Frankenstein Created Woman Soundtrack

A film involving a violently loud, retired, and suicidal blind man (played by Al Pacino) could have been stricken with a motion picture score to match the surface mood. Thomas Newman's score for Scent of a Woman delves beneath the surface, and what is found is a set that sounds not only classical but classy. There is a chilling calm in the music, a dreamlike state, that draws energy from the colors and feelings of autumn in New York City. Just as one track settles into a peaceful sleep, the stings and violins and drums come marching in, often too briefly, and fade away.

The soundtrack album features two versions the song “Daily Battles” which was written by multiple Grammy Award-winning artist Thom Yorke, who, along with his Atoms For Peace bandmate Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), performs a sparse and emotionally captivating version of the song. The second version of “Daily Battles” was arranged and performed by Wynton Marsalis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, nine-time Grammy Award-winning jazz trumpet icon, who has been awarded the National Medal of the Arts and the National Humanities Medal, by two United States presidents. Marsalis, along with his hand-picked quintet of heavy-hitting-jazz-stalwarts, delivers an instant jazz standard version of the song that conjures images of the 1950s-era gin-soaked Harlem jazz club seen in the film. Additionally, the soundtrack album features several new recordings of jazz classics by Marsalis with master musicians including Joe Farnsworth, Russell Hall, Isaiah J. Thompson. Willie Jones III, Ted Nash & Jerry Weldon.

Paul A. Rothchild produced the final Janis Joplin studio album, Pearl, as well as many a Doors disc, and the late producer was the perfect guy to tackle this tribute to Joplin featuring "The Divine Miss M" as "Pearl"/"The Rose." In March of 1980, the version of "When a Man Loves a Woman" from this 1979 film soundtrack went Top 35, and Midler's biggest hit followed her Oscar nomination, but it was a well-produced version of the title track, different from the album, which went Top Three, the gold single the biggest of her six hits up to this point in time.