diabolical Danger: Diabolik masterpiece. If you happen to be a fan of pop mod spy action films, then this is your movie! It’s bizarre Italian cult cinema at it’s best, and needless to say, it’s legendary with Italian genre film buffs. But even before the 1968 cinematic hero existed, the myth was well and truly alive in the form of a long running controversial pocket sized publication entitled Diabolik. It was created by former secretary, editor and model Angela Giussani, who founded the Astorina publishing house, a company that was limited to board and Western card games. Angela really studied the market and concluded that many commuters liked to read mystery novels. She imagined a magazine commuters could read during their trips, that was entertaining yet intriguing, with breathtaking action.
Inspired by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre’s Fantomas, Angela and her younger sister Luciana, who had now started working with her, came up with the handsome masked criminal, who would be seen really as an anti-hero for grown-ups of both sexes. The first issue had a dark yet vibrant cover of a masked man in the background and a woman screaming in the foreground, with the subtitle “Il fumetto del brivido” (The comic book of terror). This really highlighted that the publication was aimed at an audience of grown-ups, who likely preferred noir novels, something rather unique for those times when comics were considered as light entertainment for kids. Luciana collaborated with her on the series’ stories starting from issue #13, and the exciting adventures evolved. Diabolik was soon a successful working man’s super hero which has sold more than 150 million copies since he made his first appearance.
In the Dino De Laurentiis produced feature film, John Phillip Law plays the “master sports car racer, master skin diver, master lover”, Diabolik, and the stunning Austrian Marisa Mell plays his girlfriend Eva Kant. The movie is a real trip. It’s got that great 60’s vibrant Technicolour palette, over the top action and charismatic characters, and like its De Laurentiis companion Barbarella, it’s damn sexy! (1*)
So the plot in a nut shell is. After an armored car leaves the bank with ten-million dollars, Diabolik manages to attack and steal the money, escaping with his partner. He heads back to his secret underground electronic hideout where he decides to steal the famous Aksand emerald necklace for Eva’s birthday from the Saint Just Castle. He out smarts the law, as he has done so many times before, and succeeds, but gangster Ralph Valmont finds a way to kidnap Eva and holds her up for ransom. With the ten million dollars and emerald necklace for trade, Diabolik sets off to the rescue. Eva makes her escape and Diabolik kills Valmont, but this time he is trapped and faces a shiny gold plated death. The police find Diabolik and proclaim him dead, but soon it is revealed that he has in fact faked his death through a technique taught to him by Tibetan lamas. He returns to life, however if he does not get the antidote within 12 hours, he will die. I think I’ll leave it there and keep you all hanging, so you can go out and find a copy to see how it all unfolds for the anti hero.
The film is typical of a De Laurentiis production, and while some just can’t see the beauty in this genre, tagging it as camp and cheese, I seriously love this kind of film making. For me everything works as it only could have, in that late sixties era of cinema history. And when the psychedelic spiraling open titles kick in, again we have the great Christy-Morricone collaboration with Deep Down. This time, as opposed to her previous more expressive soundtrack recordings, Christy is far more subtle with her approach. It’s actually very sensual and her vocals riding nicely up alongside the distorted whaling guitar that brands the composition. Don’t get me wrong, she stills sings with her gusto and passion, but this time it’s the whispery voice that really draws you in here. The genius of Morricone shines in this perfect collaboration. Some may find this surprising, but this Parade 1968 single featured, is the only vinyl to be officially released from this infamous underground cult film. The word on the street is that all masters and recordings of Morricone’s work for the film were destroyed in a studio fire. An “unofficial” soundtrack on Sycodelic in 2001 was released but it is believed that these recordings may have been ripped from a laser disc edition of the film, as some sound effects and dialogue are evident throughout. What you will find on this release are 3 alternate versions of Deep Down performed by Edda Dell’Orso (featured on my last post) and the incredible psychedelic Valmont’s Go Go Pad and Underwater Wah-Wa. Crazy fabulous stuff! This featured isolated Diabolik single is flipped with the unconnected Amore Amore Amore, which was produced by Piero Piccioni for Alberto Sordi’s 1967 film Un italiano in America.
Deep Down is such a great little 7″ and a bit of a shining gem in my collection, obviously because it’s an important piece of Diabolik history, but also because I just love this song so, so, so very much. It’s not too difficult to find and it plays nicely for those early cocktail sets. Deep Down was recently covered by Mike Patton on his Mondo Cane Lp, and there’s some great clips online, in particularly the live footage at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam, you may want to search. Whether fans agree if Patton gives the song it’s deserved justice or not, I don’t know, But I have to say, once those horns kick in on that live version, the hairs do rise!
In the late 60s Christy recorded more pop songs (including a great version of Quando Quando Quando) and ended up a popular Italian TV variety artist for a number of years. Today she’s now a well known voice actor, who dubbed Barbara Streisand’s voice for the Italian version of Funny Girl, and has worked on countless animated films including The Princess and the Frog, Anastasia, Bambi, Beauty and the Beast, The Three Musketeers and The Lion King 3.
(1*) The release of Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik lead to a minor trend of adaptations of comic strips that emphasized mild sado-masochism and late 1960s fetish gear. These films were followed up with Piero Vivarelli’s Satanik (1968), Bruno Corbucci’s Isabella, duchessa dei diavoli (1969) and Corrado Farina’s Baba Yaga (1973) which had a Piero Umiliani soundtrack.
