England is an interesting country: Although its language spread all over the world and is the most-used one toay (however, not on native-peaker-terms) as it was once an enormous empire (well, some might still claim this to be true today ...), its movie industry remains pretty shallow. In the fifties there were some REAL niceties starring a raw hero of nitty-gritty "realo"-pictures, Stanley Baker (someone I always love to see!), in the sixties Bond started to spread the world, in the seventies some adventure movies made the box-offices and in the eighties and nineties some impressive kitchen-sink movies dominated the scene. Nevertheless, no real distictive pattern or style developed (maybe that´s also an advantage ...) and - with very few exceptions - to worldwide known top stars ever came from England (except Sir Sean Connery as actor and Stanley Kubrik as director), so there´s no genre, style or person automatically connected with the island. As far as soundtracks are concerned, it´s moreless the same: Again, a few exceptions like William Walton, John/ny Dankworth, John/ny Scott, Ron Goodwin, Roy Budd and - of course - John Barry, who are already quite a lot top composers anyway, but are there any well-known English recordings known to come from these ...? The answer is quite simple and VERY short: no! Although being no expert on Sir William Walton, he has been nearly forgotten over the years and only recently resurreced from oblivion with a few CD-releases, the other composers´ compositions saw their releases mainly outside England. Roy Budds most famous scores are associated with the Japanese ODEON-label and Dankworths, Scotts, Goodwins as well as Barrys scores were and are mostly released on US-labels.

So there´s not much to report on English soundtrack-releases on vinyl. There are rather few in quantity (although this site is nowhere complete on English soundtrack-releases, it does contain the best-known and rarest ones ...) although the number of movies made in England should well exceed the ones coming eg. from Germany, which is the country best compareable as far as the soundtrack-on-vinyl output is concerned.

To start with, there are of course a number of English soundtrack-releases containing scores usually associated with US-prints: For example, "Bedazzled" (Dudley Moore), "xxxx" (Quincy Jones), "The adventurers" (Carlos Jobim), "Shalako" (Dennis Farnon) and "Modesty Blaise" (John/ny Dankworth) were issued in England, featuring definitly much improved (laminated!) cover-artwork (in case of "Modesty Blaise" also extended contents!) and therefore being more collectible than their better-known US counterparts. Another group of scores saw identical releases in England, like McCartneys "The family way" (on Decca), US-composer Goldsmiths "Stagecoach" (on Fontana) or Italian-composer Lavagninos "Falstaff" as "Chimes of midnight" (on Fontana and not a F/O in England), but these are rather unknown items.

What remains is literally a handful of highly collectible, first-class and top-entertainment scores: John Scotts "Rocket to the moon" and his legendary promo-only sampler "JSD 100", Ron Goodwins "Decline and fall ... of a birdwatcher", the LP Keith McNally considers as the second rarest non-US soundtrack-release: Leppards "Alfred the great" (truly one of the best scores ever written for an historical epic) and Herrmans "Twisted nerve" on one side of a double-feature OST-LP. Five LPs in total ... In addiion to that there is app. the same number of even rarer EP-releases, most noteably George Delerues "xxx" with different tracks than the French EP, and that is it (at least as far as I know and I am collecting for quite some time, so should there be others, I´d most likely have heard of ´em ...). Most of these scores feature the jazzy and beaty 60ies style we all love so much and should you see any of them being available for anything less than 100 pounds, they´d be a steal and you should grab them immediately!

If you have any additions (you´re MOST welcomed! smile) or questions, that have been left unanswered (and I am sure there are some ...), please do not hesitate to drop me a line e-mail! I answer all questions as fast as possible, plan to collect them and want to put them into a FAQ-section (which is planned for 2003!). The same goes of course, if you have any info or items for sale or trade available!!

AVAILABLE items (visually graded: cover/record; play-graded upon request):

Stateside SSL: Decline and fall ... of a birdwatcher (Ron Goodwin),   NM/EX+   
SPAIN LPs:
CineVox DLP 1044:   Las ordenes son ordenes         (Fred Bongusto)     M-/M   

WANTED: Rotten to the core (LP), Nowhere to hide (EP), Private life (UK Brigitte Bardot EP-pressing),...