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Today, from the Bond on Vinyl archives, we’re taking it from the top and listening to music featured in Dr. No!
Growing up in Hollywood, California, it seemed Alvin LeRoy Holmes could not escape show business. After high school, he left town to attend Northwestern and then the Juilliard School of Music, and then he worked with a handful of composers and prominent bandleaders before WWII. During the war, he served as a Navy pilot and flight instructor, and afterwards returned to Hollywood to serve as a conductor and arranger for MGM Studios. By the 1960s, he had moved to United Artists Records, working with the likes of Judy Garland and Shirley Bassey.
I picked up this album a few years back at Swaggie Records in Nashville. The store doesn’t have a huge selection, but it is in a cool building that looks like an old bank and is just a short walk from the lively Broadway street. The album is filled with music (mostly main themes) from 15 films from the early 1960s, most of which I have not actually seen, but the tunes themselves are still more familiar to me 60+ years later than they were when the collection was released.
In addition to being credited on the theme from “The V.I.P.’s” (a 1963 film with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and other notable actors based on the real-life story of Vivien Leigh attempting to leave her husband at the time, Lawrence Olivier), the LeRoy Holmes Orchestra plays a jazzy version of the James Bond Theme (From “Dr. No”) – a highlight of this compilation.
64. Original Soundtracks And Music From The Great Motion Pictures
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