After completing my rundown of my entire Goldsmith collection earlier in the year, I figured it was time to fill some gaps. A few I acquired mid-rundown and decided to save for later. Most I purchased in the last two weeks, with some of those out-of-print though still (with one notable exception) reasonably priced on the secondary market.

Up first though...it’s the forgotten music for 1973’s forgotten crime drama The Don is Dead, recently released for the first time by Intrada.

I’ve seen some commentary focus on the work’s electronics, and, gosh, they certainly don’t do the album a lot of favors. Even in the context of Goldsmith’s experimental stuff in the 70s and 80s, the usage here is particularly grating, as if someone recorded a dripping drain, processed the noise through a guitar amp, and then played those sounds on a keyboard at a single pitch in an echo chamber. Listeners who hate this type of material might give up after the first track which has a few moments of JUST. THIS. SOUND.

And that would be a shame, as that isn’t all there is to the score. The love theme and the “old country” theme are decent, though rather understated. There’s no one moment where Goldsmith really lets one of them rip, which seems to be a function of the film and perhaps a smaller budget for the recording as well. Still, they’re pleasant examples of Goldsmith’s warmer tones from the period, and it’s nice to have another instance of Jerry’s wife singing (she’s good!). [EDIT: whoops, she only wrote the song]

The rest of the score feels like a collection of ideas Goldsmith would explore more fully later that decade. The occasional off-kilter string rhythms foreshadow his later score for Contract on Cherry Street. The brief, berserker orchestral rage in ‘The Beating’ would be revisited in Alien and Logan’s Run. I’m sure I could pull up more examples with a few more listens.

It’s to Jerry’s mid-career drama/thriller works what U.S. Marhsals was to his late-career action works - functional, but perhaps best left for Goldsmith completists only.

Rating: ***

Up next: television!