Music Album Review: ‘John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999)’

Album Title: John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999

Genre: Classical, Stage & Screen/Commemorative Events

Style: Modern, Neo-Romantic, Film Score

Date of Original Release: November 2, 1999

Music Label: Sony Classical

On November 2, 1999, Sony Classical released John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999, a two-CD compilation album featuring 28 themes and commemorative marches composed by legendary composer/conductor John Williams for movies (The Reivers, Jaws, and Star Wars) and special occasions (the 1984 and 1996 Summer Olympics) over a 30-year period. Culled from several pre-existing recordings by executive producer Laraine Perri and editors Richard Haney-Jardine and Laura Kszan, this Greatest Hits collection is not a “deep dive” into the first 30 years of Maestro Williams’ long and illustrious career – there are quite a few films from this period that aren’t represented here, such as 1972’s The Cowboys, 1976’s Midway, and 1987’s Always. Rather, it – as reflected by the album title – is a sampler of the five-time Academy Award-winning composer’s most beloved themes at the time it was released.

Williams is one of the most influential composers of the late 20^th and early 21^st Century; along with other composers who emerged in the film industry in the late 1950s and early 1960s – including John Addison, Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry, Elmer Bernstein, and Ennio Morricone – his scores revitalized the art of orchestral, symphonic-style film music at a time when many studios were enamored of soundtracks that featured “modern” pop songs, electronic music or minimized musical underscore altogether.

Per John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999, Williams’ neo-Romantic themes from such diverse fare as The Reivers, Jaws, and – especially – the blockbusters Star Wars (1977) and Superman (1978) were instrumental in the Renaissance of the classic film scores.

And it was during this period of Williams’ long and still ongoing career that the composer won all five of his Oscars[1]:

• Fiddler on the Roof (1971, Best Scoring: Adaptation and Original Song Score)
• Jaws (1975, Best Original Score)
• Star Wars (1977, Best Original Score)
• E.T.: The Extraterrestrial (1982, Best Original Score)
• Schindler’s List (1993, Best Original Score)

The Album

The first edition released back in November of 1999 is a two-CD set that comes in one of those slimline jewel cases with a (fragile) foldout CD holder and a slipcover that looks and feels like a strip of film celluloid. Altogether, John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999 presents 28 iconic themes and “special commemorative” marches; each disc contains 14 tracks that are not necessarily presented in chronological order but chart the composer’s career in two distinct phases.  

Track List

Disc 1

1-1         London Symphony Orchestra– “Main Title” from Star Wars 5:44

1-2         London Symphony Orchestra– “Flying Theme” from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 3:42

1-3         London Symphony Orchestra– “Main Title” from Superman 4:25

1-4         Boston Pops Orchestra– “Parade of the Slave Children” From Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 4:53

1-5         Boston Pops Orchestra– “Theme” from Sugarland Express (Harmonica – Toots Thielemans) 3:35

1-6         London Symphony Orchestra– “Theme” from Jaws 2:51

1-7         Boston Pops Orchestra– “Bugler’s Dream” / “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” (Leo Arnaud/John Williams) 4:28

1-8         The Skywalker Symphony Orchestra– “Luke and Leia” from Return of the Jedi 5:02

1-9         John Williams – (“Main Title” from The Reivers 5:13

1-10      The Skywalker Symphony Orchestra– “The Imperial March” from The Empire Strikes Back 3:04

1-11      Boston Pops Orchestra– “Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra” from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 2:48

1-12      Boston Pops Orchestra– “Cadillac Of The Skies” from Empire of the Sun 4:58

1-13      Boston Pops Orchestra– “The Raiders’ March” From Raiders of the Lost Ark 5:11

1-14      Boston Pops Orchestra– “Suite” from Close Encounters of the Third Kind [When You Wish Upon A Star (Interpolated)] – Leigh Harline 9:46

Disc 2

2-1         Boston Pops Orchestra– “Hymn to the Fallen” From Saving Private Ryan (Chorus – Tanglewood Festival Chorus) 6:10

2-2         Boston Pops Orchestra– “Theme” from Jurassic Park 5:29

2-3         Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra – “Theme” From Schindler’s List (Violin – Itzhak Perlman) 3:32

2-4         Boston Pops Orchestra– “Flight To Neverland” from Hook 4:41

2-5         John Williams – (“Seven Years In Tibet” from Seven Years In Tibet (Cello – Yo-Yo Ma) 7:09

2-6         John Williams – “Prologue” from JFK (Trumpet – Tim Morrison) 4:00

2-7         John Williams – “The Days Between” from Stepmom (Guitar – Christopher Parkening) 6:27

2-8         Boston Pops Orchestra– “March” from 1941 4:14

2-9         John Williams–   “Somewhere In My Memory” Main Title From Home Alone (Lyrics by – Leslie Bricusse) 4:54

2-10      Boston Pops Orchestra– “Summon The Heroes” (for Tim Morrison)            6:14

