In the 1970s, when prominent movie stars started to become the driving forces behind films, the jazz musician Dave Grusin was a favorite choice for film composer by several above-the-title male actors, notably Robert Redford, Paul Newman, and Warren Beatty. Redford starred in director Sydney Pollack's spy thriller 3 Days of the Condor, and Grusin got the scoring nod. The film was set in the New York City of the present day, the present day being 1975, and Grusin turned in music imbued with familiar elements of jazz fusion and R&B-funk. His "Condor! (Theme From 3 Days of the Condor)" could have been the instrumental track for a Steely Dan song of the time, and "Yellow Panic" was one of several tracks to employ wah-wah guitar à la Shaft.
The Jazz Club series is an attractive addition to the Verve catalogue. With it's modern design and popular choice of repertoire, the Jazz Club is not only opened for Jazz fans, but for everyone that loves good music.
Dave Grusin has been a highly successful performer, producer, composer, record label executive, arranger, and bandleader. As a pianist, Grusin tends toward the fusion and smooth end of jazz, but he's primarily an accomplished film and television soundtrack composer. Grusin played with Terry Gibbs and Johnny Smith while studying at the University of Colorado. He was the assistant music director and pianist for Andy Williams from 1959 to 1966, and then started his television composing career…
Pleasures takes us back to the live album of that name culled from two evenings of concerts in Hamburg in August 1975 and is a reissue of that album together with five extra cuts from the same sets (three of which duplicate songs featured earlier in alternate performances). This is definitive mid-70s Chapman, here featured first in solo acoustic mode then from track five onwards with a band (Keef Hartley, Steffi Stephen and Achim Reichel), arguably at the zenith of the soulful-rockin’ phase of his career.