Dirty Harry

Lalo Schifrin

Flush with popular successes that spanned film (the Oscar nominated score for Cool Hand Luke Bullitt ) and TV (the Grammy-winning Mission: Impossible, Mannix) Argentine-born composer Lalo Schifrin infused director Don Siegel's original, epochal Dirty Harry with one of the 70's most riveting, consistently original jazz-fusion scores. It was also one that, until now, was only available in mono-mixed snippets on obscure compilations; this release marks the full-score's first, three-decade-overdue release (remixed in stereo for the first time and including alternate takes). The 1971 score folds Schifrin's classical training and years as jazzman into a context that's undeniably charged by the contemporary electric excursions (Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Live at the Fillmore East) of Miles Davis. Its cues for renegade San Francisco detective Harry Callahan are variously driven by restless, propulsive electric bass, a small string ensemble, East-Asian percussion and spare Fender Rhodes lines, a musical tack that would be revived a quarter-century later and hailed as "acid jazz." But in portraying the serial killer Scorpio, Schifrin fuses the anxiety of 20th century classical modernism with electric psych-rock, then overlays it with an eerie, wordless soprano that beats Morricone at his own game. Also included here are smatterings of Schifrin's various source music (mostly disposable jazz and r&b kitsch) that colored the film's various San Francisco diners and dives, a context that only underscores the stunning, electric cool of his dramatic cues. --Jerry McCulley

Dirty Harry Album: