Teasing the Korean

"Portuguese Soul" features an extended work, with big band/orchestra, on one side of the album. "Bluesmith" has our hero moving into a funky early 70s bag, at least on a couple of the cuts. I have lots and lots of Jimmy Smith from both his Blue Note and Verve eras and like this one quite a bit.

TTK, my database showed that I hadn't listened to either since 2003, so it was extra enjoyable to hear them both. Both are relaxing, and I was in the right mood for both. I got Rain Forest for Christmas, 1966. It seemed like jazz to me at the time, but it's really not. Bucky Pizzarelli contributes some jazz riffs, but Wanderley's style is lounge. Still, for what it is, it's good, with a good selection of songs. Miles Ahead has never been one I've worn out the grooves of. It's particularly good as background music. When I first got into jazz forty years ago all the writers for Downbeat couldn't say enough good things about the Miles records with Gil Evans. In retrospect, I can see that they were different from the run of the mill, with good production values (money spent on the sessions). I'm glad I have it, and it occurred to me that this would be a good present to someone who is not already into jazz in a big way. But I won't be spending money on a new remaster of it. Maybe one day I'll appreciate Svengali's arrangements more. Miles' playing is good, but not eye-opening. I was just curious. I really love "Miles Ahead." It may be my favorite of the Miles/Gil Evans collaborations. I always find something new in it. Agree with your assessment of "Rain Forest." Not a great hangover record is it? A bit too hyper at one sitting, but most of the cuts would work well on a comp or in a dj set. WW has other records I like more. Still, a hip record to have received for Christmas 1966! You are truly The Man Who Reads Playboy...

Check out Vinnie Bell's definitive version of this Bacharach classic, originally released on one of his US Decca LPs.

Jacques Brel, Encore! (second US LP on Reprise, mono). Features "Funeral Tango" and "The Girls and the Dogs," later recorded in English by Scott Walker.

When I saw the thread title, I thought it was about the Bacharach tune of the same name...

Lincoln Mayorga and his Distinguished Colleagues (Sheffield Laboratory Series S9, Direct to Disc) Great funky version of the Beatles' "I'll Be Back!"

Oh, great. First they're downsizing Verve, and now Fantasy?

I partially solved this problem years ago by creating a "Weird" genre in my record room. Trouble is, my definition of "weird" constantly evolves!

Her "Pet Project" album is brilliant. Her beloved cat Arnold, who she sings about on earlier albums, has died, and the "Pet Project" is like a therepeutic song cycle which chronicles all of the potential new pets she's considering. Favorite title: "Why Not a Bear?"

I was using the term "psych" in a broad sense, but I think many of the tunes on the first 2 albums would fit many people's definition of (British) psych, including "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man," "Horizontal," Lemons Never Forget" and "The Earnest of Being George." Barry and Robin describe many of the tunes as "psychedelic" in the liner notes. I agree with you that "progressive" is an accurate description too, despite the baggage associated with that term. And when will "Robin's Reign" be reissued?

GIL FULLER & THE MONTEREY JAZZ FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA w/Dizzy Gillespie (Pacific Jazz, blue label mono). Wow, I'd have thought this was Lalo Schifrin if I didn't know otherwise.

What'dja think of "Miles Ahead" and "Rain Forest?"

“The Orson Welles of film composition.” ---Television director David Green about Gil Mellé. The Jazz Genesis Composer Gilbert John Mellé was born December 31, 1931 and passed away October 28, 2004. Gil Mellé was a self-taught musician, electronic instruments inventor and engineer, painter and graphic design artist: in short, a demiurge. In 1950, thanks to Alfred Lion, he started his career at Blue Note Records as a baritone saxophonist, band leader (Gil Mellé Quartet), arranger for the jazz scene and also fashioned the album covers for other jazz artists (Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Sonny Rollins): http://www.gilmelle.com/albumcovers.htm . He studied music theory with modernist composer Edgar Varèse (1883-1965) -- known for blending acoustics with mechanical sounds by using tapes: see the musique concrète piece "Déserts" (1954) and the Organized Sound opus "Poème électronique" (1958) -- and from 1959, Mellé built his own instruments from scratch. In the mid-1950's, he left Blue Note and signed with Prestige. In 1968, he achieved the first electronic jazz album for Verve Records under the name Gil Mellé and the Electronauts -- see the veiled reference to Jason and the Argonauts traveling through uncharted waters -- : “Tome VI” (the name of the instrument that he designed from a customized soprano saxophone with circuits; Tome standed for Transistorized oscillator modulator envelop: http://www.gilmelle.com/instruments/tomev1.htm Almost Ten Years inside the Universal Factory Still in '68, producer Jack Laird gave Mellé his first job at Universal Studios: “Perilous Voyage”, a two-hours made-for-television movie accompanied with a strong electro-acoustic composition which was broadcast in 1976 due to its violence. The early 1970’s allowed Mellé to be at his creative peak and conceived the first electronically-generated score -- actually, it was electronics combined with musique concrète -- for Robert Wise’s science-fiction film “The Andromeda Strain” by using many of his devices, especially the drum machine called Percussotron III. In the line of this feature film music, TV producer Jack Laird hired again Mellé to write the spooky main themes (performed with the Percussotron III, the Elec-Tar and the Doomsday Machine) for the first two seasons and some season 2 scores (“House--with Ghost”, “Dr. Stringfellow’s Rejuvenator”, “Hell’s Bells”, and some experimental library music) of the horror anthology “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery”. The third great achievement came from a young journeyman director named Steven Spielberg who had Mellé to score episodes for the 1971 short-lived series “The Psychiatrist”, starring Roy Thinnes -- the main theme consisted of an exquisite brief, suave and warm motif -- ; later, in 1973, Spielberg used him again for a television movie thriller with the IMF couple Martin Landau (as TV reporter Paul Savage)/Barbara Bain (as Savage's TV producer Gail Abbott): “Savage”. a. The Television Collaborators Mellé worked a lot for people as writer-producer-director Jerrold Freedman (see “The Psychiatrist”, "Rod Serling's Night Gallery", “The Chill Factor" aka "A Cold Night's Death”, “The Last Angry Man”, “Borderline”) and writer-producers Richard Levinson/Willian Link (see “My Sweet Charlie”, "Columbo", "That Certain Summer", “The Judge and Jake Wyler”, “Tenafly”, “Partners in Crime”, "Savage", "A Cry for Help"). b. "One more thing…" During the first (and, perhaps, single best) season (1971-1972) of the police show “Columbo” (starring Peter Falk) whose theme was created by composer Billy Goldenberg, Gil Mellé developed an alternate jazzy Columbo main theme and left three beautiful and sensitive scores: “Death Lends a Hand” (the most ambitious of the bunch owing to the avant garde electronic and refined melancolic jazz bent), “Dead Weight”, “Short Fuse” (including acid funk rock-oriented shades). Meanwhile, Mellé scored two downbeat television movies related to the NASA: “The Astronaut” (1972) -- forestalling the sham plot from “Capricorn One” -- , with Monte Markham and Richard Anderson (future Oscar Goldman) and, above all, “The Six Million Dollar Man” (1973), starring Lee Majors, Martin Balsam and Darren McGavin -- Mellé perfectly recaptured the desperation of disabled pilot Steve Austin owing to his integration of the sad jazz melodies with funky outbursts into agonizing electronic vibrations. In 1973, Mellé took care of a memorable adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel for the four hours television mini series: “Frankenstein: The True Story”, which was a marvelous symphonic score. For the anecdote, both “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “Frankenstein” shared the theme of the man-made monster which took its roots from the myth of Prometheus. c. “Don’t look now, baby, but Kolchak’s coming back in style.” Item: after two television movies (1972-1973) centered around the character of monsters hunter reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) for ABC and whose music was by Robert Cobert -- producer Dan Curtis’ personal composer -- , Universal television decided to launch a regular series and asked Mellé to write the main theme and the first four jazz-macabre scores before leaving owing to artistical misunderstandings of the show's tone: “The Ripper” (including acid rock-oriented shades and a hectic climax), “The Zombie” (with Haitian-flavored colors featuring an alternate Kolchak theme with a dominant psychedelic electric guitar: over-used during the show), “They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…” (the most esoteric of the four due to its