The Lalo on My List

I’ve been thinking about Lalo Schifrin who we lost last week, and all the enjoyment I’ve gotten from his scores over, well, my entire lifetime.

When I was doing the FSM label, I had a “wish list” of titles I wanted to release—and we got to do quite a number of them. But there are, nonetheless, the “ones that got away,” and on my “Lalo list,” the one at the top was the 1976 Charles Bronson movie, St. Ives.

Sorry to tease—I am not making news, It’s still unreleased and I want it!

I know Warner Bros. has the multitrack masters and it would sound amazing. I did ask about the title at some point and was told there was a rights problem, which I am sure had to do with the underlying literary rights.

St. Ives was based on a 1972 novel by Oliver Bleeck (a pen name for Ross Thomas), The Procane Chronicle. This is a problem that has increasingly come to bite the specialty CD labels: literary rights expirations. Warner Bros. bought the rights to the book back in the 1970s to make a movie—and they did. They own St. Ives and can continue to release (on home video) and exhibit the movie based on their original deal.

However, once that original deal expires (there are complicated copyright issues having to do with the contract language and/or the death of the author), they can no longer continue to make new material based on the book. And technically, a soundtrack album to the film derived from the book could be considered a new product.

So there you go. What a bummer because I love that main title theme!

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