Jazz For The Screen ★ Leith Stevens (II)

Leith Stevens

Private Hell 36

To continue our Jazz For The Screen series, here is another gem composed and conducted by Leith Stevens in 1954, following his pioneering work on The Wild One.

About the Music:

If there is one soundtrack that represents the refoundational landmark of jazz in film noir, it is Private Hell 36. This work is considered one of the first Hollywood orchestral scores written entirely in a modern jazz idiom, setting the standard for the 1950s crime and detective sound.

Originally released by Coral Records, the Private Hell 36 album is a masterly compendium of West Coast Jazz. Stevens dispensed with traditional romantic symphonism to create an oppressive, nocturnal, and urban atmosphere, utilizing small ensembles and a big band packed with stellar soloists from the Los Angeles scene.

The music stands out for its sharp brass motifs, melancholic cool-sax passages, and rhythmic figures that accentuate the paranoia and unbridled ambition of the characters. Tracks like "Private Hell 36", "Lilli", or "Joshua" showcase the perfect balance between sophisticated arrangements and the improvisational power of its soloists.

About the Film:

Directed by action cinema master Don Siegel and produced/co-written by pioneer Ida Lupino, Private Hell 36 is a tense film noir police drama. The plot follows two Los Angeles police detectives, Cal Bruner (Steve Cochran) and Jack Farnham (Howard Duff), who investigate a stolen money trail following a fatal shootout. During the pursuit of the suspect, they recover a substantial sum of uncounted cash.

Temptation strikes when Bruner, dazzled by Lizabeth (Ida Lupino)—a stunning nightclub singer with a voracious appetite for the high life—decides to keep a portion of the stolen money and drags along his partner Farnham, a family man tormented by guilt. From that moment on, mutual distrust, blackmail, and their own department's investigation turn cabin number 36 (the "Private Hell" of the title) into a claustrophobic setting where crime will exact its toll.

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Some things are expressed best by jazz music, but some music that is not jazz is played properly only by jazz musicians. Our definitions of "jazz" may differ. To some the term applies only to the primitive New Orleans product; to others, perhaps, it encompasses the "swing" and "bop" eras as well. More and more, in a world where the horizons of tolerance and knowledge push past old barriers, l’enfante terrible—bop—has, turned around and extended its hand to tradition, so to speak. The bop experimentalists in Minton’s Harlem Playhouse back in the early ’forties instinctively sought and arrived at many of the same devices with which the "serious" contemporary school was concerning itself. But the jazzman’s devices eventually demanded form to give them meaning and permanence, especially as larger ensembles became involved. The longhair harmonists and contrapuntalists came in for intense study, and Jazz’s own Duke Ellington was found to be not so old hat after all.

So-called "Progressive Jazz" developed from the incorporation of the new jazz or bop devices in definite architectural-musical structures, or in freer tone poems employing written and improvised jazz in logical, dramatic sequence and juxtaposition.

For some reason, the most intense creative activity in these directions has erupted on the West Coast. Perhaps it’s the clement climate, or the general youthful open-mindedness, or some sense of stability created by fruitful film employment, or perhaps it has been the proximity of such monumental influences as the schools of Schoenberg, Milhaud, and Toch. At any rate, technical skill as well as invention are flourishing as never before, and dozens of interesting provocative discs bear testimony to the talents of such jazz men as Shorty Rogers, John Graas, Milt Bernhardt, Jim Giuffre, and Bud Shank.

Now Leith Stevens—composer, conductor and perennial jazz pioneer—has successfully injected Progressive Jazz into an idiom never noted particularly for innovation. Suddenly, in a commercial, first-magnitude film, we have not the usual lush, soporific string backgrounds, but highly original jazz-based tone-painting that has singular meaning for the age in which the action transpires. PRIVATE HELL 36 is actually the second successful application of such material by the venturesome Stevens—the first having been his extremely appropriate scoring for THE WILD ONE in 1953, which, incidentally, employed several of the same musicians featured in these performances. *Bill Simon (from the liner notes)*

Off Note:

The music was originally released as a 10-inch Coral LP in 1954 (Coral CRL 56122). However, for a 1959 edition (Coral CRL 757283), the record label took the original 1954 mono recording of Private Hell 36, placed it in the center channel, and overdubbed it in stereo by adding vibraphone, bongo, and tambourine tracks (panned to the left and right).

This innovative approach was an ingenious way to preserve the original beauty of the music while technologically adapting it to the late-1950s stereo craze.

However, the 1959 Coral liner notes and official credits did not individually credit the session musicians who recorded those vibraphone and percussion overdubs.

Unlike the original 1954 track—where Shelly Manne handled the original drums and percussion—the names of the performers who added the skin drums, tambourine, and vibraphone to the 1959 stereo mix are omitted from both the album's personnel listings and the label's discographical archives.

This post presents both versions of the soundtrack for comparison: the original 1954 mono release (a vinyl rip of modest sound quality) alongside the 1959 stereo restoration featuring the added percussion and vibraphone overdubs.

Side 1

1 - Private Hell 36

2 - Havana Interlude

3 - Easy Mood

Side 2

4 - Daddy, Long Legs

5 - Joshua

6 - Lilli

7 - Dance Of The Lilliputian

8 - Private Blues

(All compositions by Leith Stevens)

Shorty Rogers, Pete Candoli, Charles Grifford, Carlton McBeath (trumpets);

John Graas (french horn); Paul Sarmento (tuba);

Milt Bernhart, Harry Betts (trombones); Bob Enevoldsen (valve trombone);

George Roberts (bass trombone); Sal Franzella (alto sax, clarinet);

Lennie Niehaus [as Leonard Niehaus] (alto sax); Bob Cooper, Jimmy Giuffre (tenor saxes);

Bob Gordon (bass clarinet, baritone sax); Bud Shank (bass sax);

Claude Williamson (piano); Joe Mondragon (bass); Shelly Manne (drums).

Recorded in Hollywood, California, September 3, 1954