music composed by Michel Legrand and Miles Davis

(cast) (In Australia) Dingo's Bush Band:

Robert (rhythm) Tim Hood Mal (drums) Cyril Garnett Ned (bass) Peter Byfield

Billy Cross Jazz Bands:

Drummer Marcus Johnson Double Bass Matthew Branton Trombone Bill McAllistair Tenor Sax Lee Buddle Alto Sax Terry Thomas Guitar Kuki Piano Don Gomez Trumpet Pat Crichton

(In France) Caesar Onzy Matthews Caesar's Band 'Terra Incognita' Raymond Doumbe Moulongo Sangoma Everett Jonathan Handselman Herve Krief David Lewis Serge Marne

(In Australia) Musicians Casting Steve Shaw (In France) Musicians Casting David Lewis

Music Editor Danielle Wiessner

MUSIC

In the United States

Music Composed by Michel Legrand and Miles Davis Arranged and Conducted by Michel Legrand

Billy Cross Trumpet Miles Davis Dingo Anderson Trumpet Chuck Finley Orchestra Manager Garnett Brown Music Consultant Ernie Fields Jr. for Jade Sound Chief Engineer Chris Danley Engineer Bruce Calder

Musicians

Trumpet Nolan Smith Ray Brown George Graham Oscar Brashear Trombones Jimmy Clueland Dick Nash George Bohanon Thurman Green Lew McCreary

Woodwinds Kenny Garrett Buddy Collette Jackie Kelso Marty Krystall Bill Green Charles Owens John Stephens French Horns Vince Derosa David Duke Marnie Johnson Richard Todd Drums and Percussion John Bingham Ricky Wellman Harvey Mason Abraham Laboriel Keyboards Kei Akagi Alan Oldfield Michel Legrand Guitars and Banjo Dean Parks Ron Komie Accordian (sic) Frank Marocco Violin Bobby Bruce Music Copyist Suzie Katayama Copying Service Recorded at Crystal Studios, Los Angeles Overdubs at The Hit Factory and Right Track, New York

In Australia

Additional Music Composed and Arranged by Tim Hood

Dingo and Dusters Coordinator Steve Shaw Colin Friels Trumpet Tutor Pat Crichton Dusters Music Performed by Tim Hood Steve Shaw Pat Crichton Recorded at Planet Studios, Perth

Original soundtrack album on Warner Bros. Records, Cassettes and CDs WB ® Warners - logo

Sound and soundtrack album mixed at Hendon Studios

CD RELEASE:

The soundtrack has been released a number of times, on LP, CD and cassette, and latterly became available by streaming. For notes on the individual tracks, see below; for various covers see below:

CD Warner Bros 7599-26438-2 (AAD) 1991 Music arranged, orchestrated and conducted by Michel Legrand Album produced by Rolf de Heer and Michel Legrand Executive producers: Gordon Meltzer and Hilliard Elkins Album mixed by Peter D. Smith at Hendon Studios, Adelaide Australia Chief recording engineer: Chris Danley at Crystal Studios, Los Angeles, U.S.A. Orchestra Manager: Gernett Brown Music Consultant: Ernie Fields, Jr. for Jade Sound Trumpets: Chuck Findley, Nolan Smith, Ray Brown, George Graham, Oscar Brashear Keyboards: Kei Akagi, Alan Oldfield, Michel Legrand Guitar: Mark Rivett Drums & percussion: John Bigham, Ricky Wellman, Harvey Mason, Alphonse Mouzon Bass & lead bass: Benny Rietveld, “Foley”, Abraham Laboriel Woodwinds: Buddy Collette, Jackie Kelso, Marty Krystall, Bill Green, Charles Owens, John Stephens French horns: Vince de Rosa, David Duke, Marnie Johnson, Richard Todd. Trombones: Jimmy Cleveland, Dick Nash, George Bohanan, Thurman Green, Lew McGreary Saxophone: Kenny Garrett “Billy Cross” trumpet: Miles Davis “Dingo Anderson” trumpet: Chuck Findley All music published by Gevest Australia Pty. Ltd./F Sharp Productions Ltd. Adm. by F Sharp Productions Ltd. ASCAP

