It's a different thing taking a girl into danger!

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

21/05/61 : King Kong - Original Soundtrack 

Oh good, having just said I didn't see the point to film soundtrack albums, I immediately get another one - I'm expecting to switch off pretty quickly.  

Actually, the music was pretty varied and atmospheric - particularly when you consider it's from a film from 1933. I can't say I truly enjoyed it, but it was quite an interesting listen - maybe one of these days I'll even watch the film (or the remake - that passed me by as well!)

We're at #13 in the chart this week with a re-entry just for the one week, after having had a seven week run earlier in the year peaking at #12.  The top five this week were Elvis, South Pacific, George, Cliff and more Elvis and we have one new entry in the chart for the Barber/Bilk best-of (#14) which did very well throughout the year and I'm disappointed I never found it.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album, but the entry for the film makes some lofty claims for it - "King Kong's score was the first feature-length musical score written for an American "talkie" film, the first major Hollywood film to have a thematic score rather than background music, the first to mark the use of a 46-piece orchestra and the first to be recorded on three separate tracks (sound effects, dialogue, and music)".  And then, somewhat bizarrely, it doesn't say anything more about it other than telling us it was done by Max Steiner. His entry has a bit  more on it, along with a LOT on all the other stuff he did and boy did he do a lot - including Gone With The Wind and Casablanca which are two films you might have heard of...

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations", which is a bit bizarre when you see how many other soundtracks Exodus threw up.  This was also a lot more interesting, as well as having considerably more historical significance - but quite why it was charting in 1961 is not entirely clear...

14/05/71 - Hits the heights of "not dreadful"
28/05/71 - I just didn't care

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