Soundtracks

What I enjoy most about my job is building collections. I love learning new things and being a librarian is kind of like being a perpetual student except I get paid for it. So I've been working on the soundtrack collection and really enjoying it. I've always known that Hollywood loved chart topping musicians. I remember running across a hokey B-western that I almost bought for the library just because it had Bob Wills and his Texas Cowboys doing country swing from the flatbed of a supposedly moving train, but great musicians always have a habit of showing up in movies. There is a wonderful scene in the movie Ball of Fire of Gene Krupa doing a boogie riff in a club with wooden matchsticks and a matchbox. Of course Broadway was a huge source of talent for Hollywood, and there were several major stars that were singers first, (Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, and Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley in particular used movies to introduce and promote his music. I just recently bought a DVD collection of Alice Faye DVD's. I had never heard of Alice Faye so I was surprised to learn her movies generated 24 number one hits.

The music in this order falls into four broad categories, movie soundtracks, musical soundtracks, original cast Broadway recordings, and great soundtrack composers. Generally I tried to get original Broadway cast recordings of musicals since we probably own most of the great Hollywood musicals on either DVD or VHS but there were several cases where the motion picture soundtrack is either better in quality or has the performers people remember best.

The CD's

Show Boat
42nd Street
Annie Get Your Gun
Big Chill - A MoTown sampler with Aretha, Three Dog Night, and Procol Harum thrown in.
Blues Brothers - Jake and Elwood with Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, and James Brown.
Pulp Fiction - An amazing collection of hits from the Del Tones to the Statler Brothers.
Best of Bond - Carly Simon, Duran Duran, Tom Jones, Gladys Knight, Paul McCartney, Sheena Eason, Cheryl Crow, and more. Just wow.
Kiss me Kate
Guys and Dolls
Kismet
Oklahoma!
Carousel
King and I
South Pacific
West Side Story
Mary Poppins
My Fair Lady
Sound Of Music
Oliver
Funny Girl
Hello Dolly
Fiddler on the Roof (motion picture version, Issac Stern plays the violin part!)
Man of La Mancha
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Grease (the movie soundtrack.)
Fame - The movie soundtrack just may live forever.
Annie
Footloose - Another 80's hit generator with, among others, Kenny Loggins, Shalamar, Quiet Riot, Sammy Hagar and Foreigner.
A Chorus Line
Little Shop of Horrors
Dirty Dancing - Another 80's hit machine with an amazing collection of classics.
Captain Blood and Other Swashbucklers - the four composers on this album, Eric Wolfgang Korngold, Victor Young, Max Steiner, and Miklos Rozsa were nominated for 61 Academy Awards and won 9.
King Kong: Complete 1933 film score. Max Steiner's ground breaking music changed soundtracks for all time. (Yep. King Kong changed music!)
Adventures of Mark Twain - Max Steiner wrote one of the greatest film scores ever written for a movie nobody remembers.
Buono, il brutto, il cattivo (Good, the Bad, The Ugly) One of the most unforgettable western theme songs ever written.
Goldsmith Conducts Goldsmith - Jerry Goldsmith was nominated for 17 Academy Awards and wrote music for the Blue Max, Patton, and Legend among others.
Brigadoon
Bernard Herrmann: The Film Scores - Won one Academy Award and was nominated for 5, his distinctive style including Psycho and North by Northwest.
Bye Bye Birdie
Unsinkable Molly Brown
Nashville
Music in Film - Another Oscar studded cast share the stage with Aaron Copeland, Sergey Prokofiev, and Leonard Bernstein.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Tommy - I like the Who, but I've always liked Tina Turner's version of the Acid Queen better.