Black and white photo. Angela and Luciana Giussani, the creators of the comic book Diabolik, in their studio, 27th September 1966 (photo credit unknown).
Danger: Diabolik! Trailer
Recommended reading… Anna Battista’s irenebrination
Edda Dell’Orso – Kukumbe (Le montagne della luce)
Ricordi SRL 10781 Italy 1975
As that saying goes, behind every great man, there is a great lady, but there was more than one that strengthened one particular composer’s work if we’re talking about Morricone. A key element so important to his sound, Morricone would expose and you could even say, flaunt his leading ladies up front in the mix down, even if they were at the time providing background sounds or atmospheric vocals.
I’m going to parallel two posts celebrating two important women with names that are synonymous with Morricone, particularly from the 60’s and 70’s, when that era of his film scores were infamous for that beautiful sensual psychedelic and at some times haunting sound. But I also want to present other composer’s that all contributed to that now distinctive classic Italian cinematic sound if that time. This post I’ll be looking into an Edda Dell’Orsa composition she undertook for one of those other composers, and with a follow up post, I will pursue a journey into the works of Maria Cristina Brancucci, also known as Christy. As always, I wish I was able to enlighten you all with more information about Dell’Orso’s musical journey, but facts and life details are a little mysterious and not too easy to come by. However I will go through a bunch of my favourite Edda tracks and touch on some of those great composer contributions.
Edda Lucia Sabatini, was born in Genoa, Italy on February 16, 1935 and married pianist Giacomo Dell’Orso in 1958. She studied singing and piano at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome from around 1958, and in time she would possess a beautiful soprano voice with a three octave range that would stamp many now legendary composers work.
Around the mid sixties, Morricone was the first composer and conductor to use her astonishing voice for a feature film, and with immense artistry, he created unforgettable innovative vocal lines and sound effects. One of those early soundtracks was for Sergio Leone’s 1966 Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and it includes one of the most celebrated Morricone’s themes, The Ecstasy of Gold, which is played while Tuco is frantically searching a cemetery for the grave that holds $200,000 in gold coins. This amazing piece of cinematic music has been covered from Yo Yo Ma to Metallica, but as famous as this soundtrack is today, Edda was actually was uncredited for her part. The soundtrack album was on the charts for more than a year, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard pop album chart and No. 10 on the black album chart. The main theme was also a hit for American musician Hugo Montenegro, whose rendition on the was a No. 2 Billboard pop single 2 years later in 1968.
This was an incredibly busy period for Dell’Orso recording from film to film, studio to studio. Westerns were of course very popular after the success of A Fistful Of Dollars, and the hard working Dell’Orsa kept providing the goods, including the very moving titled track C’era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West) for Sergio Leone in 1968, another Morricone partnership (1*). Again in ’71, another fitting title track with the quirky Giù la testa for Leone’s Duck, You Sucker! (also known as A Fistful of Dynamite and Giù la testa), but she also worked far beyond the Italian West.
In 1967 Dell’Orso scores the opening swinging title song Seli, for the Italian science fiction film Mission Stardust (…4 …3 …2 …1 …morte), composed by Antón García Abril & Marcello Giombini. Some fans of the genre consider this offbeat film so appallingly bad that they playfully deny its very existence, however this rare soundtrack is also called a masterpiece by many jazzy lounge aficionados, which I tend to support. The next year Dell’Orsa contributes to the infamous Danger: Diabolk soundtrack, offering 3 alternate versions of Deep Down…The Shower, Eva’s Holy Dress and the tripped out, whimsical Emerald Bikini version. The title track was performed by Christy, another female legend of the Italian cinema soundtrack that Morricone liked to work with. 1969 offered up a true classic Dell’Orso-Morricone cooperative, with Metti una sera a cena for the Italian drama film of the same name, directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi. One of my favourites.
Dell’Orso moved into another film genre with the thriller La stagione dei sensi (Season of the Senses), bringing with her the lovely bossa styled Una Voce Allo Specchio. The title track for Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s 1969 drama, Metti, Una Sera A Cena, is classic and rich in Dell’Orso spices, and was covered a few years later quite nicely by Milva. The 1967 chilling score for Bruno Gaburro sci-fi post-apocalyptic Ecce Homo I Sopravvissuti, which gave Morricone an alternate opportunity to get down low into the darker side of Dell’Orso’s vocal soul, and the outcome is a soundtrack which offer varied versions of Venuta dal mare throughout, that all raise the hairs. Staying on the horror theme, Dell’Orso contributed to two films by Italian shock horror director Dario Argento, the first in 1970 called L’uccello Dalle Plume di Cristallo (The Bird With Crystal Plumage), and then for Perche Si Uccidono? (Why Do They Kill Themselves), a film essay about drugs and self-destruction. For the latter 1976 film, the score was a collaboration with composer Fabio Frizzi and instrumental band Goblin (often used by Argento), under the pseudonym of Il Reale Impero Britannico.
