Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2014 May 12 • Monday

Kenyon Hopkins's music for the obscure television program East Side/West Side is the 318th Soundtrack of the Week.

The show was one of many gritty city dramas of the time (late '50s and early '60s). This one starred George C. Scott as a social worker.

The theme for the show has moments that recall Elmer Bernstein's powerful music for The Man with the Golden Arm. The other cues are more Hopkins, variously jazzy, bluesy, swinging, tender, wistful, sad.

There must have been a lot of location shooting for this program, if the names of the cues are anything to go by: "Holland Tunnel", "Central Park West", "Sutton Lights", "Triboro Drive", "Blue Harlem", "Times Square" and of course the title piece.

It's really great. I'd be curious to see the show. And it would be nice to see more attention paid to Kenyon Hopkins's work. He's a curiously neglected composer despite having scored some enduring and well known movies (The Hustler, Twelve Angry Men, etc.).