Kimberley Trumpet (2’15”) Featured trumpeter: Chuck Findley The Arrival (2’05”) Featured trumpeter: Miles Davis Concert On The Runway (3’50”) Featured trumpeter: Miles Davis The Departure (1’05”) Featured trumpeter: Miles Davis Dingo Howl (0’08”) Featured trumpeter: Chuck Findley Letter As Hero (1’22”) Featured trumpeter: Chuck Findley Trumpet Cleaning (3’56”) Featured trumpeter: Miles Davis The Dream (3’45”) Featured trumpeter: Miles Davis Paris Walking I (1’58”) Featured trumpeter: Chuck Findley Paris Walking II (3’17”) Featured trumpeter: Miles Davis Kimberley Trumpet In Paris (2’05”) Featured trumpeter: Chuck Findley The Music Room (2’50”) Club Entrance (4’12”) Featured trumpeter: Chuck Findley The Jam Session (6’00”) Featured trumpeter: Miles Davis & Chuck Findley Going Home (2’05”) Featured trumpeter: Miles Davis Surprise! (4’52”) Featured trumpeter: Chuck Findley

Some of the covers for the old format releases:

MICHEL LEGRAND AND MILES DAVIS:

Both Legrand and Davis are far too well known to list in detail here, with many sites dedicated to their work available online. A good starting point for Legrand is his wiki here, and his official site here. For Miles Davis, his wiki is here, and there was an official site here, though Davis also has a number of excellent fan sites, including but not limited to Miles Ahead here, which interalia provided links to other fan sites.

As a film suffused with music and musical performances, there are too many musical moments in the film to show by way of illustrations in this pdf. For images of Miles Davis and other performers in the film, see this site’s main photo gallery.

(Below: co-composer Michel Legrand, and a portrait on the cover of one of his many releases)

NOTES ON THE MUSIC:

Director Rolf de Heer, at his web site here, provided these excellent notes on the music for the film, including liner notes originally prepared for the CD release:

MICHEL LEGRAND:

It was Miles who suggested Michel Legrand to co-compose the music. It was an astute choice. Michel's been nominated for an Academy Award seventeen times, he's won three. He's more film/traditional and Miles more avant-garde, so it was a great combination.

Michel was meant to come to Australia before they started composing, but he ran out of time. The bulk of the soundtrack was composed with their only references being the script, a few pages of my notes and a one hour tape of Australian bush sounds we'd made for them. The result is incredible.

Michel was thrilled with the film. In fact, he said it's one of only two or three films he's worked on where the film has enhanced the music.

RECORDING THE MUSIC:

We had technical difficulties with the music because it was sent to us just before the shoot without time-code. In the editing room we found that the synch kept drifting. Because we post-produced at Hendon Studios in Adelaide, we were able, with the music mixer Pete Smith, to do a lot of complex dubbing, synch chasing, removing the trumpet track from the background instrumental and synching it separately by cutting gaps in or out and so on. We could only have done it at Hendon - it's a brilliantly integrated facility. We could do almost anything we wanted or needed to in that building - it was heaven.

The sound mix went so well that Pete and I ended up doing the soundtrack album for Warner Brothers in America at Hendon too. And Warners think it's a great album.

ALBUM NOTES:

These notes were written for the soundtrack album. In the end, Warners decided on a simpler album sleeve, but the notes are still relevant and/or interesting to those who love the music in this film.

