Dirty Harry: Original Score

Amazon.com Flush with popular successes that spanned film (the Oscar nominated score for Cool Hand Luke Bullitt ) and TV (the Grammy-winning Mission: Impossible, Mannix) Argentine-born composer Lalo Schifrin infused director Don Siegel's original, epochal Dirty Harry with one of the 70's most riveting, consistently original jazz-fusion scores. It was also one that, until now, was only available in mono-mixed snippets on obscure compilations; this release marks the full-score's first, three-decade-overdue release (remixed in stereo for the first time and including alternate takes). The 1971 score folds Schifrin's classical training and years as jazzman into a context that's undeniably charged by the contemporary electric excursions (Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Live at the Fillmore East) of Miles Davis. Its cues for renegade San Francisco detective Harry Callahan are variously driven by restless, propulsive electric bass, a small string ensemble, East-Asian percussion and spare Fender Rhodes lines, a musical tack that would be revived a quarter-century later and hailed as "acid jazz." But in portraying the serial killer Scorpio, Schifrin fuses the anxiety of 20th century classical modernism with electric psych-rock, then overlays it with an eerie, wordless soprano that beats Morricone at his own game. Also included here are smatterings of Schifrin's various source music (mostly disposable jazz and r&b kitsch) that colored the film's various San Francisco diners and dives, a context that only underscores the stunning, electric cool of his dramatic cues. --Jerry McCulley Product Description This CD represents Dirty Harry's premiere release complete with the original sessions masters remixed for stereo. Schifirin achieved an action score that would come to be defined as the quintessential work in 1970s action cinema. Urban jazz-funk formed the basis, with a driving percussion-based jazz ensemble, and a ghostly charale for the "Scropio" scenes.