John Wilson Orchestra

Introduction

John Wilson explains how his early fascination with classic MGM film scores grew into a labour of love

During my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s the BBC would regularly screen the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film musicals on a Saturday afternoon – more often than not as a double bill – the perfect antidote to the endless sports programmes on the other channels. I can remember watching Singin’ in the Rain for the first time and, strange though it seems, being absolutely knocked out by the unison French horn countermelody in the main titles, and being fascinated by the titlecard that listed the staff of the music department: Lennie Hayton, Skip Martin, Conrad Salinger. I was instantly attracted to the richly upholstered sound of the MGM Studio Orchestra and, even then, knew that one day I must conduct an orchestra like that! As my musical experience broadened, I was able to analyse what made that special sound: the combination of a first-class dance band with its goldentoned brass section and myriad woodwind doublings and a small but virtuoso string section.

(That the Hollywood studio orchestras had vast string sections is a popular myth – the epic soundtrack for Gone with the Wind was recorded with only eight first violins.) It was this sound that I had in my mind when, in 1994, I formed the John Wilson Orchestra for a concert at the Bloomsbury Theatre. Several seasons followed at the music room of Pizza on the Park, as did a residency at the Royal Garden Hotel, and by 2000 I felt it might be good for the orchestra to give a concert without the accompaniment of clattering cutlery and clinking wine glasses. Our debut performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall paid tribute to the great American composers and arrangers of the past century: Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Johnny Mandel, Paul Weston and others. This led to an invitation to play next door at the Royal Festival Hall and – as part of a concert devoted to the screen composers of Hollywood’s Golden Age – I included a handful of wellknown songs from the MGM musical films.

I knew that MGM had been taken over by Turner Classic Movies which had, in turn, been acquired by Warner Bros. I’d read that Warner Bros. presided over meticulously preserved archives and that every note of music for their films survived intact. So I wrote informing them of my forthcoming concert, asking if I might have access to some of the MGM scores. I received a reply by return informing me that, while all of the available music materials for Warner films were preserved in the archives of the University of Southern California, the full scores and orchestral parts for all of the MGM productions were destroyed in 1969 – for no reason other than that they took up too much space and a new car park was needed. Every note of music for every MGM film was gone – used as landfill for a Californian golf course.

Well, not quite. For copyright reasons, MGM was obliged to hang on to some sort of musical documentation – a record of who composed what, so that royalties could be apportioned correctly. So it was with great excitement that I travelled to Hollywood to spend a week inspecting what the USC archives call ‘The MGM Conductor Books’. For every production – musical or otherwise – a short score, or ‘piano-conductor’ score, would be prepared, from which the music director could conduct. These were condensed versions of the full scores and contained most of the information necessary for recording purposes and for fitting the music to the picture. Full scores seem to have been considered too unwieldy: too many page turns which could be picked up by the microphones.

The MGM conductor books exist in varying degrees of completeness; for example, The Wizard of Oz is sketched mainly on two staves with scant indication of harmony (and virtually no instrumentation), whereas Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is laid out over six staves like a miniature full score. Easter Parade and Gigi are all but lost – only a third of each score survives; High Society is 95 per cent complete and has the most lucid sketches. In general, the piano-conductor scores for the later musicals seem to contain more information than their earlier counterparts; a state of affairs brought about by Johnny Green, who was appointed Head of Music Department in 1950 and who insisted on the highest standards of music copying and preparation.

(The conductor books are all beautifully copied by a handful of top-class copyists who must have been on permanent contract at MGM for at least 20 years.) While these documents have provided the basis for my reconstructions, most of the real work is done by listening over and over again to the soundtracks. (I once spent an entire Sunday reconstructing four seconds of music from the cyclone scene in The Wizard of Oz.) There are many things the conductor books don’t give you: inner parts buried deep in the orchestra, complex arpeggiated figures in the harp and piano, percussion effects – not to mention the countless changes made during the recording sessions. Also, only rarely did the vocal or choral parts make it into the conductor books.

Reconstructing these scores is a chore, but a joyous one. The songs are all in the top class, written by the greatest tunesmiths of the day. The arrangements are – in my opinion – the finest ever made in the field of musical comedy. The performances on the original soundtracks are just about the best you’ll ever hear. The unbeatable playing of the musicians in the MGM Studio Orchestra is a constant inspiration, not only to me, but to the musicians of my own orchestra.