Dell’Orso was also providing her voice for other prominent, mostly Italian composers of those times, and was also a key figure of the I Cantori Moderni choir, which was founded by Morricone’s childhood friend and composer Alessandro Alessandroni (2*)(3*). Piero Umiliani was one composer that regularly worked with Edda & I Cantori Moderni, and some of the best Dell’Orso work came from this collaboration. One of Umiliani’s most recognised tracks is Mah Na Mah Na, which he did for Svezia, Inferno E Paradiso, a 1968 pseudo-documentary about sexuality in Sweden, which ironically was later popularized by Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. Another Umiliani-Dell’Orso standout is the fuzzed up Le isole dell’ amore, for the 1970 film with the same title, which to be honest I know absolutely nothing about! Another soundtrack worth mentioning from the same year, is the impossible to find whacked out 5 Dolls for an August Moon, originally titled 5 Bambole per la Luna d’Agosto, and directed by Mario Bava (4*). Also check out the very chic Luna Di Miele, which was recorded for the documentary directed by Mino Loy and Luigi Scattini called Questo Sporco Mondo Meraviglioso, and includes whistling by Alessandro Alessandroni.
So lets now move on to the feature 7″ which was recorded for Giorgio Moser’s TV special Le Montagne Della Luce. Kilimangiaro is a beautifully produced composition with Dell’Orso’s trademark atmospheric artistry. Arranged by Gianni Oddi and composed by Romolo Grano, this track alone is well worth the effort it will take to find this rare thing. However while the titled A side was probably the selling point, it’s the magnificent B-side Kukumbe, that I think is the dynamic and most grooviest track she’s worked on. Big breaks, fender rhodes, jazzy trumpet, congas and top scat vocals by Edda, all amount up to a very sizeable and rhythmic killer production. I’ve been fortunate enough to play this on a big sound system and it was real fun! That bass drive grooves very nicely with that back beat. Now if you’re hoping that there’s a few Dell’Orso 7″s that you need to get a hold off, well in fact as far as I know there are only a few officials, one other being an earlier release from ’69 titled Sospendi Il Tempo, for the psychodrama La stagione dei sensi.
Dell’Orso would continue to record for many soundtracks and collaborate with many musicians. There was a very pertinent chemistry delivered in 1974 when Dell’Orso voice was utilized quite significantly on Italian master guitarist Bruno Battisti D’Amario’s album Samba Para Ti, which includes the beautiful spaced out Show Samba and the frantic upbeat Playa Sin Sol. The following year proceeded with a second team-up album called Granada and includes the standout upbeat latin dancer Su Delicia and a very cool version of Ipanema. In 1976 she worked alongside her hubby’s brother Gianni Dell’Orso, and laid down the sexy discotheque track Night Magic for Mondo Di Notte Oggi (directed by Gianni Proia), a soundtrack which has some nice funk moments, in particular on Soul Meeting.
Many years later in 2011, Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi released Rome, a soundtrack for a non-existent movie, that took five years to record. Obviously die hard fans of that era of Italian cinematic sound, the producers had their hearts set to develop the sound and process as authentic to that time as possible. The album was recorded using only vintage analogue recording equipment and musical instruments fro
m the 1960s and 1970s. They also took the opportunity to reunite Alessandroni’s Cantori Moderni choir, who had not performed together since the early 1980s. Dell’Orso’s beautiful voice can be heard on the Theme of Rome track. The album also features vocals by Norah Jones and also Jack White who also provided the lyrics for his three songs. Even more recent, Dell’Orso was picked up by Alex Puddu, another true devotee of Italian vintage sound, to work on his 2013 album Registrazioni Al Buio, where she laid down 3 very smooth tracks (5*).
To try and cover all the composers, producers and productions Edda Dell’Orso worked with especially in the specific 60′ to 70’s period, would be a bit of a feat, and true fans will agree that I’m really only scratching the surface here. Her work is the epitome of intelligence and sophistication and she is the sound of Italian cinema, and remarkably she still continues to perform today with her strong distinctive voice. And obviously there’s a lot more we can talk about, regarding those great Italian composers that she worked with, that thankfully are now getting the praise they have always deserved. In time I’m hoping to cover a special selection of favourite cinematic Italian 7’S, but for now, stay tuned because there will be a follow up post tomorrow, celebrating another Italian female legend of the cinema soundtrack, Christy.
(1*) Edda Dell’Orso performing C’era una volta il West live in 1982.
(2*) Alessandroni was an accomplished whistler, and he can be heard quite famously on numerous Leone’s western soundtracks, and also was responsible for THAT twangy guitar riff that is central to the main theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
(3*) I Cantori Moderni, was an eight-to-sixteen person vocal group featuring Edda Dell’Orso, Giulia De Mutiis (Alessandroni’s first wife), Gianna Spagnuolo, Augusto Giardino, and Franco Cosacchi.
(4*) Mario Bava’s work from the “golden age” of Italian horror films is said to have kick-started the giallo film genre and the modern “slasher film”. He was also a special effects artist and had all director, screenwriter, and cinematographer credits for many movies including Danger: Diabolik, Planet of the Vampires, The Whip and the Body, Black Sabbath and Kill, Baby, Kill to name but a few.
(5*) Dell’Orso with Alex Puddu band captured live in Copenhaghen.
Research and referencing…
Santo & Johnny – Slave Girl (EP)
PARLOPHONE GEP 8806 UK – Year 1960 PARLOPHONE GEPO 70009 AUS – Year 1960
Slave Girl (Side 2 Track 2)
While this is a far lesser known track from the Farina brothers, this exotic sultry instro has to be my fav from this talented duo! And to find it on a 45, means I can now take it with me everywhere I go.
