11. Dudley Moore TrioBedazzled
Yes, yes, another soundtrack album, although it doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen the film as the soundtrack, like the other OSTs I’ve listed, stands up nicely on its own without the movie. It’s easy to forget how big Dudley Moore and Peter Cook were in the UK back in the sixties. It was the crest of that Fringe style of comedy and separately and together as Pete and Dud they were on TV all the time, in films, doing stand-up and Dudley performing with piano. I remember my parents throwing parties where they would all get drunk listening and laughing hysterically to the latest, notorious Derek and Clive bootlegs. Scary times. I have to admit that back then being so young most of that passed me by but when Sleazy and I began swapping mixtapes in TG he gave me some with Martin Denny, John Barry and the Dudley Moore Trio tapes, all very ‘hip easy listening’. Actually I’m not entirely sure what genre the Dudley More Trio were playing. It’s not really easy listening or jazz, although it’s kinda jazzy in an easy way.
On the more orchestral Bedazzled tracks you can hear some obvious John Barry influences in the melodies and arrangements. The two minute title track is brilliant, unlike any of the other tracks and features a deadpan Peter Cook vocal and some brilliant sixties phasing effects. But skipping the idiotic ‘Leaping Nun’s Chorus’ for me the standout tracks are ‘Italy’, which is straight out of the J Barry playbook and the jazzed up ‘Lillian Lust’. To top them all ‘The Millionaire’ is all orchestral silky smoothness and showcases Dudley’s jazz piano skills… very, very nice. As an aside, one sunny day in 2009 I was driving to an electrical store in LA to pick up a USB cable, in the back were Cosey and Sasha Grey chatting away. I had one of my mixtapes on and it started playing ‘The Millionaire’ and I was thinking “ah, this is the life, it can’t get any better” then one of them said “What the fuck is this, can you put something else on?” Life, eh?
