{"id":1541,"date":"2010-11-18T03:08:47","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T08:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=1541"},"modified":"2010-12-20T22:14:42","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T03:14:42","slug":"cd-organization-the-1971","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=1541","title":{"rendered":"CD: Organization, The (1971)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Rating: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label: Intrada Special Collection\/ Released: September 13, 2010<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: 9 tracks \/ (26:40)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by James Phillips and Douglass Fake \/ Limited to 1000 copies<\/p>\n

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Composer: Gil Melle<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Intrada\u2019s release of\u00a0The Organization<\/strong> marks the second of three (legit commercial) albums that exist of Gil Melle\u2019s film work on CD, which is pretty remarkable, given the artist, composer, musician and jazz man was actively scoring movies &\u00a0TV from 1968-1993.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s maybe a sign of how little interest labels and perhaps Melle himself regarded his film & TV work, because aside from\u00a0The Andromeda Strain<\/strong> (also written in 1971, and performed on primordial electronic instruments), there were no other soundtracks albums released on LP during his lifetime. As Douglass Fake, Intrada\u2019s CD producer, explains in the disc\u2019s liner notes, after a long search the only extant material from the original recording sessions were 9 tracks totaling less than 27 mins. on a \u00bc\u201d tape that may have been suggested for a LP release on UA records.<\/p>\n

For jazz fans, releasing such a short album is a no-brainer, but film music fans might be a bit tougher to convince of this disc\u2019s value.<\/p>\n

Within the Virgil Tibbs franchise,\u00a0The Organization<\/strong> was the third and final Tibbs film, as played by Sidney Poitier through\u00a0In the Heat of the Night<\/strong> (1967) and\u00a0They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! <\/strong>(1970). The first two films were scored by Quincy Jones, who by 1971 was nearing his burnout phase, with 5 feature films and a TV series exhausting his creative juices in that one year.<\/p>\n

Jones may also have said everything he could\u2019ve said about the character. In the first film, covering Tibb\u2019s arrival in a racist town, the setting mandated blues and jazz \u2013 each performed with orchestra and jazz instrumentation, and scat vocals. The second film had Tibbs back in the city, so the style was jazz funk, but Jones seemed either tired or uninspired by the material because the bulk of the score (and certainly on the album) reiterated the new Tibbs theme heavily.<\/p>\n

Melle\u2019s approach for the third film was orchestral jazz, somewhat matching the style of Don Ellis\u2019The French Connection<\/strong> (also written in 1971), albeit without the shrill dissonance and weird orchestration. There is an undercurrent of funk in Melle\u2019s writing, but\u00a0Organization<\/strong> is a rare work that exploits the power of a large jazz band, and gives lots of room for soloists to play around.<\/p>\n

The titular main theme (\u201cThe Organization\u201d) which bookends the album (and also appears in the hybrid cue \u201cAnnie Lost\u201d) emphasizes hardened authority through the use of brass, and the repetition of the brief theme imparts Tibb\u2019s dogged style of never giving up when the quest for justice is at his heart\u2019s center. The bass line, electric guitar, and keyboards gives Tibbs some hip coolness, and decent improv from tenor sax hints at the chases and slimy characters he follows, tackles, and arrests within the film storyline about drugs and organized crime.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite a contrast \u2013 both the film and score \u2013 to\u00a0Connection<\/strong>, because while Don Ellis\u2019 music was a perfect match for that film,\u00a0Connection<\/strong>\u2019s look was grungy, chaotic, corrupt, and seedy.Organization<\/strong> is visually polished: Tibbs\u2019 personal world has colour and clean furniture, as well as a devoted wife with whom he struggles with emotionally for time and affection.<\/p>\n

