Cool Hand Luke [Original Soundtrack Recording]
With an iconic, Academy Award®-nominated lead performance by Paul Newman as the free spirit who refuses to be broken by cruel Southern justice, director Stuart Rosenberg'sCool Hand Lukehas rightly taken its place as a modern American classic. One of the key elements to the film's deft balance of drama and humor is also its most unlikely: the Oscar®-nominated score of Argentine-born composerLalo Schifrin. As he's done throughout a career that's moved gracefully between jazz recordings, classical podiums, and scoring stages, Schifrin's music fuses seemingly disparate genres--bluegrass, symphonic, rhythmic jazz--into a soundtrack that evokes them all yet becomes distinctly more than the sum of its parts. Given that gratifying sensibility, it's a soundtrack full of surprising twists and turns, crackling with energy. Such is its dynamic nature that one reedited cut ("Tar Sequence") has taken on a second life as the ubiquitous "Eyewitness News" theme music at local TV stations across America.--Jerry McCulley