2021 In Memorium - #3: Leslie Bricusse (Born 1931)

I'm sure that for many of you visiting this blog, the name of Leslie Bricusse, who died this past October 19th at the ripe old age of 90, won't ring any particular bells. But for a time in the '60s and '70s, the man was a giant in music, particularly in musical theater. His work provided the world with several beloved and memorable tunes which are now regarded as popular standards.

Born in London in 1931 to a wholly nontheatrical family (his father was a newspaper circulation manager), Bricusse gained entrance to the prestigious University of Cambridge, majoring in languages. While there, he quickly found a place in the college's famous amateur theatrical troupe, Footlights, an organization he eventually became president of during his senior year (later, beginning in the 1960s, Footlights alumnae came to dominate British comedy, producing such celebrated performers as David Frost, Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy), National Lampoon's Tony Hendra, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, and several members of the Monty Python troupe).  

As president of the Footlights, he co-wrote and appeared in the 1954 revue Out of the Blue, the first Cambridge revue to reach the West End (London's equivalent to New York's Broadway theater scene). The success of this show caught the attention of longtime West End music hall star Beatrice Lillie, who took Bricusse under her wing as her leading man in her own popular revue, An Evening With Beatrice Lillie. Lillie's show played in both London and New York, and through it Bricusse was established as a "name" in international musical theater. He remained with Lillie's show through the end of the 1950s.

Late in that decade, while on a cruise in the Indian Ocean, Bricusse caught the show of the ocean liner's featured performer, British radio star, screen actor and occasional pop singer Anthony Newley. The two became acquainted while at sea, and began making plans to work together on a musical production. The pair's first collaboration, 1961's Stop The World - I Want To Get Off, was a smash hit in both the West End and on Broadway. The show included Bricusse and Newley's show-stopping song "What Kind Of Fool Am I?", which eventually won a Grammy Award as Song Of The Year and is currently a popular standard. The pair followed this show with another Broadway musical success, 1965's The Roar Of The Greasepaint - The Smell Of The Crowd, a show that was nominated for several Tony Awards that year.

Fresh from their Broadway triumphs, Bricusse and Newley moved into the world of movie music, with their first effort turning out to be a classic; in 1964, they wrote the words to composer John Barry's theme for a James Bond movie coming out later that year - Goldfinger. This tune - sung the HELL out of by Shirley Bassey - is still considered the all-time greatest Bond movie song:

Bricusse scored the title theme to another James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, in 1967. The song is regarded as another Bond classic and was a huge hit for Nancy Sinatra that year.  From that year onward, Bricusse concentrated his work in film scores and movie musicals rather than with stage productions.  This included 1967's Doctor Doolittle (a notorious box-office bomb for its time, that still produced a hit song, the Oscar-winning "Talk To The Animals") and 1970's Scrooge (featuring another popular hit, "Thank You Very Much").

But in 1971, again collaborating with Newley, the pair produced the work they are most known and revered for. They were commissioned to write all of the songs for a musical fantasy film being directed by Mel Stuart and starring Gene Wilder - Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. This movie is chock-full of Bricusse/Newley classics, including "The Candy Man", a revised version becoming a big hit for Sammy Davis Jr. the following year (in fact, his only #1 song):

But probably the most beloved song from the Willy Wonka soundtrack is the one sung by the title character, the great "Pure Imagination".

In the past fifty years, this song has been covered and remixed hundreds of times by a wide variety of artists, including Lou Rawls, Mariah Carey, The Muppets, Barbra Streisand and Primus.

Willy Wonka the movie was not a huge success when first released, barely making back its production costs, and the original owners and producers (Paramount Pictures and Quaker Oats) sold off the rights to the property to Warner Bros. for a pittance a few years later. The film really didn't become widely seen or popular until the advent of home video in the mid-1980s, gradually growing its status from a cult film into a widely-loved classic. Eventually, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2014 as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

However, the flick's soundtrack was almost immediately recognized and celebrated as something special.  Bricusse and Newley's work received Willy Wonka's only Academy Award nomination that year, for Best Original Score (it lost to Fiddler On The Roof).  The soundtrack album was first released on Paramount Records in 1971; here's the complete track listing, for your edification:

1. "Main Title (Golden Ticket/Pure Imagination)"
2. "The Candy Man"
3. "Charlie's Paper Run"
4. "Cheer Up, Charlie"
5. "Lucky Charlie"
6. "(I've Got A) Golden Ticket"
7. "Pure Imagination"
8. "Oompa Loompa"
9. "The Wondrous Boat Ride"
10. "Everlasting Gobstoppers/Oompa Loompa"
11. "The Bubble Machine"
12. "I Want It Now/Oompa Loompa"
13. "Wonkamobile, Wonkavision/Oompa Loompa
14. "Wonkavator/End Title (Pure Imagination)"

In 1996, Hip-O Records (in conjunction with MCA Records, which by then owned the Paramount catalog), released the soundtrack on CD as a "25th Anniversary Edition".  And in 2016, Universal Music Group and Geffen Records released a 45th Anniversary Edition LP.  In all, these multiple releases seemed like overkill/a money grab by the respective labels, since every version had the exact same songs listed above on it.

