Barry Schwartz, Edward A. Wasserman

While director Francis Coppola's potboiling crime drama set against the gloriously tumultuous backdrop of Harlem's famed Cotton Club nightspot of the '20s and '30s didn't quite come together as a cinematic whole, John Barry's efforts at supervising, scoring, and recreating the energetic jive and wail of the era very nearly carry the day. The opportunity was likely a dream come true for the former jazzman turned film scorer; his adaptations of standards by Ellington and Cab Calloway are reverent yet energetic, infused by original music that weaves it into an accessible and rewarding tapestry of time, place, and art. Great soundtrack.

Diamonds Are Forever has undergone a somewhat less significant though thoroughly pleasing expansion with the February 2003 release of the remastered, expanded version. Still mid-priced, the disc features 24 additional minutes of music from the completed film – included is "Gunbarrel and Manhunt," alternating between original John Barry music and Barry's variations on Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme," and the musical accompaniment to various key action scenes, as well as some playful romantic scoring for some of Sean Connery's romantic activities. The main virtue is the improved sound (which greatly benefits Shirley Bassey's finely nuanced performance of the title song) on what was an entertaining and distinctive, if not terribly creative or ambitious score, a somewhat closer relative to Barry's work on Goldfinger and to the exoticism of You Only Live Twice or the bold, near-symphonic scope of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The annotation is reasonably thorough, although on this occasion it focuses far more on the movie than on the music.

John Barry's best score for any James Bond movie – including the best song ("We Have All the Time in the World") ever written for any movie in the series – is reasonably well represented on this CD. Barry had already begun adding more diverse and complex orchestral pieces to his underscoring and greater lyricism to his songs with the preceding movie, You Only Live Twice, and he continued the process with On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The serious nature of its plot, however, and the unique mood of the movie, dictated that almost an entirely new score be devised: the brassy "007 Theme," which had appeared in three prior films, was absent, and the "James Bond Theme" was re-arranged. Barry also wrote one of his longest and most easily embellished action themes (heavily featuring the synthesizer, an instrument new to film scores), and dressed it up with a string section playing running scales that is startling to hear in stereo, with the discreet separation of the orchestral parts. And then there was "We Have All the Time in the World," the best song ever written for the Bond series; a serious, poignant love song that underscores the doomed romance between Bond and Tracy (Diana Rigg), it was sung by Louis Armstrong in what proved to be the jazz legend's final recording session.

Though John Barry achieved popular recognition for the swinging, loungey, noir-ish soundtracks he composed for the James Bond films, he moved to the front rank of film composers with his score for 1966's BORN FREE. Stylistically, the music of BORN FREE is miles removed from Barry's Bond soundtracks, though the composer's fondness for brass fanfares, stirring strings, and lush, intricate charts with stunning dynamic range is still intact. On the whole, however, the music to BORN FREE has a playful, innocent quality, evoking the nature of the wild animals at the film's center. As the movie is set in Africa, Barry employs a range of African percussion instruments, and sections of flute music (which often seem to echo the sounds of birds or other creatures). The arrangements are expansive and sweeping, giving rise to the sensation of open plains, and Barry's recurring musical themes parallel the film's action (the track titles indicate plot events). The score is, for the most part, surprisingly subdued, with occasional bursts of energy (mirroring tumultuous events onscreen) and its stirring title theme the exceptions. Barry won an Academy Award for the score in 1966.

BUYSOUNDTRAX Records present HIGH ROAD TO CHINA, featuring music composed and conducted by John Barry for the 1983 action adventure film directed by Brian G. Hutton (SOL MADRID, WHERE EAGLES DARE, KELLY’S HEROES), based on a book by Jon Cleary, starring Tom Selleck, Bess Armstrong, Jack Weston, Wilford Brimley, Robert Morley, Cassandra Gava and the great Brian Blessed as the Suleman Khan.

The release of re-mastered editions of the James Bond scores offered up some great albums that expanded the original soundtracks with extra cues ("Thunderball" and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" are particularly superb). However, "Moonraker," one of the best scores of the series and one of the most lyrical and unusual (especially when you consider what a silly slapstick film it accompanies) arrived on CD in a bare-bones 30-minute edition that replicates the original LP version with no extra tracks.