James Dean made only three films but became an instant icon after perishing in a 1955 car crash at age 24. The great American postmortem exploitation industry was operating at full tilt soon after his death, with this 1957 documentary one of its first products. The James Dean Story was one of the estimable director Robert Altman's early efforts, following such gems as How to Run a Filling Station and Corn's-A-Poppin'.
Hollywood tends to impose a persona on its inhabitants, and Dean certainly had a strong one - one that was easily captured, anyway. David Stone Martin, on the album cover, portrays him as a confused child, playing with a toy car, smoking his cigarette (curious how this deadly habit persists as a sign of hipness), and carrying his drum in the thumbnail drawing. A striking if unsubtle pair of images.
Leith Stevens' score is more nuanced, displaying a variety of styles and moods in this characteristically well-recorded Capitol album. The title song is by the universal tunesmiths of the day, Livingston and Evans. It's presented on the soundtrack album by teen crooner Tommy Sands (who isn't bad, actually).
To illustrate how, as Jimmy Durante might say, everyone wanted to get into the exploitation act, I have appended a cover version of the title song - as presented by Mantovani, his cascading strings, and his bottomless echo chamber. The download includes the picture sleeve from the Mantovani 45 - a photo of Monte shares the front with the David Stone Martin drawing of Dean from the LP cover above. The back of the picture sleeve has the excellent likeness of the actor shown below.
4 comments:
I have long thought your blog is as important for cover art as music. David Stone Martin, whom Norman Granz used extensively, deserves a museum retrospective and coffee table book. That Capitol selected him for its James Dean story cover says a lot about the stature he achieved in the 1950s. Isn't it wonderful to note that Blue Note was using Andy Warhol for covers at the same time? I wonder how many other great artists were doing similar work for recording companies? MOMA, are you wondering, too? Hint, hint.
A really interesting companion piece to the other soundtrack from this film, which is an underrated, or at least little mentioned, West Coast jazz album conducted and arranged by Johnny Mandel and Bill Holman, written by Stevens, featuring Chet Baker, Bud Shank and a slew of West Coasters. Most of the tracks on this are also on the other disc, in radically different form. And "Let Me Be Loved," in the CD incarnation (not on the original vinyl), features Chet Baker's vocals, not Tommy Sands'.
The Baker/Shank version was my intro to West Coast jazz, back when I found a beat up vinyl copy as a kid for a quarter, and I still like it.
This version is new to me, and a real treat, so thanks. And thanks for the Kenyon Hopkins, and thanks for FLAC.
Remastered version (Apple lossless):
https://mega.nz/#!TY92TaoJ!zYv9W_agjAzVIFahvMtb1BTHxbPOqVGIj3Fl54lCj_U
This one i'm not as happy about sound wise.
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