Track 1 - Kimberley Trumpet

So named for the location in which this was filmed, the remote north-west corner of Western Australia. Musically it is both a cry from the heart and a celebration...and the influences of the sounds of the Australian outback, particularly the Dingo howl, can be clearly heard. I found the piece incredibly evocative - it "told" me how to shoot it, and then the fun started. Firstly to find the location, which involved climbing up and down mountains in incredibly hot conditions. Then, weeks later, arriving at the bottom of the appointed mountain with a small crew and actor Colin Friels, me pointing to the top of the mountain saying, "Up there". Disbelief, resignation, then a trek up carrying all the required equipment, during which we thought we were going to lose one of the crew with heat exhaustion. But we made it, and even though on the way up the crew thought I was completely mad, when we reached the top they understood. And when they heard the trumpet cries echoing through the valley, it became an experience none of us would have missed.

Track 2 - The Arrival

The introduction of the main theme. This is one of those numbers discovered in the film mixing theatre... you try a few different things in the editing room, rough mixes of various possibilities, none of them quite satisfactory. You settle on what appears to be the least worst case, then when you're mixing the music for the film, up against the image on the big screen, magic happens. Pete Smith, the music mixer, understood instinctively the dramatic relationship between what was happening on the screen and what could be drawn out of the music, and each time we ran through it I was deeply moved... the boy, the aeroplane and the music perfectly bound together.

Track 3 - Concert on the Runway

Our first day of shooting with Miles. It was hot, 105°F (40°C), it was dusty and the flies were very pervasive. We were on an airstrip in the Australian desert, miles from anywhere, with a crew of sixty, the cast, a hundred extras, a Boeing 707... and Miles on his first day in his first film. Everyone was nervous. We'd scheduled this musical piece first, so that Miles could plunge into his role by starting with something with which he was familiar, playing the trumpet. What no-one had remembered was that Miles is the master of improvisation. Unfortunately, filming to playback gives no room for improvisation, every note must be played exactly as it was originally recorded. We rehearsed and rehearsed, and time and again Miles would find himself playing an improvised counter-melody against the original trumpet line. It was beautiful but unuseable. Those first few hours with Miles and the whole attendant circus were the most despairing hours of filming I've ever done. Then, gradually, Miles learnt this new discipline, this new way of playing, and slowly the weight started to lift. I think Miles found the dialogue scenes easy after that.

Track 4 - The Departure

Basically the same piece (mixed slightly differently) as the earlier "Arrival", this is included because it is a wonderful illustration of the synthesis of sounds in a movie. When we'd mixed to the image it had worked well, but it was not until all the other sounds were added that the music became special. In particularly, the sound of each aeroplane engine starting in turn added to the emotion of the piece, signalling as it did to young Johnny the inevitability of the departure of Billy Cross (Miles' character), and the impossibility of Johnny's unstated wish to accompany him.

Track 5 - Dingo Howl

One of the things that distinguishes John ('Dingo') Anderson's (Colin Friels) trumpet playing is that its primary influences (apart from Billy Cross) are the sounds of the Australian outback... dingoes howling, cockatoos, cicadas, the wide open spaces. 'Dingo' would spend weeks at a time on his own, with just his trumpet and his dog ("Diz", after Dizzy Gillespie) for company. In this scene the three-legged dingo, seen earlier springing a trap, has followed him to his campsite. His closeness is unexpected, and John answers the dingo howl with a howl of his own.

Track 6 - Letter as Hero

A week or so before we started shooting in Western Australia, the first batch of music arrived from Los Angeles. In trying to meet the almost impossible deadlines set, the music came in a form where it was not always easy to work out what part of the film it was meant for. I don't recall where this number was originally intended to go, but when I first heard it, it was to me, the quintessential "going to Paris" music, full of joy and liberation. In the rough editing of the film, we used it twice as a guide, once when Jane's letter travels to Paris, and again when 'Dingo' makes his decision to go. Once we had the rough cut of the film, I took it to Los Angeles to have the remainder of the music scored. There was a screening of the film with Michel Legrand (Miles was in New York at the time), and when afterwards I started to apologise for using the music out of place, Michel stopped me. He was only too delighted with the results, and so the "guide tracks" became the final tracks.