Farina brothers, Santo Anthony & John Steven, were born in Brooklyn, New York, just 4 years apart. Santo, the elder, was born October 24, 1937 and then Johnny followed, April 30, 1941. The boys were young when their Dad was drafted into the army and stationed in Oklahoma. One evening on the radio, he heard this beautiful accent while listening to country and western…it was the sound of the steel guitar. He wrote home to his wife and said “I’d like the boys to learn to play this instrument”. When he returned from the war they searched out for a man who could get them started with the steel. The boys, I imagine, probably jumped for the opportunity. What kid doesn’t want to play a guitar of sorts?
But althou
gh their dad was super keen to have the boys learn that very particular style that carried those unyielding memories, and although he was successful in finding a lap steel guitar somewhere in a music store in Brooklyn, there was no certainty that the right teacher who had the specific skills would materialize. After a few failed attempts from baffled music school tutors, who just lacked the know-how to master the “sound”, their frustrated dad searched himself and eventually found an authentic Hawaiian musician with the skills. The brothers finally had a teacher with the expertise, and thanks to some Italian food coaxing, he would tutor the boys at their own home. After about 5 months, the teacher headed back to Hawaii, and the brothers never saw him again, but he had left behind enough of his teachings for Santo and Johnny to now take flight…and spread their wings they did.
When Johnny reached the age of twelve, he began to play accompaniment to Santo on a standard electric guitar (his big brother helped him learn to play). Their supportive father had bought them a Webcor tape recorder, and encourage them to write their own material and record everything. The brothers eventually formed a duo and became rather popular in school, soon started performing at church dances, weddings, clubs and other events in the New York boroughs. The Farina brothers began to gather fans from Brooklyn to Long Island.
In 1958, Mike Dee & The Mello Tones (Santo Farina on steel guitar; Johnny Farina on electric guitar and with their uncle Mike Dee on drums) recorded a self-penned instrumental which they called Deep Sleep. Loosely inspired by the song Softly, As In The Morning Sunrise (Sigmund Romberg, 1929), it had the same chord progression but a simpler melody line. Deep Sleep would in time become Sleep Walk.
The determined younger brother, Johnny, made the rounds of the New York record companies searching for a publishing deal, with a couple of their recorded demos in hand. His persistence and determination paid off and they got lucky with Canadian American Records, who signed them to a song writer’s contract. Although grateful I’m sure, it was a recording deal which is what they were really chasing, and soon enough the opportunity was granted to them. Their first release in 1959 was consummated, and it was called Sleep Walk. And did it do well? Umm…yes it did! It was recorded at Trinity Records in Manhattan and entered Billboard’s ‘Top 40’ on August 17, 1959. The moody eerie composition rose to the No.1 position on the American charts, for two weeks in September, and remained in the ‘Top 40’ list until November 9. There’s a great live version from ’59 on the Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show, on youtube I recommend you looking for.
Santo and Johnny actually wrote lyrics to Sleepwalk, and after the instrumental was a hit song, Betsy Brye (real name is Bette Anne Steele) released a beautiful “lynchesque” vocal version as a single in 1959 (Canadian American Records 106), which did not chart on the Hot 100, but damn I like it! At first it was believed that the composition was written at 2.am early one morning, when one brother woke the other with an idea. But a recent interview with Johnny reveals that it was a long and constant progression of revisited ideas that finally got them the hit.
The follow-up song “Tear Drop” was also a hit, though their self titled LP released that same year, was less successful in the United States. But that takes nothing away from the lp, which was arranged and conducted by Bob Davie, who had been the guiding hand to all of Santo and Johnny’s musical activities. It included some fabulous interpretations of well known ditties such as Caravan, Raunchy, Dream, and there’s even a take on Chuck Berry’s School Days. And you have to hear the wildly hypnotic version of Summertime. But the standout for me at least, has to be the self penned Slave Girl, and it wasn’t that long ago that I made the discovery of it in the form of a mono UK 7″ EP. There’s just something so exciting about this wonderful piece of exotica. It’s slinky (yeah I know I like using that term), sensual, so rhythmic, and it’s quite transporting, but unfortunately it’s also just too short! It’s a fine early night spinner, to get the right kinda’ cool in the air. This ep also includes a gorgeous version of Blue Moon which makes it even more desirable. Also funnily enough, I recently found an Aussie copy with an alternate picture sleeve, in a local record shop bargain bin.
With their unmistakable sound, they appeared on all the top music shows, “The Alan Freed Show”, “Dick Clarks’ American Bandstand”, “The Perry Como Show” etc. etc. Their fame spread to other countries and they got booked on tours in Australia, Mexico and Europe. After the less successful debut album, they issued five more albums for Canadian-American, before the company dissolved in 1965. But Santo & Johnny continued to record and release a great amount of Lp’s and 45’s with other various labels including Imperial, Ricordi and Produttori Associati, the Italian label founded in 1969 by Antonio Casetta. The albums were ethereal, relaxed, sometimes swinging, and variously themed (James Bond, Hawaiian songs, country music, rock and roll hits, etc.), but were more popular internationally than at home.
In 1964, they released an album of Beatles covers including And I Love Her, which hit #1 in Mexico and held the spot for 21 weeks (they received The Golden Kangaroo Award for it). In 1973, Santo & Johnny recorded Nino Rota’s The Godfather theme which went to #1 in Italy and stayed at that spot for 26 weeks which broke all records in Italy (there certainly feels like some Jean-Jacques Perrey channeling going on in that one). They received a “Gold Record” in Italy and were inducted into the Italian Music Hall of Fame.
