How is it that one of the most distinctive and influential film composers of his generation is practically unknown today and almost all of his records out of print and unavailable in any reissue format? Of the many scores listed in his filmography only BABY DOLL has recently been re-released on CD but what of the rest? – THE HUSTLER, 12 ANGRY MEN, WILD RIVER, LILITH, THE STRANGE ONE, MISTER BUDDWING, THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED, THE YELLOW CANARY, THE FUGITIVE KIND, etc.….and we haven’t even mentioned the space age bachelor pad music he created with the Creed Taylor Orchestra – SHOCK Music in Hi-Fi, PANIC: The Son of Shock and NIGHTMARE and more.   

Hopkins, who was born in Coffeyville, Kansas on January 15, 1912 and died in Princeton, New Jersey on April 7, 1983, worked on a number of major film and television productions during his lifetime yet remains a shadowy, almost unknown figure in the music world today. And despite a list of brilliant collaborations with such famous figures as Elia Kazan, Robert Rossen, Sidney Lumet,  Delbert Mann and even Elvis Presley (Hopkins composed the score of the King’s 1961 feature, WILD IN THE COUNTRY), he never received an Oscar nomination and was only nominated once in his entire career for an Emmy –  for scoring the TV series, “East Side, West Side,” which starred George C. Scott.   

What I love most about Hopkins’ film music are the rich jazz and blues influenced themes and melodies as well as an obvious nod to American roots music which is reflected in atmospheric orchestrations which resemble Aaron Copland compositions in their emotional complexity – Hopkins’ WILD RIVER film score is particularly reflective of this. And then there is the other side of Hopkins which is playful (“Blue Angels,” an album of cover songs such as “Blue Moon,” “My Blue Heaven,” “Beyond the Blue Horizon,” etc.), experimental (“Sound Tour: France” and its sequels) and game for the occasional pop novelty record (“Swingin’Serenades“).     

Some of his least known but most innovative work are his “concept” albums of the late fifties and early sixties – “The Sound of New York: A Music-Sound Portrait” (1958), “Rooms” (1959). Then there are the albums he made with the Creed Taylor Orchestra which have a cult following of their own: “Lonelyville: The Nervous Beat” (1959), “Ping Pang Pong The Swinging Ball,” “Shock,” “Panic,” “Nightmare.”    

In addition, Hopkins also served as musical supervisor on specific episodes of such TV series as “Mission: Impossible,” “The Odd Couple,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Mannix,” “Love, American Style” and was the composer for the TV scores for “The Cara Williams Show,” “The Reporter” (starring Harry Guardino in the title role) and the aforementioned “East Side, West Side.”    

Not a great deal is known about Hopkin’s life except for some road signs along the way. He attended Oberlin College and Temple University and graduated in 1933 after which he moved to New York City. It was there that he met and worked for three years with the renowned jazz orchestra leader Paul Whiteman and after that a stint with Andre Kostelanetz, a native of St. Petersburg, Russia who became one of the pioneers of “Easy Listening” music. Hopkins then  entered the television industry in the fifties where he found work at NBC as an arranger on “Your Hit Parade.” In 1957 he scored his first motion picture, BABY DOLL (with conductor Ray Heindorf and the Warner Bros. Orchestra), working with director Elia Kazan, a collaboration that led to composing the score for the same director’s WILD RIVER in 1960.  

Here is the WILD RIVER trailer in which you can hear some of Hopkin’s original score.

Below are just a few of the excellent film scores he created as well as other career highpoints, all of which (except BABY DOLL)  are currently unavailable anywhere. If you know otherwise, please let me know.  