Track 7 - Trumpet Cleaning

A smooth, rolling and wonderful track, so tight and compact in its playing and construction that you wish you could play the entire number in the film. But alas, the strictures of film making prevented that, though we do use two different parts of it in two different places. The sequence where 'Dingo' is in his caravan, cleaning his trumpet while listening to this, is one of my favourites in the film. Half the reason it works so well is that we were able to play it to Colin Friels ('Dingo') while shooting the scene, the sort of thing not always possible in an industry where the music is more often composed after filming is completed.

Track 8 - The Dream

When this first arrived from Los Angeles, we didn't know what to make of it, because instead of Miles' trumpet, there was the sound of Michel Legrand's voice singing the melody. The correct version arrived, and soon it became a favourite... haunting, soulful, beautiful... to such an extent that it became the main theme of the film. With the filming, editing and mixing of the film, plus the mixing of the album, I must have heard this track close to a thousand times in twelve months, but it still has the power to move me. When we were editing the sequences involving this piece, people walking down the corridors of Hendon Studios would stop, come into the editing room and just listen. We knew then that we had something very special. And I was to hear Michel singing it again... as he walked from the cinema after his first screening of the rough cut of the film.

Track 9 - Paris Walking I

This was the piece that was probably the most difficult to get right. It covers a montage of Dingo walking through Paris, trying to find Billy Cross's agent. In the rough cut we used a remix of the "Concert on the Runway" as a guide, knowing that we would probably replace it with a new piece when the rest of the music was recorded. But that failed too (see Track 10 Paris Walking II). Time and money prevented us from recording a third time, so it became a question of trying things. We put up the original 24 track against the picture as we had it then, locked it up against various tracks, and started playing with the faders... and suddenly, on the last available number, we hit it. The key to it emotionally was to have Chuck Finley's "Dingo" trumpet playing, rather than Miles' "Billy Cross" trumpet, because this was a much better musical illustration of Dingo Anderson in Paris.

Track 10 - Paris Walking II

This one is not in the film, but is included here because it was recorded for the film, and as an illustration of some of the difficulties faced. It was the first number recorded during the August sessions, and it was one of those situations that was both the best and the worst. It was exciting... here we were in Hollywood, recording with twenty-four of the best musicians you could find anywhere. Ideas come to life, dry notes written on paper explode into the most wonderful music, almost as if by magic. I'll never forget it. But then there were technical problems with the linking of picture to music, and suddenly 24 musicians are about to go into overtime, which we can't afford. And all the time I'm thinking, "I love this piece, but I don't think it'll work in the film". But maybe I'm wrong, and there's nothing to be done about it anyway, Miles and Michel are on too tight a schedule to start all over again. It really did feel like standing in a control room tearing up twenty-dollar notes. As it turned out it didn't work in the film (see Paris Walking I), but it does work as music, and having it here means those twenty-dollar notes were not wasted.

Track 11 - Kimberley Trumpet in Paris

A reprise of the opening, but played in such a different environment, it sounds very different. In the outback it is a celebration... here, played by a maudlin Dingo Anderson on a traffic island in the middle of Paris, it is almost a requiem to himself, to his (at this point) unfulfillable dreams.

Track 12 - The Music Room

This is Miles on keyboards, and the result of an extraordinary few hours of filming. It hinged on one of those decisions that seemed trivial at the time, but in hindsight proved very important. I was asked during pre-production in Paris whether I wanted the music room set (built in a room in the house used as Billy Cross's house in the film) functional or whether it could just look right. Not knowing much about working with Miles, and establishing that making the room functional didn't blow the budget, I decided we should go that way, just to be on the safe side. It came to filming, and it was the first major dialogue scene that Miles was to do. He walked into the room and was duly impressed. He wanted one, a complete room just like this one. He sat and started to fiddle with the keyboard, improvising. We rehearsed, and Miles was obviously much more comfortable playing and speaking than he was pretending to play and speaking. Henri Morelle, the Belgian sound recordist, was worried that with the improvised music overlapping the dialogue, we wouldn't be able to cut the scene. I explained the technicalities of this to Miles, so he adapted what he was doing to use the playing to punctuate the dialogue. In take after take he was consistently wonderful, and he could see that we all felt that he was. It gave him immense confidence, which profoundly influenced his performance in the more difficult dialogue scenes ahead.

