Post by erik on Mar 23, 2024 17:53:18 GMT -5
John Williams is in the Pop Music Album Spotlight with a 1977 film score of his that found extreme favor and was an important one in cementing his collaborative history with director Steven Spielberg.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (Soundtrack; Arista; 1977)
With hundreds of film scores to his credit, and the millions of people who have listened to them, John Williams may very well be the most listened-to composer of anything in music history. Having started as a studio pianist for Henry Mancini in the late 1950’s, he also found himself in that same capacity for the 1961 soundtrack of West Side Story. His film score credits began more or less in 1962 with Diamond Head; but he became a mega-star in the 1970’s when he began collaborating with a young director named Steven Spielberg. Their collaboration, which is still going as of 2024, began in 1974 with Williams’ Americana score for Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express; and then came Jaws in 1975, which won Williams his first Oscar and Grammy awards. Spielberg’s next film, the 1977 sci-fi epic Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, released not too long after his good friend George Lucas’ Star Wars: A New Hope, allowed Williams to stretch himself, borrowing some of the sinister motifs of his Jaws score with more modern, arguably even avant-garde, influences. But it still resulted in a huge success for both the composer and his most important collaborator.
Close Encounters]b\, sometimes known as “CE3K”, focuses on common everyday people who have had experiences with UFO’s, and who, for reasons that they can’t fathom, find themselves drawn to Devils Tower in northeastern Wyoming, for the first-ever personal contact between Earthlings and extra-terrestrials. Although he was often thought of as an “old-school” composer in the style of Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Williams often found himself turned off to the eerie and mysterious in the way he composed, especially for Spielberg; and his score for Close Encounters was a case in point. Even with the instrumental interpolation of the Ned Washington/Leigh Harline song “When You Wish Upon A Star” (from Disney’s classic film Pinocchio), Williams brings out the wonder, awe, suspense, and even occasional terror, of what it might be like if any of us experience what the characters portrayed in the film by, among others, Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon experience. Although Close Encounters lost at the 1977 Academy Awards to Star Wars (which Williams also scored), it did end up winning a Grammy for Best Motion Picture Score for 1978. The discofied version of the film’s theme reached #13 on the Hot 100 in March 1978; and the soundtrack album went Gold (selling 500,000 copies), reaching #17 on the Billboard Top 200.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (Soundtrack; Arista; 1977)
With hundreds of film scores to his credit, and the millions of people who have listened to them, John Williams may very well be the most listened-to composer of anything in music history. Having started as a studio pianist for Henry Mancini in the late 1950’s, he also found himself in that same capacity for the 1961 soundtrack of West Side Story. His film score credits began more or less in 1962 with Diamond Head; but he became a mega-star in the 1970’s when he began collaborating with a young director named Steven Spielberg. Their collaboration, which is still going as of 2024, began in 1974 with Williams’ Americana score for Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express; and then came Jaws in 1975, which won Williams his first Oscar and Grammy awards. Spielberg’s next film, the 1977 sci-fi epic Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, released not too long after his good friend George Lucas’ Star Wars: A New Hope, allowed Williams to stretch himself, borrowing some of the sinister motifs of his Jaws score with more modern, arguably even avant-garde, influences. But it still resulted in a huge success for both the composer and his most important collaborator.
Close Encounters]b\, sometimes known as “CE3K”, focuses on common everyday people who have had experiences with UFO’s, and who, for reasons that they can’t fathom, find themselves drawn to Devils Tower in northeastern Wyoming, for the first-ever personal contact between Earthlings and extra-terrestrials. Although he was often thought of as an “old-school” composer in the style of Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Williams often found himself turned off to the eerie and mysterious in the way he composed, especially for Spielberg; and his score for Close Encounters was a case in point. Even with the instrumental interpolation of the Ned Washington/Leigh Harline song “When You Wish Upon A Star” (from Disney’s classic film Pinocchio), Williams brings out the wonder, awe, suspense, and even occasional terror, of what it might be like if any of us experience what the characters portrayed in the film by, among others, Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon experience. Although Close Encounters lost at the 1977 Academy Awards to Star Wars (which Williams also scored), it did end up winning a Grammy for Best Motion Picture Score for 1978. The discofied version of the film’s theme reached #13 on the Hot 100 in March 1978; and the soundtrack album went Gold (selling 500,000 copies), reaching #17 on the Billboard Top 200.