Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue. Apologies for not posting last week, I was really busy.
Today we're going to be listening to 5m3-5m3a. This is by far the most mysterious cue of the entire score. Not only do I not have scans of the sheet music, I genuinely have no idea what Williams originally titled it.
The cue number is known thanks to the typeset cue sheet, and also an Instagram post by JKMS which appeared to show a cover page of some kind, which provides cue numbers - but no title.
There's an in-depth discussion of the cue number discovery available here: https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F35324-new-discovery-original-cantina-band-cue-title%2F=
This post is a little confusing as well, because the same cover page lists both 5m3-5m3a and 5m4-6m1 (with the 4 and 6 accidentally swapped). I have seen the sketch for next week's cue, and I know that piece was numbered 5m4-6m1. Additionally, we know that last week's cue was numbered 5m2, and this immediately follows it; so it wouldn't make sense for this cue to be rebalanced. But still, the 5m3-5m3a number appears to have been crossed out, I'm not really sure why.
The cover page also includes some strange names above the instrument list, "Monkey Band", and "Jolly Jazzers". Before the sketch for next week's cue was revealed, people believed that these might've been the names of the two source cues; but now that we know the second cue is not titled either of these names, it's likely these are something else instead.
This is also the first cue we've looked at that is diegetic - that is, the characters in the movie also hear the music, it's not just for the audience.
In various interviews, JW has talked about how the source music for the cantina cues was primarily inspired by Benny Goodman's big band jazz music, which was used in the temp track.
In fact, next week's cue - the second cantina source, which I do have the original title for, was named after a piece of Benny Goodman music. I think it's likely that this first piece was also named similarly, but that's really nothing more than speculation.
Unfortunately, due to not having the original sheet music I can't tell you how many bars the cue is, or who orchestrated it, or any of the normal stuff I'd go over here.
There was some officially released sheet music back in 1978 for concert recordings, but unfortunately it's modified quite heavily from the original with large sections added, removed, and changed. Therefore, it wouldn't be useful for cue length information or anything like that.
With all of that out of the way, it's time to finally listen to the piece.
Just one last note: conventional wisdom has always been that these source cues were written wild, not synced to picture at all. However, when I lined up the music to the movie without edits, I found that it actually syncs up perfectly, both this cue and the next cue add up to the exact length of the cantina sequence, with the transition between them being exactly the spot where 3PO and R2 see stormtroopers outside.
Therefore, I'm inclined to believe that it wasn't recorded completely wild - I'm not certain if there were any sync points with the picture, but I believe the overall cue length was likely timed.
For the most part the cue sounds like improvisational jazz, but there is a repeated A, B, C melody.
The A melody kicks in at 0:00, followed immediately by the B melody at 0:15. Then the C melody starts at 0:29, before the A melody repeats at 0:43.
Once again the B melody follows it at 0:58, and then at 1:13 we get the C melody again.
Then at 1:29 we get something new, a very spirited and happy sounding section. I've always thought it was funny that this section almost sounds like it has Christmas bells ringing.
Then at 1:56 we get another new section, this was always one of my favorite parts. At 2:22, it almost sounds like the musicians preparing to reset, before starting back up with the A melody at 2:29, which plays until the end.
This cue was edited very heavily in the final film.
0:00-0:29 in the film is 0:00-0:29 of the original cue.
0:29-1:02 in the film was replaced with 1:57-2:29 of the original cue.
1:02-2:08 in the film was replaced with 0:00-1:06 of the original cue.
2:08-2:11 in the film was replaced with unknown (possible short/pickup ending, or alt take?).
2:11-2:25 in the film was replaced with silence.
2:25-2:43 in the film was replaced with 0:00-0:18 of the original cue.
As a result the section from 0:00-0:18 appears no less than 3 times in the span of 3 minutes, and the section from 1:06-1:57 is completely unused.
This cue was recorded on March 10, 1977, the fourth day of the recording sessions. It was the first cue recorded that day.
Eight takes were recorded, numbered 73-80. According to the 1997 take log, the performance edit used just take 76.
That said, the typeset cue list I have has some contradictory information on it which makes the mystery of this cue all the more confusing:
The actual length of this cue is 2:44, and the two sections of the film edit are 2:11 and 0:18. Therefore, the lengths in the typeset list don't appear to make much sense, particularly the 1:00 length for 5m3a. Also the fact that 5m3 and 5m3a are listed separately is curious.
I should note that this typeset list only lists the music used in the film, not the way it was recorded, so perhaps the separate 5m3a could be referring to the fact that the cue was split in half - except that the length doesn't make sense, and next week's cue doesn't appear to be separated in the list in a similar way.
The other interesting part is the mention of pick-ups, which aren't mentioned by the 1997 take log at all. Could these be where the unknown film ending of the first half comes from?
Regardless, due to its nature as a jazz piece, rather than an orchestral one, this cue (and next week's) were recorded with a different group of players than the rest of the score. As a result, this day of the recording sessions, March 10th, was devoted entirely to the jazz sessions with this group.
This cue has been officially released on four different albums:
1) In 1977 on 20th Century Records' OST album
2) In 1993 on Arista Records' 4-CD Anthology box set
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
4) In 2018 on Walt Disney Records' Remastered album (remastered OST rebuilt from scratch from the session masters)
More specifically, 5m3-5m3a can be heard:
From 0:00-end of track 9 "Cantina Band" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 0:00-end of disc 4 track 10 "Cantina Band" on the 1993 album
From 0:00-end of disc 1 track 11 "Cantina Band" on the 1997 album.
All releases have clean openings, but the 1977/2018 albums both fade out early, where the 1993 and 1997 sets have the full ending. All releases have the same takes. The above video just uses the 1997 set.
I find it curious that the 1977 OST album included this cue in the first place. John Williams usually avoids including source music on his OST albums, and often will even veto its inclusion on expansions. This is one of the only cases I know of where he intentionally included it on an OST album.
That's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Next week we'll be discussing the second cantina cue, 5m4-6m1 Don't Bee That Weigh. See you then!
