Gil Mellé (Gilbert John Mellé) was born on this date, December 31, in 1931, in
New York,
New York. He
was a jazz saxophonist and respected visual artist, best known as a
cutting-edge creator of
electronically generated music.
His 1970 theme for
Night Gallery was the first all-
electronic main title for a TV series, and his music for the 1971 sci-fi thriller,
The Andromeda Strain, became the first all-
synthesizer
score for a feature film.
The album cover for the
Andromeda soundtrack is the
usual 12" square but the housing attached to the front of the cover (
image above) holds the 10"
hexagon-shaped vinyl LP record (
image below) and is designed like the
shutter of a camera. I don't know of another album with this configuration.
The jacket cover is by
graphic designer, Virginia Clark, with assistance by
sculptor,
Joel Shapiro. Clark designed the album cover for
Black Mass by Lucifer (
Mort Garson) as well as
Big Black,
Cher,
Neil Diamond,
Yvonne Elliman,
Rick Nelson,
Saddhu Brand,
Sony & Cher,
Roger Williams and many others (
link below). The collage photography is by Ruth Corbett. The jacket cover was printed by
Bert-Co Enterprises.
In the 1970s and '80s, Melle composed traditional orchestral music for TV. He scored the TV movies
My Sweet Charlie,
That Certain Summer, four early episodes of
Columbo and the first four episodes of the cult series
Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
The music he composed lent itself to
sci-fi and
horror projects, including orchestral scores for the
pilot of
The Six Million Dollar Man and the four-hour
Frankenstein: The True Story (1973), which he recorded with the
London Symphony Orchestra. Melle created landmark electronic scores for
sci-fii TV movies including
A Cold Night's Death and the four-hour
World War III. He wrote and performed music for several telefilms dealing with sensational murders, including
Fatal Vision,
Ted Bundy story
The Deliberate Stranger and
The Case of the Hillside Strangler.
I love the
hexagon shape
of the 10" record. The plastic record sleeve has a label with a warning
to the owner to beware of damage to the needle if not played properly.
Mellé was born in 1931 in
Jersey City,
New Jersey, and signed with
Blue Note Records as a jazz performer at age 19. His artistic abilities also led to album-cover paintings (
link below) for
Miles Davis,
Thelonious Monk and
Sonny Rollins, as well as art-gallery showings in
New York. Melle and his group, the Electronauts, debuted electronic jazz at the 1967
Monterey Jazz Festival. The following year,
Verve Records released his
Tome VI, the first all-electronic jazz album (
YouTube link below).
When he was young he listened avidly to
Lester Young,
Stan Getz and
Charlie Parker. As he did with so many other musicians,
Duke Ellington caught Mellé’s ear. The saxophonist would spend nearly every spare quarter on Ellington
78s, with exceptions made for
Stan Kenton and
Thelonious Monk,
with whom he eventually performed. Before long, Mellé was playing the
tenor sax, transcribing music and doing a little composing.
Mellé's paintings and sculptures were shown in
New York City galleries in the 1950s and he created the cover art for albums by
Miles Davis,
Thelonious Monk and
Sonny Rollins. He played tenor and baritone
saxophone with
George Wallington,
Max Roach,
Tal Farlow,
Oscar Pettiford,
Ed Thigpen,
Kenny Dorham and
Zoot Sims. He led a number of sessions recorded for the
Blue Note and
Prestige labels between 1953 and 1957.
Blue Note founder,
Alfred Lion, personally signed Mellé when he was
18 years old. Lion encouraged Mellé to explore his musical and artistic
gifts, commissioning him to create dozens of album covers for label
mates (
see above).
Mellé invented and built all the instruments he needed for his
performances, including
drum machines and electronic
saxophones. He
and his group "Gil Mellé's Electronauts" performed at the
Monterey Jazz Festival and throughout the country in the late 1960s.
Mellé introduced recording engineer,
Rudy Van Gelder, to
Alfred Lion,
Blue Note Records founder, in 1952. Lion had been impressed with the sound of Mellé's
recordings, which were engineered by Van Gelder. Van Gelder was
responsible for hundreds of recordings on Blue Note from 1953 to 1967.
As a film and TV composer, Mellé was one of the first to use self-built
electronic instruments, either alone or as an added voice among the
string, wind, brass, and percussion sections of the orchestra. He was
the first to compose a main theme for an American television series arranged entirely for electronic instruments, the
Night Gallery, produced by
Rod Serling.
Any project under the auspices of Serling was guarnteed to raise
goosebumps and start you thinking. The wonderful thing about his work,
like Hitchcock, most of the terror was left up to your imagination; he
was the master of
innuendo.
