(Track Listing
Disc 1:
1. Main Title (From Lawman) 4:42
2....)
Track Listing
Disc 1:
1. Main Title (From Lawman) 4:42
2. Old Family Burial Ground 2:24
3. Predators 4:09
4. Branding The Cattle 1:36
5. In Lauras Room 2:45
6. Requiem In The Pasture 4:20
7. Rapidly, Toward Resolution 3:28
8. Finis 1:20
9. Anatomy Of The Assasin 9:53
10. Two Soliloquies 4:31
11. The Contract In Naples 4:56
12. Approach, Assualt, Pursuit, Conquest 7:20
13. Suite (From The Big Sleep) 19:25
Disc Time: 70:49
Disc 2:
1. Prologue 1:45
2. Dialogues 4:20
3. Window Display 3:45
4. The Hunting Party 2:31
5. The Man Trap 4:14
6. The Infamous Apassionata 8:33
7. The Siege Begins 2:28
8. Coda 2:24
9. Epilogue 1:46
10. Main Title 4:39
11. Fruits Of The Incursion 3:30
12. Main Title (From The Nightcomers) 2:45
13. Bedtime At Blye House 3:01
14. Summer Rowing 3:19
15. Pig Sty 1:36
16. Pas De Deux 2:23
17. The Smoking Frog 2:08
18. The Childrens Hour 2:17
19. Act Two Prelude Myles In The Air 2:24
20. The Flower Bath 2:21
21. The Big Swim 3:30
22. Through The Looking Glass 2:41
23. Tea In The Tree 1:53
24. Recapitulation And Postlude 3:26
Disc Time: 73:39
Total Album Time: 144:28
Jerry Fielding was an American jazz musician, arranger and film composer who emerged in the 1960s after a decade on the blacklist to create boldly diverse and evocative Oscar-nominated scores, primarily for gritty, often brutally savage, western and crime action genres, including the Peckinpah masterpieces, The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971).
Background
He was born Joshua Itzhak Feldman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Hiram Harris Feldman, a furniture salesman, and Esther Felman. Encouraged by his father's love of music, young Fielding took up the clarinet after a desire to be a trombonist proved impractical.
Education
He joined his school band and proved so adept that soon he was offered a scholarship to the Carnegie Institute for Instrumentalists in Pittsburgh.
Sufficiently recuperated, Fielding saw no reason to prolong his education.
Career
His tenure there was short-lived as his health suddenly deteriorated. Although his ailment was not diagnosed, the thirteen-year-old Fielding spent the better part of the next two years bedridden.
He listened to the radio and became enamored of the big-band sound. He was also drawn to Bernard Herrmann's music for Orson Welles's groundbreaking radio dramas. Sufficiently recuperated, Fielding saw no reason to prolong his education. Instead he went to work for Max Atkins at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh.
Atkins was the orchestra's director, and he also taught arranging. Fielding, a fast study, was soon doing charts for the bands, and his natural aptitude was noticed by Alvino Rey.
At seventeen he departed with Rey's band for New York City. Fielding's arrangements were often rejected by Rey because of their innovative quirkiness, but in 1940 his arrangement for "Picnic in Purgatory" was recorded and it sold well. His stint with Alvino Rey ended when most of the band members were drafted.
Fielding, however, was turned away from military service because of his frailty.
After arranging for Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge on the radio, Fielding became bandleader on a succession of radio shows, including the "Jack Paar Show, " "The Life of Riley, " Mickey Rooney's "The Hardy Family, " and "You Bet Your Life" with Groucho Marx.
When Marx moved to television, Fielding stayed with him, and from 1949 to 1952 he had several weekly assignments including his own "Jerry Fielding Show. " He joined a group called the Hollywood Writers Mobilization, which later became the Independent Progressive party. Under both guises the groups were considered by some to be fronts for the Communist party.
Blacklisted in Hollywood, Fielding eventually found work in Las Vegas, where for several years he led the band in the Royal Las Vegas Hotel, which later became the Stardust. He recorded a number of albums for Decca Records and worked with many vocalists.
In 1959, Betty Hutton was signed to do a television series, but she refused to work without Fielding. The network finally relented, and he was once more employable in Hollywood. Moving seriously into composition, Fielding's first film assignment was to write the score for Advise and Consent (1962).
The director, Otto Preminger, was supportive of blacklist victims and, encouraged by writer Dalton Trumbo, gave Fielding the job.
Fielding worked steadily in television, and he achieved fame with his theme for Hogan's Heroes (1965). In 1966 producer Daniel Melnick introduced Fielding to director Sam Peckinpah, and the two began a fruitful working relationship beginning with Noon Wine (1966) for the ABC series "Stage 67. "
The Wild Bunch (1969), a revisionist Western masterpiece, established the reputations of the director and his composer.
Fielding worked with other directors, including Michael Winner and Clint Eastwood. His score for Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) was also nominated for an Academy Award. In 1971 he repaid a debt of faith to Dalton Trumbo by scoring Trumbo's directorial debut, Johnny Got His Gun, a harrowing antiwar story.
In 1977, Fielding suffered a heart attack. In the aftermath of his illness, he bemoaned the dearth of good directors and the lack of integrity in the work he was offered. He resented the fact that the studios retained ownership of the scores he and his colleagues were composing.
He helped to initiate a lawsuit against the studios on behalf of the Composers and Lyricists Guild of America. The suit was only partially successful.
Under both guises the groups were considered by some to be fronts for the Communist party.
He joined a group called the Hollywood Writers Mobilization, which later became the Independent Progressive party.
Views
Quotations:
When he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1953, Fielding refused to provide the committee with the names of his friends and political colleagues. Later he said, "I knew I'd be out of a job. By the time I got home the studio had called telling me not to report for work anymore. "
Connections
He went to Los Angeles and was hired as vocal arranger for the Town Criers, led by Lucy Ann Polk. When the group joined Kay Kyser's band, Fielding went with them.
By 1945 he had become Kyser's chief arranger and had begun a courtship with Ann Parks, a production assistant with the band. They married in December 1946 during a trip to Tijuana, Mexico. They adopted two children.
In the spring of 1963, Fielding's marriage ended. He had met Camille Williams, a dancer, in Las Vegas, and they were married on August 6 of that year; they had two children.
Fielding's lengthy and diverse score for the movie was nominated for an Academy Award. Fielding received his second Academy Award nomination for his score to Straw Dogs