Les Baxter - biography

“I was working all the time I was in college.  I was working so much that I could hardly do my college work.”

“Under my contract with Capitol, I have complete freedom to do just about anything I want in my own way.”

“Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.”

“Any good music must be an innovation.”

“I love doing concert music.”

“I write emotional music.”

“I’ve never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.”

“You know, they wanted to do a Broadway album and every show was kind of a bomb.  There was no music at all.”

“In a sense, a hit belongs to the person who made it popular, but if a tune is good enough to attain tremendous success, then it certainly deserves more than one version, one treatment, one approach.”

“I aim my arrangements at what will fit and colorfully frame the song in the best way possible.”

“I did the Broadway album unfortunately in a year when there were no hits.”

“I don’t know what the problem with Capitol is.  Some one’s got to wake ’em up.  Prod ’em a little bit.”

“I don’t think the record company is aware of it.  Because they just bury my albums and don’t release them.”

“I don’t try to make 15 musicians sound like two each.”

“I’m not an intellectual composer.”

“I’ve been down there 6 times and there’s nothing like Brazilian percussion.”

“That was when the Spanish came in and conquered the Aztecs.  I thought that was a clever thing.”

“Well, that’s the secret of commerciality, a simple style and you stick with it.”

“When I want 30 musicians in the orchestra, I get 30.”

Les Baxter composed the score for the following films:
Summer with Monika (1953)
The Yellow Tomahawk (1954)
The Black Sleep (1956)
Frontier Scout (1956)
The Girl in Black Stockings (1957)
Voodoo Island (1957)
Mark of the Apache (1957)
Outlaw’s Son (1957)
Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957)
Escape from Red Rock (1957)
The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958)
House of Usher (1960)
Nebo zovyot (1960)
The Mask of Satan (1960)
Master of the World (1961)
Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
La Guerra continua (1962)
Premature Burial (1962)
Tales of Terror (1962)
Beach Party (1963)
Dementia 13 (1963)
The Raven (1963)
The Terror (1963)
The Young Racers (1963)
Tre volti della paura, I (1963)
The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)
Bikini Beach (1964)
Muscle Beach Party (1964)
Pajama Party (1964)
The Comedy of Terrors (1964)
Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)
Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)
Sergeant Dead Head (1965)
Spie vengono dal semifreddo (1966)
The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966)
Cervantes (1967)
Target: Harry (1969)
Flareup (1969)
Cry of the Banshee (1970)
The Dunwich Horror (1970)
An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (1972)
Gli Orrori del castello di Norimberga (1972)
The Jezebels (1975)
Born Again (1978)
Lightning in a Bottle (1993)