Jerry Hall

A characteristically humongous (8-CD) box set from the wonderful obsessive-compulsives at Bear Family, documenting the Killer's '60s tenure at Smash Records. Lewis made consistently good music during this period, but the combination of his personal scandals and the British Invasion made him a pariah to radio programmers until mid-decade, when he returned to his country roots. Highlights of the set include the entirety of a Texas live show, with Lewis and his crack band rendering various early rock standards at dangerously high (i.e., proto punk) speed, some excellent duets with his (then) wife Linda Gail, and gorgeous renditions of standards like Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away" and Merle Haggard's "Lonesome Fugitive." Lewis fans with deep pockets should grab this one immediately…

Newly remastered release of exciting, aggressive Jerry Goldsmith WWII score, Morituri! Terrific cast headlines 1965 20th Century Fox movie: Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Trevor Howard, Janet Margolin, Wally Cox, Hans Christian Belch, William Redfield. Intelligent, complex script comes from Daniel Taradash, Bernhard Wick helms. Striking b&w camerawork from Conrad Hall. Wartime Freighter loaded valuable with supplies, spy activities, sabotage and intrigue plus unusual locales that include Yokohama, Macao and the high seas all inspire Jerry Goldsmith to fashion intense, riveting score for orchestra with spotlight on solo zither at the onset.

I am not an automatic fan of composer-led recordings, even when the composer is as great a conductor as Leonard Bernstein. However, after living with this newcomer for a while, I have to confess that it doesn’t quite match that classic version, even though it does a few things even better. On the plus side, there’s Kent Nagano’s swift and perky direction of some of the music-theater numbers, such as “God Said”, “World Without End”, and in general all of the music in and around the Gloria. But this can be a two-edged sword: The mechanized Credo has less impact than it could; a very quick tempo at the opening of the Agnus Dei prevents the chorus from ever sounding really angry and demanding; and the calamitous Dona Nobis Pacem simply lacks the bluesy sleaze that Bernstein himself wrings out of it. A slower tempo also would have allowed the music’s many layers to register with greater clarity.