Customer Reviews

Do The Right Thing: Original Score

5 star:		(4)
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Just so you don't order the wrong thing, thinking you'll be Fighting the Power with PE. But this score is excellent, true jazz, but it contains a full orchestra. It is beautiful morning music, especially. There are some great solos, like "Riot," and ballads like "Father to Son." Bill Lee is a great musician, I figure he must have been the inspiration for the father's character in the movie Crooklyn. Though I don't think its available on Amazon, if you can find the score for She's Gotta Have It, it's even better. No Branford Marsalis on that one, but it sounds less like a movie score and more like just good music. Mo Better Blues Soundtrack is also a classic jazz album.

If you have missed this one for a wonderfully mastered Jazz piece by Bill Lee... you don't know what you are missing. From start to finish this is a classic. I listened to this 'original score' many times in college almost 15 years ago and I still rank it among my favorite jazz pieces (and I have a huge jazz collection).

Spike Lee's powerful movie couldn't have possibly been better served or encapsulated than it has been by this soundtrack. Anyone who enjoyed the movie, and the ambience of it, can instantly be transported just by popping this into the CD player. It's amazing

The term orchestrated jazz was always a difficult concept for me to grasp. It was a conflicting term, an oxymoron. Jazz isn't supposed to be composed. It is supposed to be spontaneous, culled immediately from one's present emotions. Then I heard Mingus' The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady and I realized how wrong I could be. You listen to compositions by Ellington or Mingus or the gems Miles created with Gil Evans and you realize how magnificent and beautiful orchestral jazz can be.

In my opinion, this score by Bill Lee ranks right up there with the greats. The amazing thing is that this music isn't fifty or sixty years old. This masterpiece was created in the late 1980's when jazz was supposed to be on its deathbed. Do The Right Thing: Original Score is both unerringly beautiful and unexpectedly timeless. It holds up just as well today as it did over twenty years ago. From beginning to end it is joyous, introspective and, in the case of such pieces as "How Long?" and "Malcolm and Martin", utterly heartrending. It is the perfect compliment to its cinematic counterpart which, like the music, is just as relevant today as it was in 1989.

If you are a fan of jazz and you crave the taste of genius that Ellington and Mingus once provided, purchase this album. And if you are not a fan of orchestral jazz, give this piece a try. You may unwittingly become a convert.