Whereas Ellis\u2019 title music blares dissonance and immediately assaults the viewer, Melle creates a modernistic crescendo for the opening chase (\u201cMain Title\u201d), starting with a loose bass that sort of swirls in a nondescript time signature before locking into a rhythm, and setting the skeleton for Melle to start his simple thematic motif, adding flutes, sax, tambourine, and keyboards. Every musician gets room to groove, and Intrada\u2019s mastering exploits all the fine nuances that luckily existed on the \u00bc\u201d tapes. The woodwinds are breathy but smooth, keyboards glide behind the funky electric bass, and tambourine shakes on the right side of the stereo image.<\/p>\n

\u201cVirgil\u2019s Theme\u201d is faintly heard in the prior two cues, but in this statement it\u2019s a loose rendition on low flutes, pulsing string bass to the left, and slight ornamentation from keyboards on the right. The emphasis is on human warmth \u2013 Tibbs is a good, decent man \u2013 as well as slight confusion & frustration, because Tibbs has to balance the needs of his work as a detective and less than perfect marriage. \u201cThe Whole World\u201d starts off as a breezy, small jazz combo version of the Virgil theme, and Melle quickly decelerates the piece for odd percussion and wooden rattling. \u201cMr. Tibbs\u201d provides another theme variant with a mellow mood and slow tempo for jazz orchestra, and tenor sax leading the short theme statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnnie Lost\u201d is comprised of two cues: the same\u00a0Organization<\/strong> take that starts the album, and a quick edit to the more abstract theme variation where Melle plays with screeching bowed strings, blurting brass, wooden rattles, and a circular high pitch squeal and water bottle taps. The brief \u201cNight Danger\u201d recaps the\u00a0Organization<\/strong> theme, albeit really mellow, with a slower tempo, smooth bass, light percussion, and several flutes \u2013 the perfect cue to underscore Tibbs\u2019 walking across a street or layin\u2019 low under a dim street light.<\/p>\n

The album\u2019s last major cue is \u201cSubway Chase\u201d which brings in more string action, as well as timpani, and coarsely bowed double bass. Here the style is more evocative of Ellis\u2019\u00a0Connection<\/strong>writing, but for the cue\u2019s second half Melle recaps the\u00a0Organization<\/strong> theme as heard in the \u201cMain Title,\u201d again emphasizing the addition and subtraction of certain instruments cover the drama as Tibbs chases his suspect through a new subway development. The cue builds quickly but runs out of steam, so the album\u2019s original producers reprise \u201cThe Organization\u201d cue again to close the score.<\/p>\n

Here lies Intrada\u2019s dilemma: one cue is repeated\u00a03 times<\/em> in the aborted soundtrack album as edited on the tape master, so technically what survives is 21:32 mins. of actual score cuts, and that\u2019s where buyers will have to weigh whether the CD\u2019s full price makes the it worth snapping up.<\/p>\n

The jazz orchestra\u2019s size undoubtedly makes this a pricey album to produce, but this one\u2019s basically up to the buyer, because ultimately one is hungry for more, and disappointed so little survived in the intervening decades. Perhaps Melle simply didn\u2019t think enough of his film work to save material for his own archives, since he remained active as a jazz musician and artist.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s great music (hence the Very Good rating), but a cruel teaser of a great score that\u2019ll remain unreleased.<\/p>\n

Now if Intrada would set their eyes on Larry Cohen\u2019s weird little\u00a0Bone<\/strong> (1972), or the chilling\u00a0The Deliberate Stranger<\/strong> (1986) – two forgotten gems that illustrate Melle\u2019s brilliance in jazz and electronica\u2026<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2010 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related links:<\/p>\n

CD: \u00a0TV Omnibus: Volume One (1962-1976)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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External References:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews . Rating: Very Good Label: Intrada Special Collection\/ Released: September 13, 2010 Tracks & Album Length: 9 tracks \/ (26:40) . Special Notes: 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by James Phillips and Douglass Fake \/ Limited to 1000 copies . Composer: Gil Melle . . Review: Intrada\u2019s release of\u00a0The Organization […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[147],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-oR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1944,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/1944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}