Da-daaa-da-daa-da-daaaaaa

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

28/05/61 : Exodus - Original Soundtrack 

I've never heard of this so have no idea what to expect - I guess it's either a musical or a film, so it'll probably be dated songs with lyrics or a load of orchestral music which will be perfectly fine but pointless.

It's most definitely the latter - all perfectly fine and pleasant enough to listen to (although somewhat over-dramatic at times), but I don't really understand why film soundtrack albums are a thing (and they still very much are for some people).  I mentally switched off way before I got to the end of this, I'm afraid...

We're at #17 in the charts this week with a rare new entry and it managed a whole one week on the chart.  The top five this week were Elvis, South Pacific, Cliff, George and more Elvis and there are no more new entries but two re-entries that we're probably going to see some time soon, so we shouldn't run out of albums for a bit!

Somewhat surprisingly, Wikipedia does have an entry for the album and it tells us that it was written by Ernest Gold and recorded by the London Sinfonia.  Most of the rest of the entry talks about all the people that have covered the theme tune and there's been a surprising variety of them including ska, hard rock, disco, techno and several versions with lyrics.  I'm sure you also know it was the theme tune for Mr Perfect, an American wrestler who is apparently very highly regarded in such esoteric circles.  And, quite obviously, it won the 1961 Emmy for Song Of The Year, being the only instrumental track to do so - the album won the Best Soundtrack Emmy and also the Best Original Score Academy Award.  And finally, a 2009 version by the Prague Philharmonic won the Sammy Award for Best Newly Recorded Vintage Film Score, which feels like a VERY niche award indeed.

"Customers also listened to" the soundtracks to Rio Conchos, The Guns Of Navarone (I used to love Alistair MacLean books as a teenager!), Camelot, Lawrence Of Arabia and many, many others.  This was, as I said, all perfectly fine and I'm sure it did the job, but I just didn't care.

21/05/61 - An interesting historical listen
04/06/61 - Nice enough

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