The Jaws Soundtrack Album of 1975

A bit of an "I was there" memory from 1975.

Jaws is famously "the first summer blockbuster."

(Except it isn't -- that honor should go to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which was released on the East Coast of America in June of 1960 and then on the West Coast of America in August of 1960...back to back summer releases.)

But "when the legend becomes fact...print the legend." So, OK, Jaws WAS the first summer blockbuster -- released to a huge number of theaters coast to coast on the same day in June of 1975.

But this was still an era in which there were not many "ancillary markets" to release Jaws to for home viewing after its huge summer-into-fall run in 1975.

VHS tapes were available to "inside Hollywood people" and other rich folk...they had been INVENTED, but they weren't being DISTRIBUTED to "regular folk" yet. I guess a whole lot of legal rights neeeded to be cleared before VHS tapes could be produced and marketed with movies to the masses. I recall all this happening between 1980-1982. I bought my first VCR in 1982.

HBO existed in the 1970s(the first movie shown on HBO was Paul Newman's "Sometimes a Great Notion" from 1971) but evidently didn't have heavy national er, penetration.

In Los Angeles County only in the 70's, there was a "local" version of HBO set up mainly to serve the film industry in Hollywood -- for Oscar screenings, etc. This was called The Z Channel and I had access to it, and while i remember seeing The Sting, Chinatown, The Longest Yard and Blazing Saddles on The Z Channel, I don't remember Jaws. But then I eventually moved away and lost the Z Channel.

For most people, the first chance to watch Jaws on television came when ABC broadcast the movie as "an evcent" on the Sunday Night Movie in the "sweeps month" of November 1980 -- over five years since the movie had been released.

So we had to WAIT to see Jaws again.

But..wait..there was one other way to "experience" Jaws in the summer of 1975.

You could go out and buy the "soundtrack album" featuring selected tracks of John Wiliams famous score (which would win an Oscar)

The Jaws album was a huge bestseller -- platinum? I don't recall -- and an MCA executive quoted gloating: "We got a cash cow bestseller out of a record with an hour of a music going 'chug, chug, chug"!

Well-- not so fast there, Mr. Smarty Pants Universal-MCA executive.

I was among those who bought that album, and I found it a great way to 're-experience" at least the SOUND of Jaws, to learn how the music was used to enhance scenes and, indeed to re-experience the movie itself.

Nowhere was this more evident than in a "near the end of the record" track that began , I believe, with the music right after Quint is killed and as the shark circles around to come eat Chief Brody as the boat sinks.

Remember , I could not SEE the scene, but I could imagine it with the music. Some general cacophony(as the shark kept attacking Brody and Brody kept fending it off) and then a slowly acclerating , ever building, ever speeding along run of music that "fit" the shark coming at Brody, Brody climbing to the to of the mast(the boat has almost sunk) and the big moment:

In the movie:

Brody: Smile...you son of a bitch!
Bullet hits tank in shark's mouth.
Shark explodes
Shark sinks to bottom of ocean floor(intercut with Brody celebrating.)

On the record:

The music builds and builds and builds and then with a crash of music:

Everything stops..total silence, for quite some time(because in the movie, "smile" and explosion occur.)

But then...the music came back on as "music for dead shark to sink to the ocean floor" came on. And we could PICTURE the shark, with the tank in its mouth like an exploded cigar, and John William harps coming in to gently glide the shark carcass to the bottom.

NO, this wasn't EXACTLY like seeing the movie, but YES..one could still "see" the movie in one's mind...the opening famous slow build up (duh...duh duh...duh duh DUH) leading to the locomotive "chug chug chug" and the "scene" (on the record) of the naked young woman being taken as the first victim (again, a cacophony of jangling noises and tinkling sounds to accompany her death) well...in 1975, this was the closest thing to a VHS or a DVD or a streaming screening for rent.

Until such time as we could see Jaws again. On ABC, with all the bloody parts cut out.

I can't remember when an uncut VHS tape was released. 1982 maybe?