Resuming a thread of film soundtrack music that transcends their original source - this time the classic thriller starring Michael Caine and directed by Mike Hodges from 1971. It’s truly a theme to catch a train to. One remarkable fact about this is that south London jazz pianist Roy Budd was only given a budget of £450 for the music for this film, and so managed to overcome this by restricting it to three main musicians - himself on electric piano and harpsichord, Chris Karan on drums, percussion, and that innovative sound of the tabla, and above all, that sublime upright bass riff played by Jeff Clyne. It just shows how when you’ve got so much less, you can sometimes achieve so much more.
Budd could play the Wurlitzer organ by the age of 8, and when he was 12 he performed at the London Paladium. He composed scores for dozens of films and TV, among others Wild Geese, Zeppelin, and perhaps most memorably the clip-clopping theme from Steptoe and Son, but surely Get Carter is his finest journey into the genre.
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