POLICE STORY

JERRY GOLDSMITH

Rating:

Original Review: Buried beneath such landmark works as QB VII, Papillon, Chinatown and The Wind and the Lion, all of which were written around the same time, are a number of Jerry Goldsmith scores that most people will have never heard of, let alone heard. Police Story is one such score; rescued from obscurity by the Prometheus gang, Police Story was a TV movie made in 1973, starring Vic Morrow (he of the Twilight Zone on-set death), Ed Asner and Harry Guardino, which acted as a pilot episode for a cop series that ran for several seasons during the following decade.

Police Story's main theme actually sounds more like something Lalo Schifrin might have written than anything in Goldsmith's past. It has a real Mission: Impossible groove, with funky flutes and toe-tapping trumpets intoning the melody over a wash of wah-wah guitars. The theme re-occurs in several other tracks, notably receiving a full recapitulation during 'Hot Car', and with silky variations in 'The Tail', 'The Lawyer' and 'The Phone Booth'. A slightly more conventional love theme for piano and strings makes a couple of appearances during 'Wrong Number' and 'A Love Affair', marking one the score's few lighter moments.

The underscore proper, where the theme is not present, tends to be less interesting, owing more to the "ticking and creeping" style of scoring that permeated much of America's TV music during the 70s and 80s. Moody electric guitar picks, triangle taps, woodwind flutters and an occasional percussion rhythm are the name of the game in the 'Stakeout' cues, while the unfortunately rather drawn-out 'The Market/Quick Draw' is nothing more than a series of electronic textures overlaid by percussive acoustic effects. It's dirty, gritty, urban music for the disco generation - quite unlike anything I personally have ever heard from Goldsmith, and which makes it all the more interesting as a result.

Following the conclusion of the score itself, the album goes on to include ten "library cue variations" of Police Story material, arranged and conducted by Richard Shores, which would later go on to be used as score for the series itself. Much of Shores' work is Goldsmith-lite, watered down versions of themes and motifs, usually for a smaller ensemble. Rounding out the album is a 7-minute suite of music from Medical Story, a follow-up series which attempted to do for doctors what Police Story did for cops. Other than Goldsmith's original theme, Medical Story offers a rare opportunity to hear original music composed by Goldsmith's long-serving orchestrator, the late Arthur Morton, who wrote most of the episodic scores.

Police Story is an obscurity, certainly, and to be completely honest my own collection would not have been worse off had it not been rescued and revived. On the other hand, any archival material relating to Jerry Goldsmith is of great personal and historical interest, charting as it does the musical development of a man who is almost certain to be remembered as one of the greatest film composers in history.

Track Listing: Running Time: 53 minutes 47 seconds

Prometheus PCR-507 (1973/2000)

Music composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith. Orchestrations by Arthur Morton. Library cue variations arranged and conducted by Richard Shores. Music from Medical Story composed by Arthur Morton. Recorded and mixed by Dan Wallin. Edited and mastered by James Nelson. Album produced by Ford A. Thaxton.

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