MAIN | DISCOGRAPHY | SONGLIST | COVERS | CHRONOLOGY | VIDEOGRAPHY

The World's Greatest Sinner Original Soundtrack

Performances | Comments | Conceptual Continuity

• written in the summer of 1961
• originally recorded between November and December, 1961

FZ album(s) in which song has appeared:

• Unreleased

Comments:

Dwight Bement (quoted in Splat's Zappapage)

It took FZ 2 months to write 15 minutes of music for the soundtrack. The recording session took 11 hours w/ the Pomoma Valley Symphony. Frank conducted and one mic was used. It was placed above the podium. Aside from Al Sarratt and myself, I don't remember who else played. Maybe Ronnie, but I can't be sure. I played several instruments during the session including clarinet, rhythm guitar, marimba, snare drum and contra-bass saxophone, a very rare instrument. I have no idea where Frank found it. I spent a lot of time w/ FZ and Timothy Carey during post production both at Carey's home in El Monte and in Hollywood at the sound company, Glen Glenn, I think. I'm not sure of that spelling. While FZ was writing the soundtrack, he would dip his pen in the ink and then wipe the excess off on his pant leg. He always wore the same pants, gray w/ thin black stripes. It ended up looking pretty cool. He told me that he cut out the section of pant leg with the ink on it and framed it and sold it for $500.

FZ on Society Pages (USA), April, 1990

There is some music in [The World's Greatest Sinner] which actually resides in the Uncle Meat album. I remember the cue is something with a lot of sixteenth notes in it, sextuplets that had something to do with, uh, it's been so long since I saw the movie, it was for a plane taking off, and that part was used, and also, the trail of blood sequence in World's Greatest Sinner, where the guy stabs the host and there's supposed to be a trail of blood on the lawn. That was called "Blood Unit", in the scoring list, and that whole unit was done with electric instruments for Uncle Meat, but I can't remember what I called it. I know it's in the album. I can't remember what I called it.

Includes:

• Primitive instrumental version of The World's Greatest Sinner (this is debatable)
• A melody that would appear at the beginning of Oh No and a section of I Don't Know If I Can Go Through This Again, both on Lumpy Gravy (1968)
• The part right after "your ship of love is ready to attack" on Dog Breath, In The Year Of The Plague on Uncle Meat (1969)
• Some fragments of what later would be Holiday In Berlin, Full Blown on Burnt Weeny Sandwich (1970)

Structure, comparing the music heard on the original soundtrack with the Apocrypha (Ap.) and the The Soundtracks (ST) unauthorized releases:

Original transcription by Patrick Neve
Corrections and additions by Román and Charles Ulrich

Conceptual Continuity:

• World's Greatest Sinner
• Lumpy Gravy
• Holiday In Berlin

TOP | MAIN | DISCOGRAPHY | SONGLIST | COVERS | CHRONOLOGY | VIDEOGRAPHY