From Russia With Love Score
While the rest of the score to From Russia With Love was composed by John Barry, who’d previously done some work on the James Bond theme in Dr. No, the theme song was written by Lionel Bart.
Dm Bb Gm7 A7 E|--------------------------|| B|--------------------------|| G|-----------3---2-1---2----|| D|----0-3--0-------------2--|| A|--0-----------------------|| E|--------------------------||
Barry tells Royal S. Brown in the latter’s Overtones and Undertones that, “Lionel Bart wrote the main song because, although I had written some instrumental stuff, and although I’d written one or two small songs, I had never had a big, hit song. Lionel Bart was coming in off Oliver!, and he was the hottest song writer in England. I did not write a note of the song ‘From Russia With Love.’ I orchestrated it and did it for the movie.”
For the vocals, the Bond producers turned to “the singing bus conductor,” Matt Monro. A Youtube user named LuiECuomo has kindly swapped out the instrumental version from the opening credits for Monro’s version:
The Bond theme formula was not yet in full effect, though the bare bones can be heard here in Barry’s orchestration, and the single did not fare well on the charts. Jeffrey Paul Smith writes in his “The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music”:
In March 1964, UA released the soundtrack album for From Russia With Love on their subsidiary record lable to coincide with the film’s April release. Improving on the performance of its predecessor, Russia reached number 28 on Variety’s album charts and remained there for over four months. More importantly, though, the title tune quickly became Unart Music’s most recorded song. Within a month of the film’s release, Bart’s tune was featured in eighteen different single versions, both vocal and instrumental, and also turned up as a track on numerous albums. The heavy activity on the Russia music was driving UA’s music publishing operations to a peak level and racking up considerable licensing fees in the process.
From Russia With Love Single
None of these singles, however, was able to crack Billboard’s “Hot 100.” To some extent, the single’s poor performance was likely due to the weak placement of Monro’s vocal version within the film. It is heard only twice, first as a snatch of radio music during Bond’s picnic with Sylvia Trench, and then later in a more complete version over the end credits. Neither of these instances does a particularly good job of selling the song or reinforcing the film’s dramatic material. In the former, the excerpt is so short that it can be easily missed; in the latter, it is easily ignored.
The tablature provided today is not a full arrangement, but chords with tablature for the vocal melody. I wrote it years ago, when I was attempting to put together a spy-surf band, called The Yuri Gagarins (which was to also feature my then-girlfriend, now wife, on bass). I’ve shared this little MP3 from one of our practices before, but here it is again!
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