alien contact nature), “The Vampire” (slightly baroque). Actually, his Kolchak theme was derived from a previous 1974 unsold pilot created by Gene Roddenberry: “The Questor Tapes”. Finally, as a John Williams replacement, he achieved a last memorable score for Universal, the 1977 horror film “The Sentinel” which included voices and eighty classical musicians. More Music, More Studios For other Studios, Mellé composed the 1971 Neo Noir “The Organization” (a jazz-oriented MGM score), two science-fiction films for Warner Bros.: the 1975 anticipation film that ended up Yul Brunner’s trilogy: “The Ultimate Warrior” (with a Kolchak musical leaning) and the 1977 jazz-fusion “Starship Invasions”; the 1976 biological horror film “Embryo”, starring Rock Hudson (Plura Service Company) and its crossover bent (some chamber music combined with electronics). Because of director Robert Wise and Paramount Pictures and despite the demand of Gene Roddenberry, Mellé failed to score "Star Trek: The Motion Picture": a major commission which could have boosted his career. At The End of the Road… Among other things, at the start of the 1980’s, he scored again a film with Lee Majors: the car race/anticipation film “The Last Chase” (his 80's masterpiece featuring some powerful lyrical and funky motifs), a low-grade "Jaws"-like horror film entitled "Blood Beach" for writer-director Jeffrey Bloom -- as well as TV movies: "Jealousy" and "Starcrossed" -- , and collaborated with television director David Greene: the Cold War drama with David Soul “World War III” (a grim minimalistic electronic John Carpenter-like score which was humanized by touches of acoustics: piano, cymbalum, guitar), “Sweet Revenge” and “Fatal Vision”. Gil Mellé in Store or Gil Mellé CD representation? Unfortunately, Gil Mellé is mostly and vaguely remembered as a jazz musician -- under the name Gil Mellé Quartet -- because only a selection of off-centered hard bop jazz albums ("Patterns in Jazz" at Blue Note, "Gil's Guests" and "Primitive Modern/Quadrama" at Prestige but re-released thanks to Original Jazz Classics) are available on CD. The internet also labels and files him in the jazz genre. Blue Note records seems to have erased his memory because there're no reissues on CD format -- there used to be a cool "Complete Blue Note 50's Sessions" in 1998 but now gone! Needless to deal with his filmography on CD: the desert of the Sahara. Does Mellé sink into oblivion? That also raises the question: when will Mellé be recognized as a pioneer of electronics and soundtrack? There is a huge educational task to fulfil (explaining his musical philosophy and the detail of his sounds by describing his home-made instruments and his audio collages) in order to spread his work. How does the young generation be in touch with Mellé's music? The solution lies in a massive soundtrack CD releases of his seminal film music (“The Andromeda Strain”, "The Organization", "The Ultimate Warrior", "The Sentinel") and his serious and 'popular' input on Universal television (Steven Spielberg's two titles "The Psychiatrist/Savage", “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery”, “Columbo”, "Frankenstein: The True Story", “The Six Million Dollar Man”, “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”). But, who can do this assignment, who will be the champion and, how will this person operate? Until then, keep the hope… Notes: Film music critic and Gil Mellé expert James Phillips provides all the informations concerning the articles about Gil Mellé and books mentioning Gil Mellé. Writer James Phillips is also a Lalo Schifrin, Billy Goldenberg and Richard Rodney Bennett expert. Order and read the booklet of "The Prisoner of Zenda" (Music Composed by Alfred Newman) written by James Phillips: http://www.screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm?ID=3805 BIBLIOGRAPHY Articles about Gil Mellé Gil Mellé website http://www.gilmelle.com webmaster@gilmelle.com “Gil Mellé: Pioneer, Innovator, Maverick” by Jon Burlingame in “The Cue Sheet”, n° 1, January 2005, pp. 3-16 http://www.filmmusicsociety.org "Gil Mellé 1931 -- 2004" by Scott Bettencourt in "Film Score Friday", 11/5/04 http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/articles/2...core_Friday.asp MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com "Music la Mellé " by Randall D. Larson in "Cinescape", 11/11/04 http://www.mania.com/42953.html "Music la Mellé, Part 2" by Randall D. Larson in "Cinescape", 11/18/04 http://www.mania.com/43016.html "Baritone saxophonist, composer, inventor" by Todd S. Jenkins from the Jazz Journalist Association in "The Last Post", 2004 http://www.jazzhouse.org/gone/lastpost2.php3?edit=1099159235 "Gil Mellé" by Graham S. Watt in "Legend - the Official Goldsmith Film Music Society Journal", n° 26, September 1998, pp. 8-11 "Primitive Modern" by Matt P. In "Ground and Sky – Music Review", 04/20/05 http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/display.php?rev=gm-pm Music Resources Original Jazz Classics http://concordmusicgroup.com/labels/?label...l+Jazz+Classics Edgar Varèse, the Father of Electronic Music http://csunix1.lvc.edu/~snyder/em/varese.html Books "TV's Biggest Hits: The History of Television Themes from 'Dragnet' to 'Friends' " by Jon Burlingame (Schirmer Books, 1996, 342 pages, ISBN 0-02-870324-3) “Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour” by Scott Skelton and Jim Benson (Syracuse University Press, 1999, 398 pages, ISBN 0-8156-0535-8) http://www.nightgallery.net/ "The Night Stalker Companion: A 25th Anniversary Tribute" by Mark Dawidziak (Pomegranate Press Ltd, 1997, 208 pages, ISBN 0-938817-44-2)

