John Barry

Before coming to prominence as a soundtrack composer, Barry performed (mostly) instrumental pop music aimed at the general market, with reasonable commercial success. This gathers a whopping 37 tracks from 1957-60 on a single disc (songs were shorter then!), and show Barry coming to grips with pop and rock trends with various degrees of effectiveness, as well as showing flashes of the trademarks he would brandish in his soundtrack work. The early rock vocal tracks, like virtually all British attempts at rock in the '50s, suffer from a basic inability to truly get into the spirit of the thing, sounding like a very low-rent Bill Haley. Barry started to find his footing when he ditched the vocals and put the accent on twangy reverb guitars, reflecting the influence of Duane Eddy, the Shadows, and the Ventures. The moody instrumentals, sometimes featuring innovative pulsating guitar lines, worked the best, sounding a bit like soundtracks caught between the jazz and British Invasion eras. And of course Barry would eventually find his forte in the soundtrack arena. While admirably thorough, this retrospective is too erratic for the general listener; a selection of the best half would have been much more judicious. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide