Tech Talk From The Producer…
The inevitable sequel to Steven Spielberg’s 1975 hit
Jaws found John Williams, who had won the coveted Academy Award for “Best Original Score” for that very same hit, now writing all new music for the second movie, surrounding the score with the obligatory—and now familiar—shark theme. To present this expanded release of the score, we were given access to the actual three-channel scoring session masters vaulted by Universal in pristine condition.
Many of the selections appearing on the original album were assembled from various shorter cues for reasons of musicality rather than exact chronology. As we prepared this set, with the cues appearing in their original order, we realized that many of those 1978 album assemblies deleted precious bars of music to accommodate joining two or three otherwise unrelated cues together to form longer album tracks. Listeners familiar with that admittedly classic 1978 album will enjoy discovering previously unreleased bars of music that were edited from the album tracks, frequently at the overlap points. For example, note the striking final measures of “Sailing” (CD 1, track 3) that were removed from the cue when it became the first half of “The Catamaran Race” on the LP. Note also the significant middle portion of “The Big Jolt” (CD 1, track 23) that was deleted from the LP version.
Sit back and enjoy a second helping of “tourists on the menu."
—Douglass Fake
