Well, US-soundtracks on LP ... would I decide to show them in as much depth as the Italian ones, the covers shown on this site would probably quadruple in quantity. There is no doubt that the majority of all soundtrack releases do come from American labels (with the only exception maybe being India, which "Bollywood" also produces more movies per year than Hollywood plus all independent US-producers together), but ... at the same time - and since this sites goal is to show mainly rare and tough to find OST vinyls´, I have to mention that - there are (not only relatively, but also absolutely) very few items of US-origin, that are really tough to find. The main reason for this is not only the US-"cut-out-policy" (for a detailed description and comparison with the Japanese copyright-policy, please read the relevant paragraphs in the Japanese section), but quite simply the fact that for a country with over 200 million inhabitants, larger print runs were manufactured, usually very well exceeding the usual European 500 to 1000 copies by a multiple. But there are always exceptions ...
As all over the world, copyright disputes or divergent views on the presentation of music on vinyl sometimes lead to the withdrawal of an already manufactured and (partly distributed) LP-release. Such was the case regarding the LP-release, which is commonly (but arguably) referred to as the "rarest and most valuable of all OST-LPs" (R.T.S. from California claims to have once sold a copy for US $ 10.000,-), which is Max Steiners "THE CAINE MUTINY". However, slight doubts about this fact and about the LPs real scarcity should be allowed: Not only have there by now been numerous bootleg-reprints (which of course do not "damage" the rarity of the original), be it with black and white cover, be it with a 100% perfect colour reproduction of front and back cover, but also the surviving number of copies (after the withdraal due to Mr. Steiner not being content with the representation of his music together with the movies dialogue) seems to be higher than assumed a few years ago. The internet brought lots of information forward and only in the view years that I am now searching the world wide web, I have learned about around 6 copies not known earlier. So, my conclusion is, that there are "much" more surviving copies existing than assumed earlier and a safe guess regarding the quantity of copies existing would start at around 2 dozen minimum. That´s of course still a VERY low figure, but keeping in mind that this LP is considered the "Royce Royce or Holy Grail of soundtrack collecting" the question must be allowed, if there could not be possibly other soundtrack recordings "existing", with even a fewer number of copies around ...
A heavy competitor in this question is definitly the POO-109 release of "SCCUSI, FACIAMO L´AMORE", which was "released" by the tiny POO-label in the late 70ies (all POO-releases are collectible, by the way!). In fact released is the wrong word in that context, because actually this item was just pressed in the normal print run of 1000 copies by someone called Walter PAUSER, when the police raided Mr. Pausers place and confiscated all copies. Well, all copies ...? No, some have already leaked out and as far as my knowledge goes the number of these copies is around 1 dozen, maybe even only 10 ... An ultra-rare score, no doubt about that, and its existence was also in question for some years, until I learned about someone definitly owning one ... (this score was, however, re-pressed shortly after its confiscation, with another cover on a different label with another catalogue-number and in 2001 a legal CD-release with "additional tracks" was manufactured by GDM, Italy).
