John Barry: THE HITS & THE MISSES

Barry starts to work for the cinema in 1960, with his scores for Beat Girl and Never Let Go, and knows his first popular success very soon with his music for James Bond films; in a parallel way, his labor as arranger and pop music composer reaches its maximum levels upon signing a contract with the EMI label. It is this facet, so unknown today and so forgotten, the one which collects this double CD (50 cues in total) gathering material recorded between 1959 and 1964 with different soloists, beginning with his first success as arranger with What Do You Want, and ending with his very famous song for Goldfinger (1964). In the middle we can find themes from very meaningful of the style of the moment, performed by singers as Adam Faith, Johnny De Little, Anita Harris, Johnny Worth and Dick Kallman, and composed by great variety of authors (among them renown people as Lionel Bart, and some of the own Barry), till famous song arrangements (Glory Of Love or Down By The Riverside), and versions of cinematographic themes, as Nino Rota's Rocco and i suoi Fratelli (Rocco and his brothers, 1960), Henry Mancini's Days of Wine and Roses (1962), or the very popular Unchained Melody written by Alex North for Unchained (1955). Of course it could not lack the controverted theme for James Bond (The James Bond Theme), credited to Monty Norman though actually composed by the own Barry. The opportunity of knowing this period of his career, and to observe how it was developing his sound style (recognizable, even, in the foreign material arrangements) as well as the influences that received from the same, it is what makes particularly interesting this double CD that mixes, according to the origin of the material, monophonic and stereophonic sound in a stupendous sound reedition.

PLAY IT AGAIN PLAY007 [2 CDs] / 121'


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