sound track?

I'd also love to have the soundtrack, but I seriously doubt the soundtrack has ever existed in any published form. Not only is there no mention of it anywhere online, not even on Discogs or Amazon, but many of the individual song titles cannot be found at all online, not in any form whatsoever, not even on 45cat or YouTube. I've researched all the songs listed in the end credits and all the songs in the movie that are not identified, and to make a long story short, the music in the movie is a confused mess, and all the songs are very obscure, whether identified or unidentified.

For anyone seriously interested in obtaining songs from this movie, I've provided the following information, and I've categorized the music as follows...

MAIN GUITAR THEMES. There are two full-length guitar themes, one in the intro/ending, and one during the beach lovemaking scene. One of these themes must be the credited composition with the title "Oyster Blues", but it's not clear which composition bears that name. It would make sense that the main theme song of a movie would be the one that is credited if only one theme could be credited, but the lovemaking theme has a 12-bar blues structure (in the key of E) whereas the opening theme does not, so structurally it is the lovemaking theme that qualifies as a blues and therefore should logically be the one called "Oyster Blues". If that's the case, then the movie's main theme has no title, though I suppose "Little Sweetheart Theme" or "Theme From 'Little Sweetheart'" would be a good default title.

The opening credits attribute the film's music to Laurence Juber, presumably the jazz guitarist whom the end credits calls "Cactus Axe". Juber is the British-born guitarist for Paul McCartney's band Wings, he plays solo guitar on his own albums, and he has a similar finger-picking style with a lot of dissonant open chords. However, he always plays acoustic guitar on all his published recordings, as far as I can tell, and I cannot find any online mention of any connection of Juber to this movie or to the named songs, and none of these songs are on any of his albums. I have been unable to find any online mention of any group called "Cactus Axe".

The names "Murrel" and "Thomas" are associated with the songs "Oyster Blues" and "Reach for the Night" in the end credits of this film. "Murrel" is almost certainly a misspelling of Murrell. "Thomas" certainly refers to Ken Thomas, who is a legendary record producer. I did find one Murrell associated with Ken Thomas, namely Catherine Murrell, who wrote an article about Ken Thomas on noozly.com, but it's quite possible she was not associated with him in any musical collaboration. Most likely Hadley Murrell is the Murrell intended, since he is the most common Murrell appearing on 45cat, and he is a composer and producer. I was unable to find any association between Ken Thomas and Ready Made Productions, and in fact I could not find any reference to Ready Made Productions at all. However, there do exist two film production companies with a similar name: Ready Made Film, in the U.S.A., and Ready Made s.r.l., in Italy. There exists another song entitled "Oyster Blues" by Abaddon & Teppo Keitaanniemi but I doubt that is the same song.

CREDITED-AND-AVAILABLE SONGS. There are only three songs (supposedly) from the film that are commercially available, to my knowledge: (1) Take My Body (And I Will Take Your Love) (Tracy Ackerman, 1987, single (1987), author Nigel Stock); (2) I Was Born to Cry (Johnny Thunders & Patti Palladin, 1988, "Copy Cats" album (1988), author Dion Dimucci); (3) Eat You Up (Angie Gold, 1985, "Applause" album (1986), authors Angelina Kyte & Tony Baker). "Take My Body" is played in the background at Thelma's birthday party when Robert talks to the girls, and is a great dancing/disco song. "I Was Born to Cry" is the second song played on the radio in The Grill when Robert is watching his car, and is bouncy with male vocals. That song is out of print on CD. "Eat You Up" is not present in the film, however, not even in the very faint radio excerpt in the veranda shaving scene. The studio version of that song is a disco song with female vocalists. This raises the question as to whether some part of the film containing this song was removed. Currently all three of these songs exist on YouTube, which attests to their commercial availability, at least at one time.

CREDITED-BUT-UNAVAILABLE SONGS. Three other songs in the soundtrack can be matched with their credits because their key lyrics are audible, but these songs are extremely obscure and therefore absolutely unobtainable, to my knowledge. (1) "Reach for the Night" is the first song played in The Grill when Robert enters and begins watching his car. It's a smooth, very pretty song that has rich male vocal harmonies and a guitar solo. (2) "Radio City" is the song in the Old Time Soda Fountain where the girls drink shakes after their successful blackmail and where Thelma talks of using her blackmail money to buy a radio. It has a fairly high male vocal line with lively horns in the background. (3) "Too Rich" is played in the background in the Old Time Soda Fountain near the end when Thelma buys her ice cream alone, after shooting Elizabeth and presumably taking her money. It has a male vocalist and a catchy pop sound with horns, much like Phil Collins recordings. Note that these song titles tend to correspond to the events at those points in the movie, and note that the music seems to have been carefully placed so that the sung titles are heard in the brief time those song fragments are audible in each scene.