Leslie Bricusse continued to write music and lyrics for several movie and stage productions throughout the remainder of his life... but Willy Wonka will probably always be the one he'll be most remember for. In honor of his long and productive life, here's Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (Music From The Original Soundtrack), put out by the labels noted above in their respective years.  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Brady Bunch - Merry Christmas From The Brady Bunch

 

Time for some of my annual Christmas postings...  and my first selection for this year is a doozy!

As mentioned in a previous post, the television program The Brady Bunch premiered on ABC in the fall of 1969.  The show was extremely popular with kids in its first couple of seasons, but that popularity wasn't reflected in the overall Nielsen TV ratings, which ranked The Brady Bunch somewhere near the middle (at best) to the back of the pack.  Still, the network and the producers wanted to further capitalize on the program's pre-teen popularity, and early in the second season, someone came up with the inspired idea of releasing an album full of Christmas standards sung by the kids as something that might appeal with their target audience.

It goes without saying that this recording was not exactly a labor of love by anyone involved... The kids (Barry Williams ("Greg"), Maureen McCormick ("Marcia"), Christopher Knight ("Peter"), Eve Plumb ("Jan"), Mike Lookinland ("Bobby") and Susan Olsen ("Cindy")) weren't particularly enthused about doing it - except for perhaps McCormick, who had some limited vocal experience, the rest of them had little if any significant singing talent to exploit.  Facing this fact and the relative brevity of time allotted to cut this disc, the production staff were even less happy to be involved in this project (album producer Tim O’Brien, who was also Paramount’s house producer, was later quoted as lamenting trying to pull something listenable from “six little kids who could not sing”).  And network management could have cared less about the resulting quality of the finished product - they just wanted something related to their semi-hit show out before the holidays.  In that atmosphere, production commenced in mid-October, 1970.

Recorded in less than two weeks, the album mixed group sing-alongs with solo performances on classic holiday standards (“We finished our vocals in one afternoon, and then listened intently as the audio engineers used every gimmick, trick and echo chamber in the book to get us at least up to ‘listenable’ status,” recalled Barry Williams).   None of the tracks are especially memorable; frankly, most of them are jaw-droppingly horrible renditions that soon segue into the realm of "Oh my God!" hilarity.  A prime example of this is their version of "O Holy Night", which I only recently listened to for the first time in years.  The song starts off semi-tolerable, until it reaches the chorus... at which point I burst out in incredulous laughter at its stunning awfulness.  The label had the cojones to actually release a single from this album, Susan Olsen's lisping rendition of "Frosty The Snowman" - there wouldn't be another.

It's not like there weren't any decent Christmas numbers to pull from the show; mother Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) laid down a beautiful performance of “O Come All Ye Faithful,” featured in the series’ only Christmas episode, that for some reason was not among the selections (I guess they just wanted to focus on the kids - bad decision).  

 

All in all, this record, in my opinion, has all the hallmarks of a recording of an amateur holiday pageant from some elementary school in the Midwest - good enough for parents and attendees to have a memory of their child warbling off-key Christmas songs, but nowhere near good enough to actually release for purchase.

One of the other weird things about this album is that the kids recorded it "in character". As shown below, some of the songs say "lead vocal by Bobby Brady, Jan Brady", etc., not by the actors' names. 

 

 

This thing was pushed out the door so fast, they obviously didn't spend a lot of time on spell checking or proper song annotation - "Marcia Brady's" name is spelled "Marsha" here; and some of the lead vocals are credited to the incorrect child.

These are the correct lead vocals for this disc:

1) The First Noel - Mike
2) Away in a Manger - Maureen
3) The Little Drummer Boy - all 6 kids
4) O Come All Ye Faithful - Eve
5) O Holy Night - Maureen & Barry
6) Silent Night - all 6 kids
7) Jingle Bells - all 6 kids
8) Frosty the Snowman - Susan
9) Silver Bells - all 6 kids
10) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - all 6 kids
11) Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Barry
12) We Wish You a Merry Christmas - all 6 kids

Not exactly the mark of a quality production.

 

Anyway, for good or ill for you this holiday season, here you are: The Brady Bunch Kids' debut album, Merry Christmas From The Brady Bunch, released by Paramount Records on November 2nd, 1970, and rereleased on CD (and renamed Christmas With The Brady Bunch) by MCA Records in 1995.  Get ready...

 

Whatever your reaction, as always, let me know what you think.

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