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Today, from the Bond on Vinyl archives, we’re still listening to music featured in Goldfinger!
Born in a rundown hotel next to the Albany, Georgia, city jail in 1919, Harry James was destined for the spotlight. His mother was a trapeze artist, and his father was the band leader with the Mighty Haag Circus. Harry also started performing with the circus early on, presented as “The Youngest Contortionist in the World”, which he started at age four, before learning to play drums for the circus band at age six. That same year, stunt-performing circus horses nearly trampled James, but he was saved by his mother’s pet horse, who stood over him until the other horses had passed.
By age twelve, James was playing trumpet in the Christy Brothers Circus band, and continued to improve his musical prowess, as by 1936 he was leading the brass section of Benny Goodman’s band. His stay was not long. Within three years, he had left to form his own band, initially called the Music Makers. In 1939, James showed that he was more than a trumpet-playing band leader when his band was the first to find a young waiter at a New Jersey restaurant and sign him to a one-year, $ 75-per-week contract to sing with the band. You know the singer as Frank Sinatra.
After several decades of hits between the Harry James Orchestra and other bands, the Music Makers were still playing together at Disneyland in 1963. Following the success of Goldfinger in 1964, James included a big band version of the title song as the penultimate track on his 1965 album “Harry James Plays Green Onions & Other Great Hits.” The record was released in eight countries, but not originally in the UK for some reason, until this 1974 re-release that dropped Green Onions from the title in favor of a simple self-titled album.
103. The Harry James Big Band – The Harry James Big Band
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