What about Al Bowlly?

Rating: Null/10 (19 April 2001)

Say What?
WHAT about AL BOWLLY?
Or the Ray Noble Orchestra?
I feel any "User Comment" I may have about this film would be in vain given the hype and controversy surrounding the director, the book, etcetera, as this was written more for those who HAVE seen the film or are seeking other opinions by reading these reviews. I am largely annoyed with this film (I liked Kubrick's "Lolita" myself, much more!), but this picture does have some splendid, provocative, frightening images, and for these alone I would recommend this film, however, these have been discussed to death.
SO -
What about that lovely big Gold Room Dance? The incredible ambiance created by the elegant 1920's ghosts walking around that enormous airplane-hangar of a ballroom, the potted palms, the balloon clusters and sparkly streamers tacked beneath them? AND WHAT ABOUT THE SONGS?
Okay, when the soundtrack LP came out, I hastily ran out and bought it assuming the lovely lilting vocal which lures Jack Torrance into the Gold Room, and repeats again in full during the end credits, would be there.
It wasn't.
Instead, the song "Home" (which is indeed heard, only in the highly-reverbed background as Jack and Delbert Grady discuss things in the "Gentlemen's Room") was on the album, credited by an ersatz made-up name like "Henry Hall and the Gleneagles Hotel Band," or some such ludicrous thing, and the fact is, Warner Brothers just didn't credit Al Bowlly, the actual crooner who performed "Midnight, the Stars, and You" in 1934, nor the Ray Noble Orchestra which accompanies him. Perhaps "Home" was by a contemporary artist of the time, and recorded specifically for the picture, but I doubt it. This point aside, this music is what so sets the glittering vintage ambiance of the Ball, and it seems significant as it plays again at the very end and well into the end-titles. Yet no one acknowledges this. Why "THAT" song? I love it, but is there "a meaning" that has yet to be discussed or revealed?
It is almost as if this aspect of the picture is swept under the Gold Room Carpet, for every other little thing about "The Shining" has been analyzed with a finely-honed axe, except that wonderful song and its role in the picture. There are few if any who note it, care about it, or wonder why The Genius Called Kubrick doesn't acknowledge or even credit it anywhere, to my knowledge, at all. It establishes a mood and a presence as important as any other visual or music cue, and the director deemed it intriguing enough to repeat in the finale. The lyrics are relatively clear and audible, perhaps containing a message, perhaps not, and the lushness it conveys is palpable; that particular instrumentation just *IS* the Overlook Ballroom (muted horns, sax, saucy little high-hat cymbal-fox-trot rhythm, etc.).
I daren't pursue a "meaning," but please, note it when it plays. It wasn't just Source-Music (music pre-recorded by unknown studio orchestras and stashed in a vast music bank for use as MUZAK in restaurant and bar scenes in motion pictures), it was a real song, recorded by a real band. I will say this: as the film has it, the whole "July Fourth Ball" and the ghostly party and so on were supposed to have taken place in 1921, yet "Midnight" was recorded in February 1934, according to the liner notes on the compact disc it was finally released on.
So HEEE!