Track 13 - Club Entrance

This was probably the most straightforward piece for us in the whole film. We got it before shooting, we knew what it was for, we shot to it, it worked. An interesting sidelight was the casting of Caesar, the trumpeter of this piece in the film (as opposed to the soundtrack). We found him in Paris, a musician called Onzy Matthews. Onzy happened to be American, as was his character in the film. He also happened to know Miles, from years before (Onzy had played with Ellington), which was precisely the situation between the two characters in the film. What added to the irony of it all is that as a result of the three days of shooting together, the rag-tag collection of Paris musicians, individually chosen to play Caesar's band in the film, now play together as a band known as "Terra Incognita".

Track 14 - The Jam Session

I think this is one of the most remarkable pieces of composition I'm ever going to come across. Consider the situation: an impossibly short amount of time between the signing of the contracts and the deadline for delivering the music; the information available to Michel and Miles consisted of a script and some hastily written notes of mine about what we required; I had met Miles for less than an hour some months previously, Michel not at all. When the music arrived in Western Australia and we stuck it into the nearest cheap cassette player and turned it on, I was filled with a growing sense of awe and excitement...the story, the developing drama of the scene in the film, was all there in the music - Caesar leading off, Dingo joining in, tentatively at first, then growing in confidence, finally taking over and making the music his own, bringing in his special sounds of the outback; a final flurry of triumph...then another trumpet starts, pure and clear, magic...it is Billy Cross, unexpectedly on stage with them. Billy plays, then signals for Dingo to join him. They play together, then Caesar joins them in a wonderful finale of three joyous trumpets. The music is fantastic, but more importantly, the drama is there.

Track 15 - Going Home

The genius of Miles. Early September in New York, and the extra backing tracks had been recorded...all we needed now was Miles. The first session was disastrous, Miles was clearly not well, and he was unhappy with his playing, struggling. After two or three hours he called it quits, his lips were hurting. We had less than half a number down. Michel had a commitment in Europe, we had a film to finish in Australia and the following night was our last chance at it. Miles arrived, Michel was full of care and concern for him but Miles shrugged it off - let's play. Twelve minutes later, two numbers were down, Paris Walking II and this one. But Miles wasn't finished...he wanted another track on this one, and play his first one back. Into record, and Miles started playing the counter melody...it was almost shocking in its beauty, so unexpected, so breathtaking. I'll never forget those three minutes. When it was over, and Michel and I were still recovering, Miles packed up his trumpet and left. The entire session, two numbers and the counter melody, had taken less than twenty minutes.

Track 16 - Surprise!

The genius of Michel. The original version of this was recorded in March, before filming began. It was terrific, featuring an extraordinary duel between, of all things, trumpet and accordion, but events overtook it. The casting of the instruments for the bush band in the film was different (there was, for example, no accordion), the film found its own dynamic, and although the number worked in a sort of way, it wasn't the sort of finish we needed. When Michel saw the rough cut, he recognised this immediately and set to work, re-arranging and substantially augmenting what was already there. At the recording session we tried to lock together two 24 track machines so we could preserve the original for posterity, but unfortunately there were gremlins in the works and we were forced to record over a number of the original tracks. What emerged, although built on the identical foundation, was a fundamentally different piece, one much more suited to the requirements of the film. Although I was sorry to lose the original, the results of Michel's work more than compensated...the now-added big band sound set the number on fire.