His credits spanned over 100 film works including
The Andromeda Strain (1971),
The Organization (1971),
Bone (1972),
You'll Like My Mother (1972),
The Savage is Loose (1974),
The Ultimate Warrior (1975),
Embryo (1976),
The Sentinel (1977),
Starship Invasions (1977),
Borderline (1980),
Blood Beach (1981) and
The Last Chase (1981). His scores include TV movies such as
My Sweet Charlie (1970),
That Certain Summer (1972),
The Judge and Jake Wyler (1972),
A Cold Night's Death (1973),
The President's Plane Is Missing (1973),
Frankenstein: The True Story (1973),
The Questor Tapes (1974),
Killdozer! (1974),
Death Scream (1975),
A Vacation in Hell (1979),
The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (1980) and
World War III (1982). Memorables his credits for the NBC's TV series
Columbo for which he wrote the themes for four episodes of the first season:
Death Lends a Hand (1971),
Dead Weight (1971),
Short Fuse (1972) and
Blueprint for Murder (1972).
Mellé died of a
heart attack at his home in
Malibu, California
on Thursday, October 28, 2004. He was not ill and friends
say he remained youthful to the end. A Malibu resident since 1974, he
enjoyed a vigorous and varied life. For the last ten years of his life,
he was painting and working on a new jazz project, developed with
Blue Note Records, the creation of electronic paintings, a
style he termed "Cybercloissonism." His work was presented as
large-format
transparencies mounted in
light boxes. These digital
paintings created on custom-built computers were exhibited in Beverly
Hills, New York City and London, and are part of significant collections
worldwide. Mellé produced a commissioned DVD combining his digital art
and digital music, and was working on similar projects when he died; he was 72 years old.
The Andromeda Strain
was a moderate box office success. Produced on a budget of $6.5
million, the film grossed $12,376,563 in North America, earning $8.2
million in US
theatrical rentals. It was the
16th highest-grossing film of 1971.
The opinion of critics is mixed, with some critics enjoying
the film for its dedication to the original novel and with others
disliking it for its drawn-out plot. Overall, the film has earned a 67%
"Fresh" rating from the film review site
Rotten Tomatoes.
The film was nominated for two
Academy Awards:
Tracklist:
Side 1:
A1 - Wildfire - 2:41
A2 - Hex - 3:57
A3 - Andromeda - 2:33
A4 - Desert Strip - 4:14
Side 2:
B1 - The Piedmont Elegy - 2:22
B2 - Op - 2:43
B3 - Xenogenesis - 2:40
B4 - Strobe Crystal Green - 4:45
Credits:
Engineer – Alan Sohl, Gordon Clark, Terry Brown
Producer, Composed By, Arranged By – Gil Mellé
Notes:
LP is
hexagon -shaped and comes housed in an elaborate folded pod-shaped sleeve.
Gil Mellé – The Andromeda Strain (Original Electronic Soundtrack)
Label: Kapp Records – KRS-5513
Format: Vinyl, 10", LP, Album, Shape, Hexagonal
Country: US
Released: 1971
Genre: Electronic, Stage & Screen
Style: Experimental, Soundtrack
Viewfinder links:
Big Black
Miles Davis
Neil Diamond
Kenny Dorham
Yvonne Elliman
Duke Ellington
Tal Farlow
Norman Granz & Verve Records
Stan Getz
Arthur Hill
Thelonious Monk
Ricky Nelson
Max Roach
Sonny Rollins
Klaus Schulze (aka Richard Wahnfried)
Rod Serling
John Haley "Zoot" Sims
David Wayne
Robert Wise
Lester Young
Net links:
Gil Mellé album covers
Jazz Times ~ Gil Mellé: Instrumental Inventions
The Malibu Times ~ Old vanguard ventures into cyber art
The Malibu Times ~ obit
It's So Last Century ~ obit
Sax on the Web ~ obit
Virginia Clark Discography
Lucifer (Mort Garson) Discography
Robert Wise Filmography
YouTube links:
Gil Mellé -
The Andromeda Strain (1971) (Full Album - 26 min, 10 sec)
The Andromeda Strain ~
Tracks 1-4
Tome V (Full Album - 38 min, 14 sec)
Andromeda
Rare Gil Melle Percussotron Footage
Klaus Schulze - The Andromeda Strain (Concert 1976 - 41 min, 51 sec)
The Andromeda Strain seemed the perfect way
to end a year that has been totally
surreal!
Styrous® ~ Sunday, December 31, 2017
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~