 BABY DOLL – Hopkin’s debut film soundtrack is available from DRG records http://www.drgrecords.com/index.asp but for some inexplicable reason DRG dropped the main title theme from the original Columbia soundtrack in their re-issue version as Ross Care notes in his review on the Music from the Movies web site: “Hopkins’s exciting (and structurally essential) main title is a clever fusion of rock-pop saxes and brass under a lyrical string countermelody, aptly suggesting the innocent/erotic nature of the title character, and introducing a duality that will continue through the rest of the score. Thus its absence here turns the score into a kind of variations without a theme. While this title theme survives in a few of the cues (the end of ‘The Fire and Baby Doll’, the beginning of ‘Baby Doll’s Fright’) it is never heard in its original sax/brass/string instrumentation, and its omission seriously distracts from this reissue…What remains, however, is a fresh, exciting, often sensual and humorous score for a unique black comedy/drama. Hopkins makes inventive use of the pop elements in the orchestration, many derived from jazz, blues, and period rock and roll. A lurid solo sax, and a subtle use of electric guitar and jazz drumming suggest the script’s more earthly elements, while velvety massed strings and a solo celesta evoke the child-like, virginal title character…Cues such as ‘The Cradle’ and ‘The Confession’ are warmly sensual, especially the latter’s languorous harmonica solo, while ‘Lemonade’ is a clever jazz variation on the main title theme.”     

THE FUGITIVE KIND – The following excerpt is from an excellent overview of the film and the soundtrack by Ross Care on the Film Score Monthly web site. Care wrote, “In 1957 he scored two films for Sidney Lumet: The Strange One and 12 Angry Men, making experimental use of modernistic 12-tone techniques for the former. Hopkins reunited with Lumet for The Fugitive Kind to provide an intimate, lyrical “less is more” (both in mood and scale) score that served the film extremely well…Hopkins’s intimate and lyrical main title, “Bird Song,” while reflecting the atmospheric cinematography of a sunrise behind which (after a brief visual/musical prologue) the credits unfold, also seems inspired by one of the key symbols in Williams’s script, the image of the delicate transparent birds who touch earth only when they die…This main title is one of the most lyrical, poignant and concentrated of any music composed for a Williams film, and the rest of the score, primarily for guitar, solo and sectional reeds, and judiciously utilized strings and brass (mostly French horns), follows suit.”   

SHOCK, PANIC : THE SON OF SHOCK & NIGHTMARE! – According to an interview with record collector Mickey McGowan for Re/Search Magazine’s Incredibly Strange Music issue, Volume 1, “The Creed Taylor Orchestra made SHOCK Music in Hi-Fi, which bore a warning, “Don’t dare listen to his music alone!” It’s a masterpiece from the beginning, starting with loud heartbeats. “The Crank” effectively conveys the fear which a crank phone call can inspire. “The Secret” features a man and a woman laughing conspiratorily, and raises the question: “Is a secret still a secret once it’s told.” Creed Taylor’s follow-up album was Panic: the Son of Shock. Both of these LPs should also be credited to the film composer KENYON HOPKINS….You hear heavy breathing, whispering, clapping, heartbeats, shudders, screams – a whole gamut of effects. After these two masterpieces, Hopkins hit paydirt in the mid-60s with Nightmare, which has the sound of a plague of locusts coming in for the kill. “Chamber of Horrors,” besides sounding like a horror music soundtrack, really is beautiful…..He used the sound of a telephone ringing to create incredible suspense; he used footsteps, creaking doors and glass breaking to dreadful effect….He recorded a few more albums including Lonelyville, which is great private-eye jazz…He recorded a series of Verve Sound Tours in which he took the music of a given country…and mixed in the sounds of people at a sidewalk café in Paris….He also did…Riding the Rails – the cover shows two fashion models who’ve just “hopped a freight.”! McGowan, whose amazing record collection – known as the “Unknown Museum” was open to the public in Mill Valley from 1974 to 1989, is now living in San Rafael, Ca. but is no longer exhibiting for the public his still growing collection.  