2-11      John Williams –  “Look Down, Lord” Reprise and Finale from Rosewood (Guitar – Dean Parks; Harmonica – Tommy Morgan) 4:12

2-12      Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra*–            “Theme” From Far and Away (Violin – Itzhak Perlman) 5:34

2-13      Boston Pops Orchestra– “Theme” from Born on the Fourth of July (Trumpet – Tim Morrison) 6:20

2-14      London Symphony Orchestra, London Voices– “Duel Of The Fates” from Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 4:14

My Take

I want to salute John Williams – the quintessential film composer. John has transformed and uplifted every movie that we’ve made together. – Steven Spielberg (from the album THE SPIELBERG/WILLIAMS COLLABORATION)

I’ve been a star-struck fan of Maestro John Williams ever since that afternoon in 1977 when I sat in a dark Miami-area theater with 200 fans to watch Star Wars. For me, it was my first viewing of George Lucas’s now-classic space-fantasy set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” For many in that now-closed theater in the old Concord Mall, it was probably their tenth, maybe even twentieth visit to that then-new fictional universe inhabited by quirky robots, fascist Imperials, a captive Princess, stalwart Rebels, and a farm boy-turned-hero Luke Skywalker.

At the time, I was skeptical about the movie that apparently everyone on Earth had seen except for me. I wasn’t much of a sci-fi geek then, and when I saw the TV ads for Star Wars I dismissed it as a movie for kids. (Which, of course, it is. But it just happens to appeal to the kid in all of us, not just actual kids.)

But from the opening theme that underscores Star Wars’ main title and the 1930s-style crawl to the glorious “hope and glory” composition for the throne room and end title sequences, Williams’ symphonic score – a rarity in the 1970s – captured my adolescent imagination and has never let go.

Later, when I learned more about Williams’ career as a composer for television and feature films, I realized that I had already been exposed to his magical way with clefs and musical notes. With incidental music from silly situation comedies like Gilligan’s Island to scores for 1970s disaster epics such as The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and Earthquake, Williams had already been a musical presence in my life. I just had not been consciously aware of it!

The 28 tracks of John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999 are, in great part, selections that form the soundtrack of my life. In fact, I’ve seen almost all of the films and special occasions that are represented in this wonderful two-disc compilation, including the opening ceremonies to the 1984 (Los Angeles) and the 1996 (Atlanta) Summer Olympics. (The exceptions are The Reivers, Seven Years in Tibet, Rosewood, and Stepmom.)

For me, it’s hard to be objective when it comes to Maestro Williams’ music. I love every concert arrangement presented in John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999, even though I can’t honestly say the same for at least two of the movies they are from. (I fell asleep watching Hook at the movies in 1991 and I loathe Oliver Stone’s JFK.  But I still love Flight to Neverland from the former and Prologue from the latter. Go figure.) 

I’ve owned this album practically since it was released in 1999. I found it by chance when I was shopping at one of the two record stores – now closed, sadly – at the Miami International Mall.

It had, naturally, a lot of material from albums I already owned, such as Sony Classical’s John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy (a 1990 recording that Maestro Williams made with the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra, a San Francisco-area ensemble hired by George Lucas exclusively for that occasion), various soundtrack albums, and, of course, many Boston Pops Orchestra records of the time.

Still, as in every compilation album of this genre, there was always something new to discover. For me, the new stuff came from movies I had not seen (The Reivers, Rosewood) or new takes on themes I already knew by heart.

For instance, I had already heard Williams’ Olympic Fanfare (Disc One, Track 7) countless times on By Request: The Best of John Williams and the Boston Pops. When I saw it on the album program list, I thought, Oh, I’ve heard this before!

Imagine my surprise, then, when Track 7 on Disc One began with French-American composer Leo Arnaud’s Bugler’s Dream, a fanfare originally written in 1958 and used extensively for ABC-TV’s coverage of the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria and subsequent Olympiads. (I first heard Bugler’s Dream in 1972 while watching the Summer Games in Miami.) It segued nicely into the more familiar fanfare from 1984. Nice trick, that one.

It goes without saying that John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999 is one of my favorite compilation albums. Its music covers a wide spectrum of genres and emotional contexts – from the stirring marches of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman, and even the quirky 1941 to the funereal “Taps”-like trumpet call of the Prologue from JFK, Maestro Williams shows listeners his almost magical ability to conjure themes and melodies that fit perfectly with the visual works of directors as different in personalities and cinematic sensibilities as George Lucas, Mark Rydell, Oliver Stone, Richard Donner, Chris Columbus, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Ron Howard, and John Singleton.

Truly, John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999 is a treasure trove of musical memories that every fan of film music – or simply great music – should own.

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[1] As of this writing, John Williams is the second-most Oscar-nominated artist in history, with 53 nominations and, as noted above, five wins. The all-time champ of Oscar nominations is Walt Disney, with 59 nominations and 22 wins.