Customer Reviews

The Man With The Golden Arm (Soundtrack)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Unbelievable that this influential & entertaining jazz score from the Fifties is not available as a domestic release. The star of this music, the sound of Frankie Machine, the Man With the Golden Arm, is jazz great Shelly Manne. Manne is featured as a soloist, in a big band number & in the rocking title themes. The ensemble is loaded with top West Coast musicians, including Fluegelhornist & arranger Shorty Rogers, whose contributions to these numbers are considerable. Pete Candoli & Milt Bernhart also take turns in the spotlight. Bernstein wrote a simple & pretty love theme, Molly, in his usual style.

This score combined with Bernstein's similar music for The Sweet Smell of Success would be a great CD. His jazz score for the TV show, Staccato, is also worth seeking out.

Bob Rixon, WFMU

Finally! An affordable CD reissue of one of the great jazz film scores! The reviewer who criticized the sound quality apparently didn't have to live with Decca's fake stereo lp version for twenty years, or spend years trying to track down a mint copy of the original lp, or he would realize that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THE REMASTERING on this disc. It accurately captures the studio sound as recorded in glorious mono in 1955. If your're a Bernstein fan, don't hesitate to add this to your collection.

I can understand one reviewer's opinion of this cd, if they are too young to have ever owned the original Lp. The quality IS top notch and it does NOT need remastering. If it sounds a little "stodgy" it's only because of the recording practices of the day, which happened in very dry studios. This is pre-Star Wars. It also helps to be familiar with the movie and the story. The dry sound actually enhances the reality of the plot.
I WOULD like to see Bernstein do a new recording, with a top notch symphony orchestra playing in a large hall, like he recently did with "To Kill a Mockingbird", but as far as this original sound track is concerned, this is the same as the original Lp, perhaps even cleaner. IT'S A WINNER!

I looked everywhere for this CD.

Would have given it five out of five if it wasn't for the terrible recording quality - badly in need of a remastering. And this is a 2001 reissue! Very bright sound and at the very beginning sounds like a mangled cassette tape. Bad pressing? Who knows.

The content is amazing, though. Intense... and the Frankie Machine theme is unforgettable.

The soundtrack from the 1955 Otto Preminger/Frank Sinatra film is VERY Jazzy, and that is no understatement. Bernstein's score with help from Shorty Rodgers hits the mid-50's with a rocket, and is an accurate representation of the music of that time (jazz that is). Some of the music even borrows from rock 'n roll in places (or is it the other way around!!).

The transfer to CD is o.k., could have been better in my opinion, but I must assume it was not recorded/mastered all that well in the beginning. I have the record from a mid-1980's reissue, and the quality is about the same, only louder. But I'd rather have it in this form than not at all.

It's a good reminder of the film and again, a good intro to the jazzy music of the era. And it is jazzy indeed!!

Thats My-2-Cents. Enjoy the music.

The 1955 movie THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM is about a former heroin addict, Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra), who is released from jail and rehab with high hopes for a future as a jazz drummer but is quickly sucked back into his old, self-destructive lifestyle. It is only when his old associates - including his clinging, deceitful wife, "Zosh" (Eleanor Parker) - are destroyed that Frankie, with the help of his true love, Molly (Kim Novak), can finally kick the drug habit for good and start to become the person he was meant to be. For this movie, Elmer Bernstein composed perhaps the most brilliant jazz score of any during the 1950's (and there were many great ones then, including SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS by Bernstein and ANATOMY OF A MURDER by Duke Ellington). The drum - Frankie's own instrument - provides the rhythmic basis of the score. In the film's opening its beat is alternately steady and agitated, just like Frankie's life; meanwhile, the brass screams and whirls out of control, mirroring Frankie's desperation as he runs off in search of one "last" fix. Appropriately, this is for the most part a very hard-edged, even brutal jazz score, reminiscent at times of Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein (his score for the film ON THE WATERFRONT), and Richard Rodgers' ballet SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE. Yet the melodramatic "Zosh" music helps characterize Frankie's wife as a self-dramatizing emotional cripple; a serene, even bucolic, Copland-esque sound is present, too (in the tracks "Molly" and "Morning," for instance), communicating Frankie's desire for peace of mind and a brighter future, and foreshadowing the movie's hopeful ending.

I was first introduced to the music from "The Man With The Golden Arm" from the film by the same name, way back in the 1970's as a little boy. My father and mother both loved Frank Sinatra, but this film is quite unique, due to the fact that it was filmed in 1954 and dealt with serious drug addiction! Although a dark a morbid subject, the film follows Franky Machine through a deep and meaningful emotional battle with his life and ultimately ends on a high note of hope...what could be better with a story of this nature?

The music from the soundtrack to the film is glorious! It happens to be one of the finest "CONCEPT ALBUMS" (and one of the earliest as well) ever conceived in sound! Most people do not realize how many different styles that are incorporated into the music. There is ferocious jazz, classical instrument solos that take over the melody, theme music, rock and roll, swing, samba and Latin flavors (before West Side Story) all mixed in the music to tell the intense story of a poor and out drug addict!

This music pre dates all the ideas that was used (instrumental wise) in "West Side Story" by several years! I agree about the sound of the CD not being the best, but that is the way that it was recorded and I am pleased to have this 2001 release!

I can listen to this record on repeat all day long! It truly satisfies my musical needs as a listener! The combination of styles and instruments is perfect right to the very end with the horn stabs and strings ending the album! This is the "PET SOUNDS" of soundtracks...mark my words and get this CD!

Okay. I get that someone doesn't like the way it's reproduced or remastered, whatever that is. But I love it. I was fifteen when I heard this music. I rushed out and bought the record, back in the mid '50's. Well, in those days there was something wrong with Decca records. Whatever they were made of, they got really scratchy and nasty in a hurry. They didn't hold up. So I bought a second one, and before long (being Decca) it had deteriorated, too.

I get that Decca eventually did something about their records that got nasty and crummy so fast. (There's a Brahms I want to replace, a nasty, scratchy, foggy Decca from the early '60's.) I found the record at a yard sale for $2, and I was delighted that it was in good shape, being a later production after Decca got its act together.

And now I have the CD. It came today. I have no complaints. I don't know anything about remastering or any of this techincal stuph. All I know is that it sounds fine in the CD player in my car. I'm delighted. I'm tickled pink. I'm an old geezer now, and I'm happy to have the music I loved when I was 15 (Crime in the Streets, you'll have to Google to get that one, there's another).