Another hot competitor for the title "rarest (US) soundtrack-LP" is without doubt David SHIREs masterpiece OLD BOYFRIENDS, a heart-project of actress Talia Shire, who was then married with composer David, the movie unfortunately being a box office-failure and most notably remembered today for the rather good scenes with John Belushi of "Blues Brothers"-fame (a pity that he had to die soooo young!! Read the bio!!!). Rumour has it that this LP was manufactured and given away to people attending the premier viewing of the movie, but this is only a rumour and simply wrong. The real story behind this LP is that Columbia-pictures had planned an accompaning LP-release, but went behind schedule with the vinyl pressing. At the time the movie started, David SHIRE was still considering, which tracks and so on, and a test pressing was actually manufactured (these facts are printed in the booklet accompaning David SHIRES "Music at the movie" promoCD-release), simply being put in a non-descriptive plain white cover with the movies title hand-written on the LP-label. However, Columbias movie prints did already feature the availability of the scores as part of the end titles, which lead to a "stampede" among soundtrack-vinyl collectors to acquire this fantastic score, but this "stampede" ended in the nowhere. The LP was never officially released. How many copies David Shire and/or Columbia had manufactured is a mistery, but they are ULTRA scarce ... Maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe 50, who knows? One of these items was accompanied by a typewritten sheet of paper (a photocopy) containing the track-list + running times and a photo of Mrs. Shire, another copy is shown in Keith Mcnally´s price guide, the cover featuring a black-and-white photocopy of the movie-poster, which was affixed to the plain white sleeve by the collector having had a dream day the day he found this item! So, as long as further research does not proove the existence of other copies around, one has to assume, that these copies were pressed on Mr. Shires behalf, who had a sheet of paper typewritten, photocopied and added into the plain white sleeve together with a photo of his wife, actress Thalia Shire. In my humble opinion, this is the most collectible and rarest US-soundtrack LP! And what does it contain and why has it never been released by any specialty label: Both questions might have points in common! Let us start with the contents: In addition to approximately 10 very beautiful and lush, but never boring instrumental tracks the promo-"release" does in fact contain THREE vocals by the unbelievably talented Mr. Belushi, who had a voice that simply makes the walls shake. These three tracks have NEVER been issued anywhere and are part of his "lost heir". That they have never been issued in any other form does hint at "copyright problems", because why, if not for any such obscure reason, does not one of the "complete" Blues Brothers editions contain these wonderful "bonus tracks"? Maybe there were more than one reason why this LP never saw a commercial release. Maybe not only because the movie was a box office-failure, but maybe also because Columbia did not have permission to issue this record with the Belushi-tracks on it and deemed an instrumental-only recording not saleable ... An album with three otherwise unavailable Belushi-trecks would have certainly had a better market potential by attracting more buyers ... (the three Blues Brothers LPs were issued by the Atlantic-label, by the way ...). Well, nobody knows the reasons, why this score has never had a commercial release, but we certainly know that it ranks among the top five rarest soundtrack-vinyls worldwide (including all Italian releases) on every serious list ...
The above "list" contains ALL US-soundtracks, of which it is known that only literally a (few?) handful of copies do exist, actually LPs, which are so rare that "existing" is probably not the correct word, but ... is this list complete? As said, these are KNOWN to "exist", but I take every bet that this list should be (probably much) longer! OK, manufacturing a promo-CD is much easier and cheaper than manufacturing a promo-LP in a minuscule print-"run", but even the "vinyl-recording technology" was never that complicated and expensive, that it was economically impossible to manufacture just one or two dozen items (remember, history claims Mr. Presly having recorded his first 45 rpm vinyl as a single item to be given to his mother at her birthday ...). How much easier it must have been for any record company or composer to have a few vinyl copies of his compositions pressed ... The category of records I am referring to is commonly called "in-house pressings". When a company had to make a decision wether to issue an LP of a certain composition or not, it was in fact not uncommon, to have a few copies made for demonstration reasons (eg for the management), although of course tapes were more common and more widely used for this effort ... In cases, where this project was brought to a good ending, a commercial LP release saw the light of day and the inhouse-item is more obscure/rare than valuable, but what in cases where the release-decision was "no" and no further copies were made ...? Although I think (or hope?) it is only a rumour, the question of an inhouse-LP-pressing ever having been manufactured containing Maurice JARREs "EL CONDOR"-score, is one probably never going to be answered (the reason, why I assume the answer is "no" after all, is that the movie does in fact only contain very little and repetitive music, in total approximately 15 minutes; that would have never made a complete LP - however, the main theme is indeed very catchy and would surely deserve to be put on CD ...). Anyway, the three items presented above are very likely only the peak of a much steeper hill, as indicated by the not so few entries of such kind of pressings in Michael Harris book on stage and movie phonograph recordings.