Santo and Johnny’s distinctive sound influenced a generation of not just guitarists, but all kinds of musicians. “Sleep Walk’s in everybody’s DNA,” says Farina. “John Lennon said he was inspired by Sleep Walk, and that’s why he wrote Free As A Bird. George Harrison released a song called Marwa Blues inspired by Santo and Johnny”.
1999 was a great year for Sleep Walk, it earned BMI’s Millionaires Award symbolizing 2 million airplays on the radio. Also that year, Brian Setzer’s version earned him a Grammy Award for best instrumental of 1999. Because of constant radio airplay and numerous TV show and commercial plays, Sleep Walk continues to be one of the most popular and quickly recognized instrumentals of the 20th century. It was also used throughout the 1992 Stephen King movie, Sleepwalkers.
In 2002 Santo & Johnny were inducted into the International Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. Hanging proudly on his wall, Johnny has 2 Gold Records, one for Sleep Walk and on for The Godfather.
Santo retired from music in the early 70s, but Johnny continues to perform, now taking on the lap-steel role, and still finds time to record new material with his own band. He is also the president of Aniraf, Inc., an international record company based in New York, and currently operates the official Santo And Johnny website.
Joe Meek / Tom Jones – Chills & Fever
Tower Cat# 190 US – Year 1966
Joe (Meek) Versus The Volcano!
I have to say, Chills And Fever is one of my favourite R&B songs of all time. It’s had a handful of great and worthy interpretations, from reputable artists including Jet Harris, Allen Wayne and of course the unsurpassed Ron Dunbar. But being the Meek Geek that I am, it’s this delectable elusive cut that intrigues me the most, and in which I chosen to share.
But first…a bit about this Mr. Jones.
Thomas J
ohn Woodward was born in Pontypridd in Glamorgan, South Wales, on 7 June 1940. His parents were Thomas Woodward, a coal miner, & Freda Jones.
Tom began singing at a very early age, and wasn’t really into sports or even school. But he was a kid who would receive far more fulfillment when singing at family gatherings, weddings and in his school choir. At 12 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, causing him to spend 2 years in bed recovering. While he does describe it as the worst time of his life, it did give him the opportunity to do nothing other than sing and draw. In his teens he was becoming something of a tearaway, missing school, drinking and chasing girls.
By the late 1950s Tom had become entranced by the new rock ‘n’ roll sounds coming from the radio, and was big on the sound of American soul music, with early influences including blues and R&B singers Little Richard, Solomon Burke, Jackie Wilson and Brook Benton, as well as Elvis Presley, whom Jones idolised and would later become good friends with.
Tommy Scott and the Senators – In March 1957, Tom married his high school catholic girlfriend, Melinda Trenchard, when they were expecting a child together, both aged 16. The couple’s son, Mark, was born in the month following their wedding. To support his young family, Tom took a job working in a glove factory and was later employed in construction. His big full-throated, robust baritone voice first became apparent when he became the frontman for Tommy Scott and the Senators, a Welsh beat group, in 1963. The band’s leader Vernon Hopkins, lured Tom away from his usual drinking spot after Tommy Redman (their current singer) failed to show up one night. Hopkins persuaded him to perform with the Senators at the local YMCA (with the help of a crate of beer). It was only meant to be a one-off, but Tom was bitten by the bug.
They soon gained a local following and reputation in South Wales. In 1964 the group recorded several solo tracks with producer Joe Meek, who took them to various labels, but they had little success. Later that year Decca producer Peter Sullivan saw The Senators performing in a club and directed them to manager Phil Solomon, but the partnership was short-lived.
The group continued to play gigs at dance halls and working men’s clubs in South Wales, and one night, at the Top Hat in Cwmtillery (which only just burnt down a couple of years ago), Tom was spotted by London-based manager, Gordon Mills. He became Tom’s manager and took the young singer to London, and renamed him Tom Jones, to exploit the popularity of the Academy Award winning 1963 film.
Joe Meek
Now I’m only going to touch on the genius that is Joe Meek here. This complicated yet marvelous man definitely deserves a much more in depth write up, and I can assure you that this will not be the only Meek production I will cover here on Seven45. This pioneering record producer and songwriter, is most likely known for the that Tornados instrumental Telstar, (which became the first record by a British group to reach No.1 in the “Billboard Hot 100” in 1962), but his life story is truly fascinating, be it too short. A wiz kid with electronics, Meek had a unique sense of adventure when it came to music production.
Meek was born on April 5, 1929, at 1 Market Square, Newent, Gloucestershire. His early upbringing was rather bizarre, as apparently, the first four years of his life, he was raised as a girl thanks to his mother’s intense desire to have a daughter. As a child, Meek had performed theater plays of his own making with the neighbour’s children, and whenever possible, he himself would play the princess. Of course his classmates bantered him about that, as well as his brothers did. More than likely, this is perhaps why Meek more and more, backed out into his own isolated fantasy world.
He acquired an adventurous passion for performance art and sound experimentation, from a very early age, filling his parents garden shed with begged and borrowed electronic components, building circuits and what is believed to be the region’s first working television. By the age of ten he had built a crystal radio set, a microphone, and a tube amplifier.
At age 14, he expanded his rig, working dance parties as a mobile DJ. And at 16 he acted as a musical supervisor, providing sound effects for local theater groups, that he had recorded on a homemade tape machine. (He built a disc cutter when he was 24 and used it to cut his first record – a sound-effects library).
