Need help identifying a genre

[Mitchell]

Hello all you experts and musicphiles. I'm hoping you can help me out.

I'm trying to identify a genre. Specifically, I'm looking for the kind of music that was played frequently during cop tv shows and movies in the late 60s and 70s. Think when Dirty Harry is chasing the serial killer along the rooftops and you hear a lot of bongos, grooved stick, brassy orchestra hits, etc. It seems to be late jazz, a bit more funky than space-age-pop. It's USUALLY instrumental. . .any vocals are almost strictly harmonious.

I'm hoping someone with more music experience than me can help me out. Here's an example of what I'm kinda looking for: (NOTE: I shortened the MP3 to 30 seconds, that qualifies as Fair Use and I'm not letting anyone pirate the song.) It's not the greatest example, but it's the closest I can find.

www.dirkbronze.com/link/Bangasamp.mp3

[NardDog]

to tell you the truth I don't think this type of music has a specific label. I consider myself pretty well versed in music knowledge and I have eclectic tastes so I listen to a lot of different stuff but I would say it was pretty standard sounding jazzy R&B music of the 70s. Just like stuff like R Kelly is standard sounding 90s/00s R&B...then again R&B isn't my strong suite. I also hear a little Bacarach/lounge/cocktail party influence in there...but that might be the vocals

There's a lot of cool 70s R&B out there and it all sounds close enough to itself to be in the same genre but it's diverse enough that some of it sounds vastly different from itself still it all fits in this precarious umbrella. I'm obviously excluding Disco and Funk from this as they were officially labeled different genres.


But like I said I'm more an extreme expert in the rock realm...sorry I couldn't be more help to you. But I've always liked this music and this is some of the type of 70s R&B that I try to find when looking through used records

[Chuck]

There's a whole series of music referred to as "Crime Jazz". It was the jazzy/funky music that was used in crime shows and films.

[Mitchell]

Sept 27, 2008 2:30:41 GMT -5 NardDog said:

I would say it was pretty standard sounding jazzy R&B music of the 70s. I also hear a little Bacarach/lounge/cocktail party influence in there...but that might be the vocals

That's why I was thinking space-age-pop, but the beat is much too fast. . .Definitely funk as well, but there is too much brass for it to be just funk.

I was hoping with how deep the music discussion gets here, someone could identify the sub-genre of jazz/funk that I'm looking for.

Thanks for the help anyway.

[Hoss Ragen]

I collect a lot of these types of soundtracks and it falls more under the collector-dubbed name of "soul jazz". There's an early variation called "bossa/samba jazz" (think of those late 60s movie where there's a hip cocktail party. Strings and snare rim shots.) as popularized by a lot of Brazilian imports at the time. By the time the early 70s came around, the hot new thing was black R&B music, indentifyable by straight 4/4 back beats and wah-wah guitars. Therefore, a lot of go-to producers like Lalo Schifrin (my favorite), Elmer Berstein and such used this in combination with traditional jazz wind instrument modes. Later, it became "disco jazz" (like the song by Brick) followed by such horrid labels and sounds like "smooth/contemporary jazz" and, yes, "porn jazz".

It's also called "crime jazz" but it's used more in the context of library (stock) music for French and Italian thrillers, which were much more slower, heavier and moodier than the Americanized wacka-ju-wacka stuff.

Semantic, I know. By the way, I burned a LP of the selected themes from the Dirty Harry series. I'll up it when I get home. The roof top Scorpio theme with the drums that can't seem to get started but eventually kick into high gear is a raw one.

[Mitchell]

Thanks Hoss. . .great info.

[Mitchell]

Well, it seems the genre I was looking for was Fusion.