Well, enough said regarding the question of which vinyl is indeed the rarest (US-)soundtrack LP in existence. Let us go on to discuss other collectible items in more detail: we start with minor labels! Thinking about minor US-soundtrack labels, labels having issued blaxploitation music are the first ones that come to mind. Although I am certainly NO expert on blax-music (that is one of my white spots), nearly every soundtrack-enthusiast has at least heard about the New York-city based "Bryan"-label! It has long vanished, of course, and has only left four early 70ies-waxings to the music-loving world, but these four waxings are indeed among the most difficult US-soundtrack recordings to locate: LORD SHANGO is the easiest one, THE LAST PORNO FLICK is still findable, but will already carry a three-figure price-sticker, for DEEP THROAT II, which score is much better than its predecessor ("She´s got to have it"), you will probably already have to double the Porno flick´s price and do not ask me what LIALEH might cost ... All for items are great listening pleasure and as their titles indicate, they are definitly neither mainstream-stuff nor politically correct (smile)! Hail the 70ies! (That is already about the end of soundtrack-only labels, since I do not know any other US soundrack-only LP label having issued nowadays rare items; hey, Varese does not count, of course, or do you want me to write a phone-book?! smile).
Another very tough one to locate is Manu Dibangos "COUNTDOWN AT KUSINI", one of t h e funk-scores of the middle-70ies. Awesome minimalistic cover-artwork and a movie I´d love to see ... Brigitte Bardot has always been a woman any man would like to have taken home, but this was only possible as a photo: THE GIRL IN THE BIKINI, a probably long-forgotten movie (in fact I do not have the slightest idea what kinda celluloid this was ...), featuring music composed by Jean Yatove, was only issued in the USA as a private release on the obscure "Popular"-label (in fact their second recording; I wonder what # 1 was ... do you have any info?) and featurd one of those BB-covers men still love to look at ... A very heavy one to locate ... "Falling in love again" and "Oh God, book II" belong to the "oscar-category": they were sent out to oscar jurors (with a letter inside) to gain consideration by members of the Association of Motion Pictures and Arts; also very rare stuff! Even rarer than these is "Such good friends", which decidedly has the appearance of a composer-financed or inhouse-pressing! Pretty good music, too! And pretty many of the other items presented on the few US-pages have one thing in common: they are decidedly odd releases from odd labels, featuring often very good music from long-forgotten obscure movie-productions: SKI CRAZY, ISLAND WOMEN, QUILP, the three scores by Dwight Gustafson (Dwight-who?), THE GAMES, SWEDISH FLY GIRLS (what?), SLAVE TRADE IN THE WORLD TODAY (an early mondo by Teo Usuelli ... only God knows why this score received its worldwide-only release exactly in the USA ...?), DAVID RAKSINs wonderful 2LP-demonstration-set (music for studying purposes), POUND, BLACKJACK, SOLOMAN KING (I still need the colour-cover issue ...),... and many more ...
And there are more, and more and more ... items knowbody of us ever heard about or ever will: industrial scores, advertisement music, ... that kinda stuff like RHAPSODY OF STEEL, to neame the most common one ... Any info on such items welcomed (thanks goes to collector Cameron FENNEL for some input!)! The same goes if you have such "goodies" (smile) availabale for sale/trade: please do send an e-mail ...!
Well, enough written! Enjoy and let the covers attract your immagination! And if you have any questions, that have been left unanswered (and I am sure there are some ...), please do not hesitate to drop me a line e-mail! I answer all questions as fast as possible, plan to collect them and want to put them into a FAQ-section (which is planned for 2003!). The same goes of course, if you have any info or items for sale or trade available!! However, regarding this section I may well be able to learn more from you than I can supply info due to my truly limited knowledge on the really obscure US-releases.
AVAILABLE items (visually graded: cover/record; play-graded upon request):
Library of Congress: Wonderful Inventions, 2 LPs + BOOK! (David Raksin), M-/M- WB Fox-1: Oh God book II (Charles Fox), M/M Time 52034: Thriller (Pete Rugulo) M-/M- Impulse! A-9142: Sweet love, bitter (Mal Waldron) M/M Jupiter JDY-7002: La corde au cou (Alain Cosineau) NM/M- xxx: My pleasure is my business (Tom Cochrane) NM/M xxx: The flasher (Pool-Pah) M-/M- xxx: The name of the game is ... Blackjack (xxx) SS xxx: Le diable aime les bijoux (xxx), M/M xxx: Ski crazy (Henry Vars) NM/EX+Please note: of all the listed items I have only one spare copy available; wants-lists welcomed (trade preferred!). WANTED: Old boyfriends (David Shire, Columbia promo-LP, white cover) Solomon King (J. Steiger, SIPI-pressing, NOT black/white-cover bootleg!)
