Dig Deep: Quincy Jones – The Lost Man (Original Soundtrack) – UNI (1969)

Nate Turner & the Mirettes – Sweet Soul Sister
Quincy Jones – Main Squeeze
Quincy Jones – Up Against The Wall

I first tracked down this soundtrack after hearing a mix from DJ Riddm in the Bay Area where he was matching up classic ‘True School’ tracks with their original breaks. It didn’t take long at all to find it, which was a surprise to me, especially after I heard the whole soundtrack. Maybe it’s the fact that Sidney Poitier is the star, but for whatever reason, I’ve never seen this soundtrack go for more than $10 (except at Groove Merchant where Cool Chris clearly knows it’s worth), I’ve bought maybe 4 or 5 copies of it, mostly from Amoeba and it’s rarely over $4 or $5. There shouldn’t be all that many copies of the record around, since it contains no hits and the movie wasn’t exactly blockbuster material, but for whatever reason it seems a lot of people sleep on this record.

However, the Lost Man soundtrack is possibly the funkiest thing that Quincy Jones ever worked on. Virtually every song is a winner, a rare feat for a soundtrack. The material has a really distinctive tone to it, for lack of better words, it feels kind of hollow, not quite sparse, maybe a bit serious, particularly on the instrumentals. Even the use of kid’s voices in the opening theme seem ominous, but not in the spooky The Omen kind of way, just ominous, like these kids are not to be fucked with. Some of that distinctive tone drives the vocal track I’ve posted here “Sweet Soul Sister,” which remains one of my favorite tracks to start DJ-ing with. Such a massively heavy slow burner, so very very deep, with great vocal work from Nate Turner & the Mirettes. The record would be worth tracking down for this and “Try, Try, Try” alone, but then there are 4 instrumentals also on the record that make it a necessary addition to any funky library.

The best of the instrumentals is “The Main Squeeze,” a focused and tight horn driven bit of funky. On the other end of the spectrum “Up Against The Wall” is all over the place, like 5 songs for the price of one. It does feature one of my favorite openings to a song EVER, 30+ seconds of pure deep funk heaven, before shifting into a real slow almost Axelrodian theme for the middle part then to some afro-latinesque percussion before closing out with some themes from the other top instrumentals “Slum Creeper,” “The Main Title” and “Main Squeeze.” All together, it’s a serious aural workout.

If you happen upon this one in the Soundtrack section of your favorite record store, don’t let Sidney and the price fool you, it’s a stone cold gem of a record.

Cheers,

Michael