When he grew up, he did a stint doing his National service in the Royal Air Force as a technician, which only escalated his lifelong interest in electronics and outer space. From 1953 he worked for the Midlands Electricity Board. He used the resources of the company to develop his interest in electronic music production, including acquiring a disc cutter and producing his first record.
Meek In London…
Meek first arrived in London in 1954 after landing a job as a sound engineer for Stones; a popular radio and record shop on Edgware Road. After spending time working at Stones, Meek progressed to a new job, becoming a producer at Lansdowne Recording Studios, moments away from his home on Arundel Gardens in Notting Hill.
At Lansdowne, Meek proved to be quite the maverick, frequently ignoring his superiors in order to pursue his quest to develop new sound techniques. He maintained a strictly guarded “secret box of sounds”…a container kept under lock and key which held all manner of unusual objects for creating unorthodox audio effects. Confident in his new role, he wrote a letter home to his mother stating, “I’m sure your son is going to be famous one day, Mum.”
But before long, Meek became tired of working within a large organisation and decided to go it alone as an independent record producer and established his own label, RGM Records (Joe’s full birth name actually being Robert George Meek).
Between 1961 and 1967, the accommodation above 304 Holloway Road was rented out by Meek, where he set about creating a makeshift but innovative studio. Back then, such a move was revolutionary, as it was a time when pop records were the domain of big corporations, tightly controlled by cigar-puffing businessmen. The sound engineers who worked for these companies did so in strict, clinical environments, armed with clipboards and donned in white lab coats.
Joe Meek’s way of working was the complete opposite to the traditional methods. From the stairway to the bathroom, all rooms were made available for recording sessions. Joe would also use seemingly every day domestic items to create all manner of new sounds, the flat itself more or less becoming an instrument in its own right. He was particularly fond of stamping on the upper floors to enhance drumming effects.
As his experiments developed, Joe Meek’s work took on an eerie, futuristic sound; one which he hoped would define an era as the space-age began to grip the 1960s.
The first major hit
to be produced at Holloway Road was John Leyton’s Johnny Remember Me, a song about a young man haunted by his dead lover. The single reached UK number one in July 1961. But that success was followed by an even bigger hit in August 1962, with Telstar, an instrumental track created to celebrate the success of the radical new communications satellite which had been launched in July 1962. Played by Meek’s (other) backing group, The Tornados, the ode to space technology featured all manner of sci-fi sounds which had been concocted in the unlikely setting of the north London studio. The record was an instant success. It became the first record by a British group to reach No.1 in the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, which was a massive achievement!
Telstar’s popularity should have set Meek up financially for life. However, a French composer by the name of Jean Ledrut claimed that the tune was pinched from a score he’d written for the Napoleonic film, Austerlitz. This led to a lengthy legal battle which prevented Joe Meek and the Tornados receiving any royalties from their hit.
In 1963, Meek had himself another band to record, a bunch of fairly unknowns who went by the name Tommy Scott & the Senators. They recorded seven tracks with Meek, who then used Ritchie Blackmore (and The Outlaws) to enhance some of those RGM recordings which were done in a single day session. Meek took them to various labels in an attempt to get a record deal, with no success.
But soon Jones, who had had a name change and a fresh signing to Decca, would score that worldwide hit with It’s Not Unusual in 1965, and shot to mega stardom. With this sudden popularity, Meek, who had always refused to release his “Jones” recordings, now decided to cash in and sold the tapes to Tower (USA) and Columbia (UK)…releasing Little Lonely One – That’s What We’ll All Do. This was all done much to the singer’s annoyance. Jones -“We really pinned our hopes on that recording session. Meek said it was going to be released but we never heard anymore…I want to disassociate myself from it”. Meek released another single in October, Lonely Joe – I Was a Fool, then finally Chills And Fever – Baby I’m In Love.
Chills And Fever fever!
The first and original release of Chills and Fever was on the Detroit label Startime (Cat# 45-5001), who credited the track to Johnny Love and his Orchestra. But when it was picked up for national distribution by Dot Records (a label that licensed a huge array of records including some of my most treasured gems) Johnny was changed to Ronnie Love…and it signaled the beginning of one man’s incredible career in music.
Turns out the man behind the record was neither the earlier personas, but instead one Ron Dunbar. A man of talents who ended up becoming one of the most prolific writers in Detroit this side of Holland-Dozier-Holland, and his name appears on a mind-boggling assortment of writing credits, including Patches, Give Me Just a Little More Time and Band Of Gold. Ron also had a hand in A&R work, most notably with Holland-Dozier-Holland when they split from Motown in ’68 to form their Invictus/Hot Wax production company.
Love laid down Chills and Fever, which was penned by Bobby Rackep and Billy Ness, in 1960, and managed to make it to #15 in R&B and #72 in Pop.
Tom Jones & The Squires did finally make it into the Decca studios in the summer of ’64, to re-record Ronnie Love’s hit for a second time. While the band were comfortable with the “demoed” version, the label wasn’t happy with quality, and took the opportunity to augment the arrangements with experienced session musos. The result is a go-go stomping version with classy backing gals and sharp horns, but some would say, all too over produced. To me this version sounds more like a session studio band, and not so much a closely bonded band, but either way, a far turn from Meek’s production. It was Tom Jones’ official first single, and it failed to chart when it was released in late 1964 through Decca.
