INTRADA Announces:
WAY...WAY OUT/BRADDOCK
Composed and Conducted by LALO SCHIFRIN
INTRADA Special Collection Volume 73
Intada's latest release features a groovy Lalo Schifrin double-header: the Jerry Lewis comedy Way...Way Out (1966) and the hour-long television pilot Braddock (1967), both from the archives at 20th Century Fox. In Way....Way Out, the year is 1994 and a hapless meteorologist (Jerry Lewis) and a smart, beautiful astronomer (Connie Stevens) are coerced by an American space-agency bureaucrat (Robert Morley) into getting married just before being sent to the moon. There they meet their Soviet counterparts (Dick Shawn, Anita Ekberg), unmarried lovers who love to party. Eventually the space race becomes a race to become the first couple to conceive a child on the moon.
For composer Lalo Schifrin, it was an offbeat challenge: not only his first feature film for the studio but also his first comedy score. One of the delights of the score is Schifrin's semi-classical approach, where he melds early classical and baroque influences with a modern, cool-jazz sound (a very close cousin of his highly-regarded jazz fusion album Marquis de Sade). Schifrin takes his versatile main theme through a variety of twists and turns: “Space March” is a lively martial rendition, while “Welcome to the Moon” features a funkier arrangement for organ and rhythm section, and “Schmidlap” offers a fun, decidedly ’60s take that has alto flute, muted brass and bongos. There’s a love theme for warm, piano-and-strings, some appropriate Russian music (the accordion-mandolin combo that opens the “Finale”), a little Cold War suspense, and a brief outer-space motif that mimics weightlessness with some offbeat timpani and electric-bass effects (“Welcome to the Moon”). Yet there's more: as always with Schifrin, his source cues are as memorable as his dramatic ones.
The TV pilot for Braddock starred Tom Simcox in the title role -- a tough-guy detective in the year 1977 when picturephones, lapel radios and streamlined cars are commonplace. He and his partner Tratner (Stephen McNally) get mixed up in the search for a portable laser weapon, an assignment further complicated when Tratner’s wife (Karen Steele) makes a play for Braddock; multiple murders follow.
Schifrin’s Braddock orchestra of 43 players was nearly the same size as his Way… Way Out ensemble of 44, with the legendary violinist Louis Kaufman as concertmaster in both. Schifrin begins with an arresting theme that depicts Braddock in tough, no-nonsense terms, with strong brass figures and decisive timpani hits—while reminding the audience via a repeating xylophone phrase that he lives in a world dominated by technology. (The latter would reappear in Schifrin’s Oscar-nominated 1967 score for Cool Hand Luke.) Much of the underscore is not dissimilar to the style of Schifrin’s then popular Mission: Impossible scores, emphasizing stealth, danger and edge-of-your-seat suspense (including plenty of those classic ‘60s bongo drums).
Intrada presents both scores in their entirety in great stereo sound.
This release is limited to 1500 copies.
INTRADA Special Collection - Volume 73
Retail Price: $19.99
IN STOCK NOW
For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.5868/.f
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