Well, US-soundtracks on LP ... would I decide to show them in as much depth as the Italian ones, the covers shown on this site would probably quadruple in quantity. There is no doubt that the majority of all soundtrack releases do come from American labels (with the only exception maybe being India, which "Bollywood" also produces more movies per year than Hollywood plus all independent US-producers together), but ... at the same time - and since this sites goal is to show mainly rare and tough to find OST vinyls´, I have to mention that - there are (not only relatively, but also absolutely) very few items of US-origin, that are really tough to find. The main reason for this is not only the US-"cut-out-policy" (for a detailed description and comparison with the Japanese copyright-policy, please read the relevant paragraphs in the Japanese section), but quite simply the fact that for a country with over 200 million inhabitants, larger print runs were manufactured, usually very well exceeding the usual European 500 to 1000 copies by a multiple. But there are always exceptions ...
As all over the world, copyright disputes or divergent views on the presentation of music on vinyl sometimes lead to the withdrawal of an already manufactured and (partly distributed) LP-release. Such was the case regarding the LP-release, which is commonly (but arguably) referred to as the "rarest and most valuable of all OST-LPs" (R.T.S. from California claims to have once sold a copy for US $ 10.000,-), which is Max Steiners "THE CAINE MUTINY". However, slight doubts about this fact and about the LPs real scarcity should be allowed: Not only have there by now been numerous bootleg-reprints (which of course do not "damage" the rarity of the original), be it with black and white cover, be it with a 100% perfect colour reproduction of front and back cover, but also the surviving number of copies (after the withdraal due to Mr. Steiner not being content with the representation of his music together with the movies dialogue) seems to be higher than assumed a few years ago. The internet brought lots of information forward and only in the view years that I am now searching the world wide web, I have learned about around 6 copies not known earlier. So, my conclusion is, that there are "much" more surviving copies existing than assumed earlier and a safe guess regarding the quantity of copies existing would start at around 2 dozen minimum. That´s of course still a VERY low figure, but keeping in mind that this LP is considered the "Royce Royce or Holy Grail of soundtrack collecting" the question must be allowed, if there could not be possibly other soundtrack recordings "existing", with even a fewer number of copies around ...
A heavy competitor in this question is definitly the POO-109 release of "SCCUSI, FACIAMO L´AMORE", which was "released" by the tiny POO-label in the late 70ies (all POO-releases are collectible, by the way!). In fact released is the wrong word in that context, because actually this item was just pressed in the normal print run of 1000 copies by someone called Walter PAUSER, when the police raided Mr. Pausers place and confiscated all copies. Well, all copies ...? No, some have already leaked out and as far as my knowledge goes the number of these copies is around 1 dozen, maybe even only 10 ... An ultra-rare score, no doubt about that, and its existence was also in question for some years, until I learned about someone definitly owning one ... (this score was, however, re-pressed shortly after its confiscation, with another cover on a different label with another catalogue-number and in 2001 a legal CD-release with "additional tracks" was manufactured by GDM, Italy).