THE HUSTLER (1961) – One of my all-time favorite film scores. Here is a list of the musicians heard on the score and the track listings of the out of print album: Bernie Glow, Doc Severinson, Joe Wilder, Tony Miranda (tp); Jimmy Cleveland, Frank Rehak, Richard Hixon (tb); Phil Woods, Phil Bodner, Jerome Richardson, Romeo Penque (reeds); Hank Jones or Bernie Leighton (p); Barry Galbraith (g); Osie Johnsn (d); Joe Venuto (perc); Kenyon Hopkins (arr, cond).

a. Main Title (Stop & Go) (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:52
b. Minnesota Fats (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:07
c. The Loser (Kenyon Hopkins) – 3:23
d. Sarah’s Theme (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:04
e. 4 Flights Up (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:20
f. Fast Buck (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:10
g. Small-Time Charlie (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:29
h. Bert’s Theme (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:51
i. Contract With Depravity (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:08
j. All Thumbs (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:45
k. Dining Out (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:17
l. Derby Time (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:53
m. Lipstick On A Mirror (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:04
n. The Winner (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:33
o. End Title (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:04

VERVE/ESQUIRE SOUND TOUR – With Creed Taylor serving as producer, MGM’s Verve label put out a series of records in partnership with Esquire Magazine in the mid-60s – (“Sound Tour: Spain,” “Sound Tour: Italy,” “Sound Tour: France,” and “Sound Tour: Hawaii”) – that were all composed by Hopkins. Here is an excerpt from an article on the Verve/Esquire project by C. Andrew Hoyan on the All About Jazz web site: “…Much like his soundtrack work, Hopkins imbues his charts with jazz sensibilities and such names as Phil Woods, Hank Jones, Joe Wilder, and Doc Severinsen were on hand for all of the sessions. Along with Hopkins’ originals, there are pieces which are linked to each particular land, such as “Arrivaderci Roma,” “La Paloma,” and “Hawaiian War Chant.” Engineers Ray Hall and Bob Simpson further augmented the stereo terrain by adding Keene Crockett’s “sound pictures” here and there, such as boat whistles and a revved up Alfa Romero speeding away from some Spanish villa….Unfortunately, none of Hopkins’ work is currently in print, and that includes the four volumes of Sound Tour . The whole scenario is particularly surprising considering the current popularity of “space age pop” or “bachelor pad” music. Of course, even if Verve decided to reissue the Sound Tour volumes, it’s doubtful that the deluxe packaging would transfer well to the CD format. So if you still have a turntable you might want to keep an eye out at garage sales or flea markets for these neglected gems. It might take some time (it took me several years to acquire all four), but it’s well worth the search.”    

THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED – While this 1966 film adaptation of the Tennesseee Williams play directed by Sydney Pollack (from a screenplay co-written by Francis Ford Coppola) was not a complete success, it featured memorable performances by Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, Kate Reid and Charles Bronson and the music score by Hopkins was full of nostalgic yearning, tension and sadness. There was a fragile beauty to it that I still recall. Here are the original track listings from the album soundtrack and co-star Mary Badham, the child actress of To Kill a Mockingbird who played a supporting role in the film,  sings the theme song.

a. (100528) Rainbow Express (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:30  same, Mary Badham (vcl).

b. (100529) Wish Me A Rainbow (Vocal) (Livingston/Evans) – 1:04 same, vocal out.

c. (100530) Country Waltz (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:14
d. (100531) Lover’s Rainbow (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:50
e. (100532) Moonlight Casino (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:49
f. (100533) Rainbow Over My Shoulder (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:16
g. (100534) Owen Finds Alva (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:15
h. (100535) Drug Store (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:49
i. (100536) The Brawl (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:36
j. (100537) Owen Gives In (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:11
k. (100538) Dream Of Mardi Gras (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:32
l. (100539) Peadybody Hotel (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:26
m. (100540) New Orleans (Kenyon Hopkins) – 3:45
n. (100541) Bittersweet Cemetery (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:55 
o. (100542) Lovers Meet (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:00
p. (100543) 1930 Victrola (Kenyon Hopkins) – 2:27
q. (100544) A Dream World (Kenyon Hopkins) – 3:10
r. (100545) Mama Breaks It Up (Kenyon Hopkins) – 1:22