R.I.P. John Barry 1933 - 2011

For those of us who love film music, we lost a giant in that field yesterday, when news of the sudden death of British-born John Barry hit the airwaves. Barry will mostly be remembered for his dozens of scores for the James Bond films, but if you are a movie music junkie like me, you know his body of work is a vast one. Like many film composers of his generation, Barry started off arranging other composers work for the silver screen. His success with the Bond films led to his scoring of the popular 1967 film "Born Free" which won him two of his four Oscars, having been nominated for a total of six. When he wasn't scoring Bond films, he gave us such diverse scores as "The Lion In Winter", "Dances With Wolves", "Out of Africa", "Mary, Queen of Scotts", and "Chaplin." All of which brought him Oscar nods. Some of my favorite Barry scores were lesser known with the general movie-going public, but popular with film score aficionados. His 1976 score to the first remake of the classic "King Kong", is among his best. He captures the excitement of the jungle world Kong comes from, along with a lush full-on orchestra love theme that often made Barry scores memorable. His melancholy score to "Peggy Sue Got Married" is another favorite of mine and among his most listenable. Even not-so-good films like 1980's "Raise The Titanic", benefit from a mystical sounding romantic score by John Barry. Also that year he scored "Somewhere in Time" offering a popular love theme that became a hit on radio along with the films memorable rendition of Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody On A Theme of Paganini." There were many other memorable scores, too numerous to mention, but emblematic of a prolific and one-of-a-kind composer whose sound will be sorely missed.