Another hot competitor for the title "rarest (US) soundtrack-LP" is without doubt David SHIREs masterpiece OLD BOYFRIENDS, a heart-project of actress Talia Shire, who was then married with composer David, the movie unfortunately being a box office-failure and most notably remembered today for the rather good scenes with John Belushi of "Blues Brothers"-fame (a pity that he had to die soooo young!! Read the bio!!!). Rumour has it that this LP was manufactured and given away to people attending the premier viewing of the movie, but this is only a rumour and simply wrong. The real story behind this LP is that Columbia-pictures had planned an accompaning LP-release, but went behind schedule with the vinyl pressing. At the time the movie started, David SHIRE was still considering, which tracks and so on, and a test pressing was actually manufactured (these facts are printed in the booklet accompaning David SHIRES "Music at the movie" promoCD-release), simply being put in a non-descriptive plain white cover with the movies title hand-written on the LP-label. However, Columbias movie prints did already feature the availability of the scores as part of the end titles, which lead to a "stampede" among soundtrack-vinyl collectors to acquire this fantastic score, but this "stampede" ended in the nowhere. The LP was never officially released. How many copies David Shire and/or Columbia had manufactured is a mistery, but they are ULTRA scarce ... Maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe 50, who knows? One of these items was accompanied by a typewritten sheet of paper (a photocopy) containing the track-list + running times and a photo of Mrs. Shire, another copy is shown in Keith Mcnally´s price guide, the cover featuring a black-and-white photocopy of the movie-poster, which was affixed to the plain white sleeve by the collector having had a dream day the day he found this item! So, as long as further research does not proove the existence of other copies around, one has to assume, that these copies were pressed on Mr. Shires behalf, who had a sheet of paper typewritten, photocopied and added into the plain white sleeve together with a photo of his wife, actress Thalia Shire. In my humble opinion, this is the most collectible and rarest US-soundtrack LP! And what does it contain and why has it never been released by any specialty label: Both questions might have points in common! Let us start with the contents: In addition to approximately 10 very beautiful and lush, but never boring instrumental tracks the promo-"release" does in fact contain THREE vocals by the unbelievably talented Mr. Belushi, who had a voice that simply makes the walls shake. These three tracks have NEVER been issued anywhere and are part of his "lost heir". That they have never been issued in any other form does hint at "copyright problems", because why, if not for any such obscure reason, does not one of the "complete" Blues Brothers editions contain these wonderful "bonus tracks"? Maybe there were more than one reason why this LP never saw a commercial release. Maybe not only because the movie was a box office-failure, but maybe also because Columbia did not have permission to issue this record with the Belushi-tracks on it and deemed an instrumental-only recording not saleable ... An album with three otherwise unavailable Belushi-trecks would have certainly had a better market potential by attracting more buyers ... (the three Blues Brothers LPs were issued by the Atlantic-label, by the way ...). Well, nobody knows the reasons, why this score has never had a commercial release, but we certainly know that it ranks among the top five rarest soundtrack-vinyls worldwide (including all Italian releases) on every serious list ...
The above "list" contains ALL US-soundtracks, of which it is known that only literally a (few?) handful of copies do exist, actually LPs, which are so rare that "existing" is probably not the correct word, but ... is this list complete? As said, these are KNOWN to "exist", but I take every bet that this list should be (probably much) longer! OK, manufacturing a promo-CD is much easier and cheaper than manufacturing a promo-LP in a minuscule print-"run", but even the "vinyl-recording technology" was never that complicated and expensive, that it was economically impossible to manufacture just one or two dozen items (remember, history claims Mr. Presly having recorded his first 45 rpm vinyl as a single item to be given to his mother at her birthday ...). How much easier it must have been for any record company or composer to have a few vinyl copies of his compositions pressed ... The category of records I am referring to is commonly called "in-house pressings". When a company had to make a decision wether to issue an LP of a certain composition or not, it was in fact not uncommon, to have a few copies made for demonstration reasons (eg for the management), although of course tapes were more common and more widely used for this effort ... In cases, where this project was brought to a good ending, a commercial LP release saw the light of day and the inhouse-item is more obscure/rare than valuable, but what in cases where the release-decision was "no" and no further copies were made ...? Although I think (or hope?) it is only a rumour, the question of an inhouse-LP-pressing ever having been manufactured containing Maurice JARREs "EL CONDOR"-score, is one probably never going to be answered (the reason, why I assume the answer is "no" after all, is that the movie does in fact only contain very little and repetitive music, in total approximately 15 minutes; that would have never made a complete LP - however, the main theme is indeed very catchy and would surely deserve to be put on CD ...). Anyway, the three items presented above are very likely only the peak of a much steeper hill, as indicated by the not so few entries of such kind of pressings in Michael Harris book on stage and movie phonograph recordings.