I just adore Love’s version, and it’s the one that I like to play out the most…the kids love it! But when I first found out that Meek had a version with Jones, I just had to find it. I love the meek sound. It’s really grown on me over the years, and I love the man and his story. As I said, there’s just too much Meek to write about in one post, and I have to encourage you all to read up more on him (there’s some amazing posts mentioned below, and even a movie was made about him recently called Telstar: The Joe Meek Story). He had a tragic ending to his short life and obviously he had his issues and faults. But he left us some very cool and diverse yet Meek typical tunes. The Rondos, Little Baby is one of my favourites, driving and dreamy. The Honeycombs Can’t Get Through To You is fab raw pop punk garage and The Moontrekkers spooky Night Of The Vampire is a hoot! But when I listen to The Cryin Shames Please Stay…well…there’s proof that this “tone deaf” sensitive genius, had an incredible talent that should have made him far, far more recognised.
Side Notes…
The Outlaws, who’s name was originally conceived by Meek , were the house band that did all the session work for his productions. As such, they were used for recordings,”Demo (music)” and Audition. Many of the The Outlaws’ songs were written by Meek and credited to his pseudonym Robert Duke.
The Cryin Shames Please Stay is a cover version of The Drifters’ 1961 release, written by Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard.
Ron Dunbar’s Grammy for Patches was recently pawned on an episode of “Pawn Star”. Rick admits to not having a clue about the song or even Dundar. He ends up with it for $2350 (thinks he can get $5000 for it). News is from Dunbar’s facebook page, it is now back with it’s rightful owner.
Tower Records was a subsidiary of Capitol Records from 1964 to 1970. A label that often released music by artists who were relatively low profile in comparison to those released on the parent label, including a number of artists such as The Standells and The Chocolate Watch Band. For this reason Tower is often associated with the “garage” rock phenomenon of the 1960s. Freddie and the Dreamers‘ I’m Telling You Now, became Tower’s only #1 hit on Billboard. Tom Jones’ only 6 songs recorded in 1963 by Meek, were released by Tower two years later in 1965, while he was actually signed to London subsidiary, Parrot. Four of those singles were released in the U.K. (Columbia – Meeksville Sound) but Meek’s version of Chills wasn’t, making it very much “in demand”.
Reference and great reads…
JEAN JACQUES PERREY E.V.A.
Vanguard 3637 Brazil 1973 33 1/3 RPM
Jean-Jacques Perrey, was born in a little village in northern France, on January 20 1929, and received his first musical instrument, an accordion, when he was just 4, as a Christmas present. He would go on to teach himself to play the piano by ear, although he did once attempt to study music at the Amiens Conservatory, but was kicked out for violating school rules by performing in public.
Perrey must have had some sort of epiphany in Paris in 1952, after meeting inventor Georges Jenny. In 1941, the Frenchman had come up with the Ondioline, a very unique vacuum-tube powered electronic keyboard, suspended on special springs which made it possible to introduce a natural vibrato if the player moved the keyboard from side to side with their playing hand. The result was a beautiful, almost human-like expressive vibrato.
Perrey, who at the time was a student of medicine, must have realised that it was actually the science of electronic sound, that was really giving him a buzz, as opposed to the science of medicine. Upon that first meeting, Jenny must have enjoyed Perrey’s excitement towards this new instrument and actually gave him one to take home for six months, to see what someone with Perrey’s mind and talent could do with it. On the return, Jenny was quite impressed, and probably never heard anyone play it like he did. Perrey ditched his medical studies and Jenny hired him as a salesman and demonstrator of the new instrument. Out of these demonstrations grew a cabaret act in which Perrey played piano and Ondioline, at times simultaneously. Titled Around the World in 80 Ways, the show was quite popular and Perrey took it on tour throughout western Europe. Working the nightclub circuit, Perrey became acquainted with singer/songwriter Charles Trenet and also legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhart, who he ended up recording several songs with, one of which, The Soul of a Poet, became a major hit in Europe.
One night after a presentation of the show, Perrey received the notice that someone wanted to talk to him at the bar. To his surprise this person was Jean Cocteau (and by the way, myself having a huge adoration for that artist, when this fact was revealed, my brain exploded a just a little bit). The influential poet gave Perrey the advice to go to the U.S. to follow his music career there. “He said there would be more possibilities and an audience for my approach to music. He asked for my phone number and told me he would hand it to somebody that he knew who could help me find the sponsor in New York I needed. He gave my contact to Édith Piaf!”
Piaf was already really interested in the sounds of the Ondioline, and took Perrey under her wings. They would bond, perform and record together, and she would pay for studio time that enabled Perrey to record his own compositions. But Piaf’s biggest contribution was to send one of these tapes to Carroll Bratman, a music contractor in New York City. Bratman responded immediately, sending plane tickets to Perrey with one word marked on the envelope: “Come!” He moved to the U.S. in March 1960 and stayed there for 10 great years.
Now be sure to watch the online footage of Perrey demonstrating his incredible musical vocabulary on the Ondioline, which was televised on the American I’ve Got A Secret show in 1960 and also in ’66. Quite remarkable to see the reactions for what must have been for the majority of the audience, their first steps into the new world of electronic music.
Also, before Perrey moved to the U.S. he did release two EP’s under the adopted persona of Mr. Ondioline around 59-60 for Pacific Records. The result may have been whimsical commercial pop bent into kooky novel shapes, but it’s probably that bizarre mysterious cover that makes this 7″ EP so sort! Crazy for it’s day!
