It’s never been easy to pigeonhole Lalo Schifrin. The four-time Grammy-winning Argentinian composer created one of the most memorable television themes of all time with his “Mission: Impossible,” recorded jazz albums for labels including Verve and Creed Taylor’s CTI, worked with Count Basie, Cannonball Adderley and Sarah Vaughan, and scored innumerable films, racking up six Oscar nominations in the process. Now, Demon Music Group has reissued two lost gems of the Schifrin oeuvre, both originally recorded for Clarence Avant’s Tabu label, for the first time on CD. Gypsies (1978) and No One Home (1979) have recently arrived in deluxe, casebound expanded editions as part of Demon’s long-running Tabu series.
Schifrin joined Tabu fresh from CTI, where he had recorded Black Widow and Towering Toccata, both jazz fusion projects with dance and disco overtones. Those albums were recorded on the East Coast, as was CTI’s wont, with top session vets including Steve Gadd, Eric Gale and Will Lee. For his first Tabu recording, Gypsies, Schifrin headed to Los Angeles (Studio City in particular) where he could tap many of his favorite players from his Hollywood dates. 1978 was a busy year for Schifrin; in addition to scoring a couple of television movies, Walt Disney Productions kept him busy with Return from Witch Mountain and The Cat from Outer Space. Indeed, much of Gypsies – inspired by the rhythms of the titular people – plays like melodic film score cues. Funky but strongly melodic, the music of this instrumental concept album was anchored by Schifrin and Mike Melvoin on acoustic piano and the ubiquitous Fender Rhodes, and Schifrin and Ian Underwood on a variety of spacey synthesizers such as the ARP 2600 and the Mini Moog. They were joined by an all-star cast of Dean Parks on guitar, Abe Laboriel on Fender bass, Jim Keltner on drums, Paulinho da Costa and Emil Richards on percussion. A smoking brass section with such venerable stalwarts as Oscar Brashear, Lew McCreary and Ernie Watts added further excitement.