I have been absolutely unable to find any online reference to any of these three songs, whether in discographies, lyric searches, artist searches, or author searches. However, these artists, authors, and companies as credited do exist:

(1) The group When In Rome is credited to the movie's song "Reach for the Night", but this song does not exist on either of When In Rome's two existing albums, not even on the 12-song British version of their first album, or on any of their three non-album released singles or their flip sides. Furthermore, all songs on their first album and all their singles were written by the same 2-3 band members (Farrington & Floreale & Mann), never by the credited author/producer Ken Thomas, whose name does not appear in conjunction with this band anywhere that I can find. Ken Thomas is a very well-known musician/author/producer who worked with top name stars at Trident Studios and Olympic Studios. If you search under his name, use either "Ken Thomas" or "Kenneth Vaughan Thomas", not "Kenneth Thomas". There exists another song called "Reach for the Night" by the group Marseille, but that is not the song in this film.

(2) Colin Elswood, whose name is misspelled as "Elsewood" in the end credits as the artist for "Radio City", is in fact a songwriter listed on Discogs. The credited authors for "Radio City", shown as "P. Bellotte" and "G. Pleeth" in the end credits, are certainly Pete Bellotte and Greame Pleeth, both of whom are authors listed on Discogs. There exist several different songs entitled "Radio City", namely by Lizzie Webb, Scott Hamilton, Eilen Jewell, Donnie Parker, and The Loot, but none of those songs are the song in this film. The first publishing company for this song, Glen Music Limited, is now dissolved. Their address was: Glen Music Limited, 45-51 Whitfield St., London W1P 5RJ, United Kingdom. The second publishing company, Chelsea Music, still exists, and their contact info is: Chelsea Music Pub Co Ltd., 125 Parkway, London NW1 7PS, United Kingdom, +44 207 388 3370.

(3) Raf Ravenscroft, one of the two credited coartists of "Too Rich", is the British saxophonist who played the memorable lead on the song "Baker Street" (Gerry Rafferty, 1978). He can also be found in online references under the name Raphael Ravenscroft. He has two albums and several singles of his own, but none of those recordings listed on Discogs contain the song "Too Rich". There exist other songs called "Too Rich", namely by Patricia Barbra, and Doug Campbell, but none of those are the song in this film. I am unable to find the other credited coartist--Julian Lippman--online in any musical context, regardless of spelling. Most likely the correct spelling of that last name is "Lippmann". The credited coauthor of "Too Rich", Frankie Madrid, is certainly Frankie 'Madrid' Howard, who appears with the group Brother Beyond on the album "Get Even" (1988). Per 45cat, Raf Ravenscroft and Frankie Howard did collaborate at least one other time: they were members of the musical group The Ravenscroft Partnership, who in 1987 put out the British single "Hold On (This Is Clive's Song) / The Journey Part I". The publishing company listed as "COSMICSPHERE LEOSONG" probably refers to: Leosong Copyright Service, 115-123 Bayham St., London, Camden, London, United Kindom, NW1 0AG, 02074467400.

UNCREDITED-AND-FULL COMPOSITIONS. The remaining songs seem not to be credited at all: (1) The rock song in the video that is played twice, once in The Happy Pelican, and once in Thelma's bedroom, with the wildly dancing couple; (2) The long country instrumental in The Happy Pelican when Robert first meets the girls; (3) The virtually inaudible female vocals radio song in the background when Thelma comes to thank Robert on the veranda, which in the soundtrack contains one faint fragment of three descending vocal notes that don't match any part of the song "Eat You Up". So far I have been unable to identify any songs in this category.

UNCREDITED-AND-SHORT BACKGROUND MUSIC. The movie contains exactly 17 short pieces of background music: 13 with the same jazz guitarist/trio who played the main theme, plus 4 orchestral pieces in the action parts near the end. It sounds like the guitar parts are from a jazz trio that includes bass and drums and probably an occasional keyboard that plays the xylophone sound and panpipe sound in some compositions. One such piece of music in this film has only bass, and one has only (heartbeat-like) drums. My guess is an unnamed group of studio musicians was given the makeshift name "Cactus Axe" only for this film. Possibly the orchestral parts are from generic, canned music created for general use in films, especially since two of those pieces are nearly identical except for an extra fragment spliced into the center of one of them, probably to extend its length slightly to fit the scene.

It is for all these reasons and more that I seriously doubt a soundtrack was ever published for this TV movie. If anybody were really desperate for the soundtrack in a hurry, I believe their best bet would be to hire some jazz guitarist to learn all the parts (some of this movie's guitar theme transcriptions are found online, to ease that task), rerecord them, and publish them, and to use song-identifying software to identify the unidentified background songs. One could also try to contact some of the music companies, authors, TV station, or employees listed in the credits and hope they can be bothered to respond, which I wouldn't count on happening.

If anyone is interested, the line "Re-recorded at DE LANE LEA SOUND CENTRE" listed in the end credits refers to a company that still exists and their contact info is: De Lane Lea, 75 Dean St., London, Greater London W1D 3PU, United Kingdom, 020 7432 3800. Since When In Rome was a popular band with a hit single, maybe fans of that group could put pressure on whomever owns the recording of "Reach for the Night" to publish it, which might open up the archives to the other "lost" songs of this soundtrack by other groups. Please let us all know if you make any further progress on identifying or locating other music in this film. You can e-mail me if you are interested in obtaining mp3 versions of short sound clips of the musical fragments I mentioned in this post. Those clips should be legal due to their usually very short length, their use for research purposes, and their absolute unobtainability for sale anywhere in any form.