Chato's Land (1972) - Soundtrack

Jerry Fielding's score for Chato's Land, the first pairing (of six) of star Charles Bronson with director Michael Winner, is as dark and difficult as the film itself. The composer's creative affinity toward dissonance and atonality allows for the perfect underscore as the anger and tension seething onscreen builds to outbursts of brutal violence (a Winner trademark).

This score came during one of Fielding's most blistering creative streaks, which occurred in 1971 and '72. During this period he composed the scores for eight feature films, two made-for-television movies, a whopping ten television pilots, and multiple episodes of regular television. It seems that the scarring left by being blacklisted instilled in Fielding a terror of not being able to work, making him incapable of turning down any and all job offers.

The late Nick Redman, in his reprinted liner notes for this Intrada reissue, singles out Fielding's Main Title for praise, pointing out how it moves from a forceful melody into strange and worrying percussion that is indicative of the merciless brutality that is to come.

Redman describes Fielding's overall work here as "rough-hewn, pitiless, without mercy" and I agree. It is a dark and brooding listening experience that unsettles every bit as much as it impresses.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) - Soundtrack

To prepare for the job of composing the score for The Wild Bunch (1969) Jerry Fielding undertook a serious study of the music of Mexico. This study, John Takis observes in his liner notes for this Quartet Records release, turned out to be "better preparation for the more contemporary setting of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia than it was for The Wild Bunch."

The reason being that "the music he heard was very much the music of Mexico during the late 1960s, not [The Wild Bunch setting of] the 1910s," W.K. Stratton observes in The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film.

Jerry Fielding's underscore for Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia amounts to less than a half an hour of music, the rest of his work being source music for the production (i.e. music heard from sources in the film itself).

A Variety review of the film, quoted in the liner notes, described Fielding's score as "spare but dramatically haunting," and I agree. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia can be a harsh, unpleasant, and melancholic viewing experience. One that, as John Takis notes at the close of his liner notes, was "captured by Jerry Fielding in a ballad of exquisite pain and imperfect love."

The Black Bird (1975) - Soundtrack

The liner notes state that the recording sessions for The Black Bird took place on September 15, 17, 19 and 23 and December 2, 1975, respectively. The IMDB has the first broadcast date of The Devil's Platform, the seventh episode of the short-lived series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, being November 15, 1974.

When I first saw The Black Bird, which may or may not have been on the CBS Late Night Movie, I thought Gil Mellé had composed the film's score. Because I recognized the film's opening title, note-for-note, from yet another Kolchak: The Night Stalker episode, The Spanish Moss Murders, which I had made an audio tape recording of.

Because of that recording that opening theme will forever be linked to The Spanish Moss Murders, but, as noted above, its first appearance seems to have been in The Devil's Platform. Off the top of my head I also remember it being used in the infamous headless biker episode titled Chopper.

Being a credit reader, because I wanted to know who was creating or working on whatever it was I watching, I began noticing that the 'music by' credit on Kolchak: The Night Stalker was Gil Mellé on some episodes and Jerry Fielding on others.

There has been no official release of either Mellé's or Fielding's music for the series, but when Intrada released The Black Bird, I knew I had to have it. Because it might be the only way I could have even the smallest snippet of music from one of my all-time favorite television shows.

The liner notes do not mention Kolchak: The Night Stalker, even though The Black Bird's main title is the subject of a brief critical examination. 

"The composer's jazzy, string-based riff on the Main Title is very much in sync with his work of the vintage." Nick Redman wrote of the score. "The mid-1970s saw him gradually abandon some of his earlier tropes and mannerisms in favor of a style that would increasingly feature electronics. Like many composers of the time, he felt that synthesizers would begin to play a much greater part in film music and he began to accommodate them accordingly. Discreetly at first, and here mostly in the opening and closing titles, he experimented gingerly. A busy motif, in counterpoint to the orchestral forces, makes its presence felt."

For me, the presence felt in that busy motif is Carl Kolchak, forever driving his yellow Ford Mustang around the streets of Chicago, searching for a story...

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) - Soundtrack

Jerry Fielding's score for Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, as solid and admirable as it is, cannot salvage this atrocious and laughable sequel to The Poseidon Adventure. 

Jeff Bond's liner notes describe Fielding's score as a "fiery, boldly dramatic work." I guess. As distinctive a stylist as Jerry Fielding was, his score just doesn't have the kind of pulse-pounding and bombast verve that John Williams' scores for The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, or Jerry Goldsmith's score for The Swarm, had. 

Album producer Douglass Fake noted how Fielding embellished his score for Beyond the Poseidon Adventure with phrases from his scores from both The Killer Elite and Lawman. I will have to take Fake's word for that, as my untrained ear, coupled with my unfamiliarity with The Killer Elite's score, prevents me from hearing them.