Bratman built Perrey an experimental laboratory and recording studio, where he would he invent “a new process for generating rhythms with sequences and loops”, utilising the environmental sounds of musique concrète. Like a mad scientist, he’d spend endless hours, even weeks, splicing tape, and tape recorders with scissors, piecing and “looping” together a unique fantastical take on the future.
In 1965 Perrey met Gershon Kingsley, who you could say was a like minded contemporary German American composer, and a former colleague of *John Cage, and at the time was a staff arranger at Vanguard Records. There must have been a strong and obvious connection from the get go. They both shared each others way of musically thinking, way out side and far beyond any square. And it wasn’t long before they found themselves recording together in the Vanguard studios, which normally specialized in folk, and not in avant-garde. The end result of their first collaborative effort was The In Sound from Way Out! released in 66.
With Perrey’s tape loops, and his inventive melodies twinning together with Kingsley’s complementary arrangements and instrumentation, the album created, was filled with tunes that sounded like some kind of surreal animated cartoon from out-of-space gone berserk. And since this was decades before the advent of widespread digital technology, each tune took weeks of painstaking editing and splicing to produce. Their second and final collaborative effort came in 1967 with the release of Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Electronic Pop Music From Way Out!, and although sounding similar in style, this release was particularly different in two ways. Firstly, most of he compositions were versions of popular songs of the day. And secondly, Perrey’s tape loops and effects were added in post-production after Kingsley’s orchestrations were recorded, a technique now commonly used by electronic artists to this day. Also the album was one of the first to use the new Moog modular synthesizer, a massive, complicated electronic instrument resembling an old-style telephone switchboard.
Kingsley continued to do his own work with the Moog, while Perrey joined with producer John Mack and arranger Dave Mullaney and their company, Laurie Productions, to compose and record, mostly for radio and television advertisements. Perrey recorded two more albums for Vanguard, The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sounds of Jean Jacques Perrey and the legendary sort after Moog Indigo in 1970.
The back cover liner notes to this far out LP read…”Without a ship Columbus could not have traversed the Atlantic, without a telescope Galileo could not have charted the solar system, and what the MOOG SYNTHESIZER opens up for the future of music is beyond dreams”. The enthusiastic proclamation would continue with…”The most amazing instrument is nothing without a mind behind it, and Jean Jacques Perrey’s mind is that of a combined musician and scientist, with a special love for what is happy and vital tin popular music. The way Paganini thought musically in terms of the violin, Perrey thinks musically in terms of the Moog”.
As you’ve probably guessed, there were some pretty great spaced out tracks laid down on this 12″ slab, and as expected from Perrey, cosmically twisted, fun and swinging. There’s the great opener Soul City that every space mod must have played on their Weltron 2007 while preparing a Martini, and also the dark and slinky Cat In The Night. But the real track here, that took Perrey to a new level of greatness, is of course E.V.A.!
Now I know this infamous track is nowadays quite well known, and not just amongst the vintage space pop fanatics, but it’s hard to believe that is was never to be officially released by Vanguard as a 7″ in the US. In fact even the UK had to wait two years for the first Moog Indigo single, and that wasn’t even EVA, but instead the loopy Gossipo Perpetuo with the title track on the flip! THANKFULLY the vanguard people over in Brazil had the sense to release it 3 years after it was recorded as a single and as featured here, a gorgeous EP picture sleeve, that actually runs at 33rpm.
This track is pretty special to me for a number of reasons. It played on the dance floor at Sounds of Seduction when I meet my wife many years ago, and it also played at our wedding and is featured on our Super 8 wedding video. It’s so smooth, it has beats, it has fuzz and Wah wah, and it even has bells…but most importantly, it has so much integrity! And while so many other Perrey recordings happily and contently sit back in that other time from the past, this unstoppable track is still soaring far ahead, smashing through electronic genres, only leaving a traces of space glitter on the occasional hip dance floor.
And so what does E.V.A. stand for? Well to tell you the truth, I don’t know, but it is a space term for extra-vehicular activity, so maybe that was a reference point?
Perrey returned to France in 1970 and became the musical director of a ballet company. He wrote and recorded music for a television commercials and a number of French cartoons, and released several albums of this music on the Montparnasse label. He also continued to work on music for therapeutic purposes, including one project that involved recording with dolphins in the waters near Vancouver, Canada. “It was remarkable,” Perrey says. “If you played sounds of a certain frequency, the dolphins began to swim in perfect circles.”
Perrey’s influence would reverberate for years – The In Sound from Way Out! inspired a tribute from the Beastie Boys, who borrowed both the album’s title and cover art for their own album 30 years later. But sadly, none of this translated into personal fortune. Perrey did not own the publishing rights to his music when it was licensed to Disney, while Stanley Kubrick was able to incorporate some of Perrey’s sound effects into 2001: A Space Odyssey for next to nothing. Perrey says: “Jean Cocteau told me, ‘Thirty years after I die, you will retire a rich man.’ Well, Cocteau died in 1963 and I haven’t been able to retire yet.”
I highly recommend this video interview by Richard Lawson from 2004!
An RL Music Interview with Jean-Jacques Perrey.
Also great Perrey references here…
Space Age Pop!
The godfather of techno!
iCrates
*John Cage, who was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde, and is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound. Musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not “four minutes and 33 seconds of silence,” as is sometimes assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during the performance.
*Photo credit to Marco Zanoni
Seven45rpm 
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