 "Cartridge/Earphones/Holding Letter" from Zigzag (MP3 edit)
"Good Friends/To the Dead Child/By the Book" (MP3 edit)
Zigzag / The Super Cops
Oliver Nelson / Jerry Fielding
Film Score Monthly
Film Score Monthly can't be accused of playing it safe. After all, Zigzag and The Super Cops aren't exactly "classic films," and I'd bet that the only people who'll buy it will be a) fans of obscure crime jazz scores and/or b) fans of Oliver Nelson and/or Jerry Fielding. In other words, freaks like me. ;-)
Zigzag, starring George Kennedy, actually had a LP release at the time of the film's release in '70. Nelson's cachet with jazz audiences must have encouraged the release. But Zigzag isn't a straight jazz score. Nelson, who held degrees in theory and composition, brought a sophisticated ear to the film, providing both propulsive Latin jazz and meditative modernist string passages, often blending the two. The action-oriented passages will remind some listeners of '70s shows like The Six Million Dollar Man, which should come as no surprise since Nelson composed for the show shortly before he died at the age of 43. FSM includes not only the original score but also the album program, which features an unrelated song called "Zigzag" sung by Roy Orbison. There are songs sung by Bobby Hatfield as well.
Closing out the first disc are Anita O'Day jazz vocal tracks from Zigzag and The Outfit ('73). The latter film previously served an FSM release that included Fielding's score for the crime film. What is at first a seemingly random inclusion becomes an odd transition into Fielding's score for The Super Cops on Disc Two.
The Super Cops isn't among Fielding better known scores, in part because the film is fairly obscure. It's based on a true story of two New York cops who are more super dedicated to fighting crime than "super" in the comic book sense. Fielding busts out the funky crime jazz with hard blowing brass, wah-wah guitar and a near-blaxploitation vibe. Still, one wouldn't mistake Fielding for J.J. Johnson, Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield. He works a groove well enough, but like Lalo Schifrin he tends to infuse his compositions with a broader spectrum of tonal color. Still, it's very much an action score with interesting references to militarism and the Old West.
Disc Two closes out with selections from Fielding's scores for the short lived folksy attorney show Hawkins, starring James Stewart (think of it as a prototype for Matlock). These cues are by turns abstract and dramatic ("Life for a Life") and pure pastiche ("Harmonica Source"). The CD also contains Fielding's source country western and jazzy pop cues for a cafe in The Outfit.
That's a tremendous amount of music for this intriguing package. Anyone who enjoys discovering cool obscure scores will really dig it.
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