That was my first one, also. I got it for an insanely low price, new, when I was 17 or 18. I felt very adult buying it!

He did, but "Hard Latin" is from the soundtrack of Mr. Buddwing, released on Verve. His other Verve soundtrack was Yellow Canary. They would make a fine twofer, but of course no one at Verve has ever heard of Kenyon Hopkins, let alone thought about reiussing him.

Lalo Schifrin - Bullit OST (WB German reissue, stereo)

With that cover art, it couldn't possibly be any other way.

Elis Regina - Elis (1972, Philips)

So which tracks/artists do you think should be represented on Verve Downsized Volume 1? I vote for "Hard Latin" by Kenyon Hopkins, "Fried Bananas" by Gary McFarland, and something from The Distant Galaxy by Don Sebeskey, but I haven't decided which track yet. Let's put together the perfect compilation and propose it to Verve before they go belly up. I'll add some more suggestions soon.

"Verve Downsized" should be the title of Verve's next series of compilations.

Much as I love "Younger than Yesterday," the Byrds were NEVER better than when Gene was with them. The Preflyte stuff is essential. He was really shafted by those guys. If they didn't appreciate what they had, they didn't deserve to have him in the first place. Have you ever heard his album with the Godsin Brothers in MONO?

Maria Creuza with Toquinho e Vinicius, "eu sei que vou te amar..." (RGC stereomono, whatever that means)

Can't wait to see him joust with Mick Jagger.

Well, the Burt album did the trick. I was wearing a polyester shirt and flare pants. I felt like a guy who would've written in to Playboy in 1970 asking what kind of wine would be appropriate to bring to his boss's holiday party...