Kenny Graham The Small World Of Sammy Lee OST

Our stockroom elf, who usually pulls no punches with his pithy post-it put-downs, left a note on this disc saying "Lovely cinematic jazz/soundtrack easy listening stuff class!!", so I knew I was in for a treat before I put the disc in the player. This is a long-thought-lost soundtrack by Kenny Graham to cult '60s London flick 'The Small World of Sammy Lee', which was quite amazingly unearthed when Jonny Trunk visited the composer's daughter to talk about his life and work and discovered she had a box of 1/4 inch reels including these recordings.

Because of this there's no information on who the players are on this score, which adds quite a cool element of mystery I think. The music itself is soft jazz with plenty of clarinet and flute and saxophone, romping through a series of themes which range from exotic and mysterious passages of spooky sax tension through to more bouncy and upbeat jazz, the smooth melodies and frantic Latin-sounding beats of 'Glasses? You Need Glasses?' is particularly fun, as is the bouncy, almost big-band sounding 'And None Of Your Horse Manure' which follows it.

It's all performed with obvious relish and cheeky precision and it's very hard not to like, although it is over rather quickly. There are 16 tracks here ranging from 29 seconds to 2 minutes 42, so the whole thing's over in about 25 minutes, but it's uniformly excellent.