Intrada Soundtrack Forum

The recent release of THE DEEP made me throw in a few John Barry scores into my CD player, shortening the wait. Anyway, right now I'm listening to THE COTTON CLUB. John Barry's work for THE COTTON CLUB hasn't gotten all that much recognition on these soundtrack forums. It's not mentioned all that often even though it's an excellent piece of work, perhaps because it's very much a recreation of the Jazz music of a bygone era. It's not a straightforward Barry underscore. He did a terrific job musically supervising all those classic Jazz greats by Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, etc. (He must have had a ball with those.) He did, however, also compose original music for the movie, and what's on the CD is great.
While the commercial soundtrack release is very good (excellent truthful recordings of many of those classic standards but with modern sound), there is, I'm sure, much more music in the actual film. I'm wondering how much original music Barry actually composed for the movie and whether any more of it might see the light of day at some time. (I'm familiar with the suite on the Silva ZULU album, which I also like quite a bit.)

Let's not forget that Barry supposedly recorded the score for orchestra and Coppola didn't like the sound so Barry recorded it again with a more bluesy orchestration.

If that's true (and the story is revealed by Barry himself in Michael Schelle's "The Score") that would make it a true gem.

Cheers

I didn't know that. Well, a full release of the COTTON CLUB soundtrack should easily fill two CDs.

I'd have to question whether Barry supervised the source music (I don't recall him getting credit for them on the LP). I say this because in an interview at a screening of the film, Robert Evans made a very big deal about the changes he instituted in the film, one of them being tossing out the source music arrangements by Ralph Burns and replacing him with Bob Wilber.

If all this music exists in all the forms noted in this thread, I'll bet it would fill 3 cd's!

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DavidinBerkeley

"Ask [the director] where the camera comes from and I'll tell him where the music comes from" (David Raksin)

There's also a rejected score by Ralph Burns.

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