The Complete 'WIld One,' Plus Reups

From top: the EP,
10-inch LP, 12-inch LP covers

Almost 10 years ago, I featured the 10-inch LP of Leith Stevens' score for The Wild One - you know, the flick where Marlon Brando and his motorcycle gang take over a small town. The movie was iconic in a number of ways - Brando as anti-hero, his leather-jacket-and-engineer-boot look, the entire biker-film genre, and - most pertinent to this discussion - Stevens' use of jazz on the soundtrack.

Jazz had appeared in films many times before, of course. At one time in the early 40s, even third-rate big bands were snaring gigs in B-movies. Stevens' sound seemed different, though - more modern. It was in fact the approach of the more hard-driving wing of the West Coast jazz scene, as embodied in trumpeter Shorty Rogers and his cohorts, who recorded the backgrounds to Brando's brooding.

That's not to say that all the music was groundbreaking. "Blues for Brando" could well have come from any dance band's catalog. "Lonely Way" is lounge music. But the title theme was influential - its aggressive motto theme paved the way for such scores as Kenyon Hopkins' The Strange One (notice the title's similarity as well).

Today's post gathers all The Wild One recordings in one place - not just the 10-inch LP, but the additional numbers recorded later for a 12-inch album, and the EP of music from the film that Rogers recorded under his own name. Doing such a compilation isn't a new idea, but since I own all three records, I thought it might be fun to put them together in one post. I've added below some remastered versions of Leith Stevens scores.

Let me start with a brief discussion of each Wild One record in order of recording date. The first was actually Rogers' four-song EP, set down in July 1953. For the date, the trumpeter led a 19-piece band featuring Bill Perkins on tenor sax. Rogers and Perkins were veterans of the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton bands, as was true of many participants on all three recording sessions.

First EP cover

Initially, RCA Victor issued the EP under the title Hot Blood, the working title of the film, which came out the following February as The Wild One. When the film was renamed, so was the EP and the movie's title tune, as well.

Rogers and eight other musicians - most of whom were on the previous date - returned to the studio in October 1953 to record a 10-inch LP for Decca. For this date, they were dubbed "Leith Stevens' All Stars." On the LP cover credits, Shorty Rogers was listed as "Roger Short" and drummer Shelley Manne became "Manny Shell" for contractual reasons. This time around, the tenor sax soloist was Bob Cooper.

By 1956, the 10-inch LP had given way to the 12-inch variety, so Decca called Rogers back to record four more numbers to fill out a Wild One reissue in the larger format. Some of the same musicians returned for this April 1956 session, including Bob Cooper on tenor.

Brando as the badly misunderstood Johnny Strabler

To summarize, my package includes: a new transfer of the EP; a remastered transfer of the 10-inch LP; a new dub of the four songs added to the 12-inch LP; and front and back scans of all three covers.

It is sometimes said (even in the comments on this blog) that Rogers, not Stevens, wrote the music for The Wild One. I haven't seen evidence for that assertion; Stevens was an accomplished musician who had a long career in Hollywood. Still, there is no question that Rogers and his hand-picked musicians had a great deal to offer when the score was recorded. IMDb lists Rogers as arranger on the soundtrack, and he surely had much to do with the sound of the score.

Leith Stevens Reups

To complement The Wild One, I've remastered two Leith Stevens soundtracks from the early days of this blog. The links below take you to the original posts.

Destination Moon. From 1950, another influential score. A decade ago, my take was that "it does have overtones of Holst and Ming the Merciless, and I know he [Stevens] cribbed one of the main motifs from somewhere I can't recall, but it is very enjoyable nonetheless." Still true!

The James Dean Story. Following Dean's 1955 death, the American exploitation machine went into overdrive. This post captures Stevens' very good score for a 1956 documentary, with a title tune by the prolific duo of Livingston and Evans. I've tossed in a Mantovani single version of the title song for good measure. Included are excellent graphics both for the LP and the Mantovani picture sleeve.

A Christmas Carol and Lyn Murray Singers

Columbia's two Christmas releases in 1942 were Basil Rathbone as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and the Lyn Murray Singers in songs of the season. The label brought them together in 1948 for this early LP.

Rathbone as Scrooge

Rathbone was identified with the Dickens tale, and not just as Scrooge. He appeared in a televised version in 1954 as Marley's ghost, then returned to the central role for the 1956 TV musical, The Stingiest Man in Town. (I offered that album two years ago here.)

For its 1942 adaptation, Columbia advertised a "Hollywood cast," but it was mainly radio actors. Among the troupe were Arthur Q. Bryan (the voice of Elmer Fudd), Elliott Lewis (who has popped up on this blog a number of times, most notably in Manhattan Tower), Lurene Tuttle (a ubiquitous presence on radio and television), and silent film star Francis X. Bushman. The connecting music is by Leith Stevens, another semi-regular at this location.

The potted performance is an effective one, and the sound is alright. My pressing is a little worn. At one point it's hard to tell if it the ghost's chains or the groove's walls that are making the clunking noises in the background.

Lyn Murray

Don't neglect the other side of the record. It may look like a generic collection of carols, but it is very well done by the Lyn Murray Singers, a radio group of the time. Murray went on to become a Hollywood composer.

Columbia's ads for the set of carols (see below) quote composer-critic Deems Taylor as claiming that Murray's group rates with the "great English Singers". Most people these days wouldn't understand the comparison, and I doubt that most people then did either.

The English Singers were a pioneering early music group that also performed contemporary works. I have a 78 of the group in Christmas settings by Rutland Boughton and Peter Warlock that will soon be up on my other, long-neglected blog. I will say here that Lyn Murray's singers and the English Singers had little to do with one other, despite what Deems Taylor may have said. The repertoire was different, and Murray's group was much more secure technically than the Londoners.

The image below is the cover of the Christmas Carol's 78 set, presumably by Alex Steinweiss. You can see how the artwork was adapted for the LP cover above. The download also includes the inside of the 78 set and a different LP cover (these are not my scans).

Destination Moon

Twenty years before the Apollo astronauts actually landed there, George Pal was concocting a movie version of a trip to the moon - with the voyage financed by selfless capitalists. (It turned out that the selfless capitalism angle was more unrealistic than the actual exploration.)

I haven't seen the film, but the back of the LP says the idea was sold on a "whoever controls the moon controls the earth" pitch, and that the lead investor found this idea somehow moving. I'm not sure why he would get emotional over the moon exploration concept, but then I slept through the 1969 moon landing on my girlfriend's couch, so I'm no judge.

On to the music at hand, and it is a nice piece of work by Leith Stevens, who commanded a wide range of styles. This score bears little resemblance to The Wild One or The James Dean Story, which we've seen before in this space. I suppose it does have overtones of Holst and Ming the Merciless, and I know he cribbed one of the main motifs from somewhere I can't recall, but it is very enjoyable nonetheless and pretty well recorded for the time. And the cover is great!

The Wild One

Put Brando on a motorcycle and you get instant icon, and also a pretty good score, as composed by Leith Stevens.

The Wild One was probably the original biker movie, a precursor to the cheesy genre items that were so common in the late 60s. Unlike those films, which were accompanied by what seemed like one long fuzztone guitar riff, The Wild One was backed by cool jazz as played by some of the best West Coast musicians, as noted on the back of the LP. The pseudonyms are not hard to decode: Roger Short for Shorty Rogers and Manny Shell for Shelly Manne. (Too bad Paul Horn wasn't on the gig.)

This rip is from the original 10-inch LP; it later was issued on a 12-incher with a different cover.

I'll be back with Destination Moon, another Stevens score.

The James Dean Story

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.