A U.K. contemporary of Burt Bacharach's, Barry exploited the possibilties of the studio from the day he walked in one. The trumpet-playing leader of his own jazz-pop-rock combo The John Barry Seven from 1957 on, he was writing and recording regularly, and the cinematic bent of his work was evident early on. His 1961 LP, "Stringbeat," is highly recommended. Barry also teamed up with teen idol Adam Faith and others like him for a series of British Top 40 hits in the years just before the Beatles changed the landscape. Barry's trademark sound was pizzicato strings (that's what they sound like) and the twangy guitar of Vic Flick, Britain's answer to Duane Eddy. It was Flick who drove Barry's arrangement of the James Bond Theme into music history.
Barry had suffered health problems in recent years and hadn't written a film score since "Enigma" in 2001. He worked sporadically on a musical version of Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock." There's no doubt that his work evolved from the electic fare of the '60s - the Bond films, "The Knack," "The Ipcress File" and "The Wrong Box" - to majestic and much simpler scores from the '80s on. But then this is the man who won Oscars in a three-year period for scores as different as "Born Free" and "The Lion in Winter." And then did "Midnight Cowboy" next.
If you're interested, dip into this list: "Beat Girl" (1959), "From Russia With Love" (1963), "The Knack" (1965), "The Wrong Box" (1966), "You Only Live Twice" (1967), "Robin and Marian" (1976), "Body Heat" (1981), "Hammett" (1982), "Out of Africa" (1985) and "Playing by Heart" (1998).
