“What’s it all about, Alfie?” the opening line from the Hal David and Burt Bacharach tune impressed by the 1966 movie Alfie sums up a few of the confusion and misinformation that surrounds the tune, the soundtrack, and the following album launched by Sonny Rollins on the Impulse! label in October 1966.
The British film starring Michael Caine, Millicent Martin, Jane Asher, and Julia Foster premiered within the UK in late March 1966 and was an instantaneous hit. Director Lewis Gilbert commissioned the eccentric Sonny Rollins to attain the film. There are some 11 minutes of music within the movie that had been recorded in London over three or 4 days in late October 1965.
Recorded at Twickenham Film Studios, the soundtrack options saxophonist Sonny Rollins together with a few of Britain’s best jazz musicians, Keith Christie on trombone, Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott on tenor sax, pianist and arranger Stan Tracey, Dave Goldberg performs guitar and Phil Seaman on drums. There is a few confusion as to who performs bass, with varied sources saying it’s both Kenny Napper, Rick Laird, or Johnny Hawksworth.
It appears that Rick Laird was positively there for a few of the periods as he later stated, “When Sonny Rollins called me from New York and asked me to do it, I was really thrilled,” Laird recollects. “It was really interesting, because we had no music to work from. We just went to the studio, and while they ran the film for us, we improvised to the scenes taking place on the screen. We had a few basic themes, but for the most part, it was all spontaneous.” It is feasible that the opposite two could have performed on one or different of the times spent recording.
There is not any ‘official’ recording of this soundtrack, which has all the time been credited to Sonny Rollins as the only author on the challenge. However, the tune “Little Malcolm Loves His Dad” is believed to have been written by Tracey.
Three months after recording the music heard within the movie, Rollins went into Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, studio on January 26, 1966 to report a full album of music using what he had written for the film and afterward expanded upon.
Produced by Bob Thiele, the Alfie ‘soundtrack’ album was organized by the supremely gifted Oliver Nelson and options some superb performances Rollins, Phil Woods on Alto Saxophone, Bob Ashton on Tenor Saxophone, Danny Bank, Baritone Saxophone, with trombonists, J.J. Johnson and Jimmy Cleveland, Walter Booker on bass, Frankie Dunlop on drums, pianist, Roger Kellaway and the good Kenny Burrell on guitar – his enjoying on the opening minimize “Alfie’s Theme” is elegant.
The operating time of the album is a bit over half-hour, however it’s pure brilliance each second of the way in which. The album was launched on Impulse!, and reached No.17 on the Billboard R&B chart, whereas within the UK, the album was initially launched with the title Sonny Plays Alfie on the HMV label earlier than resurfacing in 1972 as Alfie on Impulse!
The film was not launched in America till August 1966. Between its British premiere and US premiere, Howard Koch, the pinnacle of Paramount Pictures, requested Bacharach and David to give you a tune to function over the tip credit of the film, which they duly did.
Bacharach was advised that Lewis Gilbert needed Cilla Black to report the tune, and the songwriter despatched the demo he had minimize in New York to London. Initially, Cilla, was reluctant to report it as she thought the title “Alfie” appeared like one thing you’ll name a canine. Eventually, she relented, however solely on the situation that Bacharach fly to London to play piano on the session and write the association.
At Abbey Road, producer George Martin assembled a forty-eight piece orchestra, and Cilla’s supervisor Brian Epstein determined to movie the entire thing. Bacharach pushed Cilla to her limits, having her do 29 takes of the vocal, regardless of Martin insisting that she had nailed it on the fourth take. The tune was a giant hit within the UK, making No.9 on the singles chart and a extra modest No.95 in America.
The lack of success within the US was partly as a result of Paramount had Cher minimize the tune at Gold Star Recording in Los Angeles, with Sonny Bono as producer, who determined to create a Phil Spectorish Wall of Sound sort manufacturing. The Cher model, regardless of being the follow-up to “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” a No.2 report, might solely attain No.37.
Great because the Bacharach tune is, you also needs to head to Sonny Rollins’ model to listen to one of many nice jazz film soundtracks that has ever been recorded.