Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email


2025 October 06 • Monday

Released by Real Gone Music in special "hellfire" vinyl, the 877th Soundtrack of the Week is Alden Shuman's music for The Devil in Miss Jones.

Pianist Frank Owens starts with a lovely solo piece in 3/4 called "In the Beginning". It's only 43 seconds long but very sweet and pretty with a tinge of melancholy.

Then organ, vibes, horns and piano create a lush, mysterious, swaying and also pretty atmosphere for "Hellcat".

"I'm Comin' Home (Theme from 'The Devil in Miss Jones')", builds on what the first two cues established but adds strings and, eventually, singer Linda November to handle lyics, of which several are "I'm comin' home", sometimes leaving out "home".

Since this is actually a porn movie, there should be some kind of slinky electro-grooves. In "The Teacher" we finally get some wah-wah guitar and electric bass guitar playing with some gently groovy rhythms but it's still very sweet and serious and melodic. This is not a trash soundtrack and presumably it's not a trash movie.

The A side climaxes with "Ladies in Love", which is a romantic piece for strings and piano, as well as what sounds like French horn, low key melodrama, easy to imagine paired with bright, colorful images.

The B side starts with piano again, this time accompanied by strings and bells, playing the theme again but this time as "Love Lesson". Some kind of horn joins the bells on the melody and then we settle into the waltz groove and it's really nice.

Another 3/4 tune follows but "Beauty and the Beast" has a more shadowy, omnious feel to it. Reed instruments take the melody this time.

More plaintive solo piano brings us "Walk with the Devil", sounding a bit like if Liberace played the theme from The Conversation. It's beautiful, though, and not overdone.

Next the secondary 3/4 theme gets a bucolic and pleasant arrangement for "Trio in the Round" with strings being the main voice and there's an especially nice violin solo at the end.

Then "Miss Jones Comes Home" and we have some suspenseful long tones for strings and organ before the piano comes in with a slow and deliberate reiteration of the main theme.

And then we're "At the End", a 46-second reprise of the main theme.