Well, enough said regarding the question of which vinyl is indeed the rarest (US-)soundtrack LP in existence. Let us go on to discuss other collectible items in more detail: we start with minor labels! Thinking about minor US-soundtrack labels, labels having issued blaxploitation music are the first ones that come to mind. Although I am certainly NO expert on blax-music (that is one of my white spots), nearly every soundtrack-enthusiast has at least heard about the New York-city based "Bryan"-label! It has long vanished, of course, and has only left four early 70ies-waxings to the music-loving world, but these four waxings are indeed among the most difficult US-soundtrack recordings to locate: LORD SHANGO is the easiest one, THE LAST PORNO FLICK is still findable, but will already carry a three-figure price-sticker, for DEEP THROAT II, which score is much better than its predecessor ("She´s got to have it"), you will probably already have to double the Porno flick´s price and do not ask me what LIALEH might cost ... All for items are great listening pleasure and as their titles indicate, they are definitly neither mainstream-stuff nor politically correct (smile)! Hail the 70ies! (That is already about the end of soundtrack-only labels, since I do not know any other US soundrack-only LP label having issued nowadays rare items; hey, Varese does not count, of course, or do you want me to write a phone-book?! smile).
Another very tough one to locate is Manu Dibangos "COUNTDOWN AT KUSINI", one of t h e funk-scores of the middle-70ies. Awesome minimalistic cover-artwork and a movie I´d love to see ... Brigitte Bardot has always been a woman any man would like to have taken home, but this was only possible as a photo: THE GIRL IN THE BIKINI, a probably long-forgotten movie (in fact I do not have the slightest idea what kinda celluloid this was ...), featuring music composed by Jean Yatove, was only issued in the USA as a private release on the obscure "Popular"-label (in fact their second recording; I wonder what # 1 was ... do you have any info?) and featurd one of those BB-covers men still love to look at ... A very heavy one to locate ... "Falling in love again" and "Oh God, book II" belong to the "oscar-category": they were sent out to oscar jurors (with a letter inside) to gain consideration by members of the Association of Motion Pictures and Arts; also very rare stuff! Even rarer than these is "Such good friends", which decidedly has the appearance of a composer-financed or inhouse-pressing! Pretty good music, too! And pretty many of the other items presented on the few US-pages have one thing in common: they are decidedly odd releases from odd labels, featuring often very good music from long-forgotten obscure movie-productions: SKI CRAZY, ISLAND WOMEN, QUILP, the three scores by Dwight Gustafson (Dwight-who?), THE GAMES, SWEDISH FLY GIRLS (what?), SLAVE TRADE IN THE WORLD TODAY (an early mondo by Teo Usuelli ... only God knows why this score received its worldwide-only release exactly in the USA ...?), DAVID RAKSINs wonderful 2LP-demonstration-set (music for studying purposes), POUND, BLACKJACK, SOLOMAN KING (I still need the colour-cover issue ...),... and many more ...
And there are more, and more and more ... items knowbody of us ever heard about or ever will: industrial scores, advertisement music, ... that kinda stuff like RHAPSODY OF STEEL, to neame the most common one ... Any info on such items welcomed (thanks goes to collector Cameron FENNEL for some input!)! The same goes if you have such "goodies" (smile) availabale for sale/trade: please do send an e-mail ...!
Well, enough written! Enjoy and let the covers attract your immagination! And if you have any questions, that have been left unanswered (and I am sure there are some ...), please do not hesitate to drop me a line e-mail! I answer all questions as fast as possible, plan to collect them and want to put them into a FAQ-section (which is planned for 2003!). The same goes of course, if you have any info or items for sale or trade available!! However, regarding this section I may well be able to learn more from you than I can supply info due to my truly limited knowledge on the really obscure US-releases.
AVAILABLE items (visually graded: cover/record; play-graded upon request):
Library of Congress: Wonderful Inventions, 2 LPs + BOOK! (David Raksin), M-/M- WB Fox-1: Oh God book II (Charles Fox), M/M Time 52034: Thriller (Pete Rugulo) M-/M- Impulse! A-9142: Sweet love, bitter (Mal Waldron) M/M Jupiter JDY-7002: La corde au cou (Alain Cosineau) NM/M- xxx: My pleasure is my business (Tom Cochrane) NM/M xxx: The flasher (Pool-Pah) M-/M- xxx: The name of the game is ... Blackjack (xxx) SS xxx: Le diable aime les bijoux (xxx), M/M xxx: Ski crazy (Henry Vars) NM/EX+Please note: of all the listed items I have only one spare copy available; wants-lists welcomed (trade preferred!). WANTED: Old boyfriends (David Shire, Columbia promo-LP, white cover) Solomon King (J. Steiger, SIPI-pressing, NOT black/white-cover bootleg!)