MRH : The people involved in the film had such interesting backgrounds. For years they had been making religious themed-films, and I guess this was their attempt to cash in on the drive-in thing, except that The Blob ended up being really, really successful. I wonder if that sort of affected Ralph Carmichael, in either raising his prominence, or helping his career by either having more job opportunities, or whether his background in religious films ended up being a hindrance?

DS : [He is] a fabulous arranger. A very talented and very nice man, too. What Ralph told me was that when the film came out, despite the fact that it was made by religious filmmakers, he got a lot of flack from some people in the religious community, saying ‘How can you be doing this? You shouldn't be doing this! Don't do this anymore! Don't have your name on it,' and even at the time, Ralph thought that was ridiculous. There's nothing satanic about that movie; it's not an anti-religious picture, except for the standpoint that God doesn't kill the blob – science does (so to speak).

He did get a lot of, shall we say, negative vibes from people in that community, but that's not why he didn't score more. I asked him why he didn't, and he said ‘I didn't get anymore calls.' It's possible he didn't get calls because he wasn't mainstream Hollywood; he probably didn't have a Hollywood agent; he hadn't been associated with studios to where he had contacts. Really, the only people he knew were in the religious music business.

But when you listen to what he did with The Blob on such a low budget, you just kind of think, ‘Wow, this guy could've had an amazing filmmaking career.' He ended up having an absolutely amazing career in the area of music he focused on, and it probably wouldn't have been possible to do both; each one I think is all-consuming in its own way, whether you're in Hollywood trying to get movies, or you're in a religious world. Those are both going to dominate your lives, and I don't think you can do both of them.

I wouldn't say he has regrets, but you could definitely tell that he's very proud of his score (and rightfully so), and probably wonders what might have been had he pursued that area, although he certainly made a name for himself in the other area. He basically helped create contemporary Christian music; it didn't exist the way it does now when he got started, and he got a lot of flack from the religious community not just for The Blob, but also for the type of music he was doing in the religious world. He was bringing in big bands, and he was bringing pop sensibilities into it, and that was considered a no-no back then.

MRH : Because The Blob score is only about a half hour, were there other choices that you had to fill out the rest of the album, or did you feel that maybe this might be the ideal opportunity to put some library or mood music on there?

DS : I wasn't thinking in terms of Ralph, because the other music that he had done was just so dissimilar from The Blob, and as little-known as Herman Stein is, at least some people in the film music know him because we put out four albums of his music (and a couple of other labels have as well), but nobody in the film music world knows who Ralph Carmichael is, so if I had done a Ralph Carmichael album, even with The Blob, I don't think we would've sold any other copies, other than the people who had wanted The Blob.

For whatever reason, some sort of business deal was done after The Blob was scored, and the music ended up in the Valentino Production Music Library. I was talking to the son of Valentino who ran the company at the time, and I told him ‘Look, what other music do you have that I can listen to?'

Again, there's business reasons in addition to creative reasons, and… it's a heck of a lot easier dealing with one or two rights owners rather than four or five; not just in terms of the expense, but also the legalities involved, and I have to draw up all these contracts. It's a nightmare.

It just seemed a lot easier [to do] a Valentino album, so I got access to some of their recordings (a lot of their recordings), and then my wife and I started going through them. As I was listening to the stuff I realized ‘Whoa, this is from The Brain That Wouldn't Die, and this is from Terror from the Year 5000,' and I thought, ‘Okay, we'll kind of tie this in as kind of a low-budget sci-fi album, with its centerpiece being the complete score from The Blob. There's enough cues here of a similar nature – suspense, horror, sci-fi, atmospheric and everything – that these will fit nicely in, because they're all examples of low-budget scoring.' It's not like all of a sudden we've got a hundred piece orchestra blaring away, totally overwhelming The Blob.

For a lot of people, they don't just hear The Blob, they hear ‘Oh, I know this music. This music was used in this picture and that picture,' [or] ‘Oh, that was my radio station back in Philadelphia. We used this when we were advertising the monster movie show coming on the TV station or whatever' because they became a part of the Valentino library, [and were] reused for all sorts of low-budget films and other productions and commercials. So it's kind of like the whole thing is a library album even if you're not aware of it.

NOW ONLINE:

In Part 1 of our conversation with David Schecter, we discuss MMM's companion album, The Intruder (and other music by Herman Stein), which features Herman Stein's complete score to The Intruder, plus selections from unreleased projects. Click HERE to read more!

In Part 3 of our conversation, we discuss the premiere commercial release of rare cues from the Valentino Production Music Library. Click HERE to read more!