John Barry – The Best of John Barry

I was going to include John Barry’s soundtrack to Walkabout, one of my absolute favourite OSTs ever. I bought a Japanese vinyl bootleg of it in the early eighties, amazing quality for a bootleg, and very expensive, I play it a lot. But I think I'll include a John Barry Best Of album instead to cover all the JB bases. There are a lot of ‘Best of John Barry Volume this-and-that’ so I choose one that has all the classic tracks such as ‘The Knack’, ‘Seance On A Wet Afternoon’, ‘The Wrong Box’, ‘Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’, ‘Walkabout’, ‘The Girl With Sun In Her Hair’, ‘The Ipcress File’, ‘Midnight Cowboy’, ‘The Beyondness of Things’… all tracks that will never be bettered.

I've been consistently listening to his wonderful compositions for more than 50 years, for pleasure, for relaxation and I've used it for DJing. His arrangements and use of melody are absolute genius. One of the first 7” singles I ever owned was the theme from Goldfinger, when I was 11. My dad gave it to me when the novelty of playing it for the umpteenth time on his hifi time wore off. Not one of Barry’s best and I can’t stand Shirley Bassey’s voice at the best of times, unlike my dad. But still, John Barry… a legend.