Jewels is actually the last all-original album Les would make for Capitol. It was recorded in 1961, and is in many ways a close spiritual cousin to Music Out Of The Moon. Les shaped a great deal of the Jewels music around the Novachord, an early electronic organ, and let his more ethereal colors show once again. |
In addition to Jewels, 1961 saw the release of his Music Of The Sixties LP. This was an album of Baxter arrangements of standard songs such as "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "Calcutta". Corresponding with the album was a syndicated television special of the same name, the only comprehensive video document of Les Baxter in performance. He features himself as pianist and conductor. Les Baxter's own music of the sixties was mostly soundtrack work. He made a few albums for Reprise -- Soul Of The Drums (which featured the great Olatunji on percussion), The Primitive And The Passionate (an exotic record), and Les Baxter's Balladeers (an attempt to cash in on the folk boom which featured a pre-Byrds David Crosby). While each of these records has its moments, none is exactly on par with his best Capitol's. Unfortunately for Les, the soundtrack work was very nearly anonymous. He scored over one hundred films for American International Pictures, the most successful B movie mill of the time. Everything was done quick and dirty. The players who worked on the recording sessions remember recording everything at the speed of light, with mistakes being covered by sound effects in the dubbing. While Henry Mancini was making his legendary reputation with such scores as Breakfast At Tiffany's and Shot In The Dark, Les was hard at work on such low-budget epics as Dr Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs, The Dunwich Horror, and Pit And The Pendulum. |
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Ironically, some of the best and most interesting music of Les¹ career was composed in the service of these pictures. His score for the Japanese feature-length cartoon Alakazam The Great is actually Les¹ finest hour as a composer of ³serious² music, rife with references to favorite Stravinsky pieces, as well as some of Les¹ most arresting and unexpected (even jarring) moments since The Passions. American International tried hard to make a ³legit² film with Master Of The World, which starred the studio¹s biggest star, Vincent Price. This was the one score that Les claimed was granted a reasonable budget, and he was quite proud of it. The grind of scoring as many as ten budget pictures a year took its toll on Les' presence in the record marketplace. The job paid well, between the actual paycheck for the assignment and the composer's royalties that were generated every time one of the movies was shown publicly or broadcasted. |
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But the stock of Les Baxter as recording
artist went down, and towards the end of the decade, he was recording for GNP/Crescendo
records, with ensembles smaller than he was used to. He had not lost his touch, but he
wasn't the kind of man who liked working with small groups. A reunion with Yma Sumac
resulted in the less-than-successful Miracles, an unfortunate attempt to get Yma to rock.
The album is a camp classic, but does nothing to live up to the magic of Voice Of The
Xtabay. |
