Imagine for a second that you're digging in your
backyard. Just, you know, minding your own business.
Right. Maybe planting a tree or something. Exactly.
And you hit something solid. So you brush away
the dirt and you pull up this dusty sealed time
capsule that was buried sometime in, let's say,
the early 1970s. Okay, I can picture it. You
crack it open and you're expecting to find the
usual suspects, right? Like a pair of bell bottoms,
a mood ring, maybe a faded ticket stub. The standard
vintage stuff. Yeah. But instead, sitting right
there at the very bottom of the box is the secret
atmospheric blueprint to 1990s East Coast hip
hop. Which is, I mean... Entirely unexpected.
You're actively searching for a piece of mid
-century nostalgia. Instead, you uncover the
literal foundation of a completely different
musical revolution. One that wouldn't even happen
for another 20 years. Right, exactly. And welcome,
by the way, to this custom deep dive. We are
so thrilled you're joining us today. Our mission
for you on this dive is to look at a piece of
media that honestly... could have easily been
a forgotten footnote, but somehow just somehow
became an absolute goldmine. We are looking at
a Wikipedia article detailing the 1972 soundtrack
for a film called Dollars. Yeah, and depending
on where you lived at the time, you might know
it under a different name. It was also released
as The Heist, or even Dollars, but spelled with
the dollar sign replacing the S at the end. Which
is very of its era. Oh, totally. It's a 1971
Heist movie written and directed by Richard Brooks
and starred Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn. Two
massive stars. Huge stars. But on paper, if you
just look at the theatrical posters, it appears
to be a very standard, you know, by -the -numbers
Hollywood product. Yeah, just another movie.
Okay, let's unpack this because before we can
even hear the music or talk about the bizarre
afterlife of these tracks, we have to talk about
the absolute legal and corporate gymnastics that
had to happen just to get these specific people
into the same recording studio. It is a wild
story. It really is. The source points out that
the composer and producer for this soundtrack
was Quincy Jones. The legendary Quincy Jones.
The one and only. But at the time, Jones was
under an exclusive contract with A &M Records.
Right. But the vocalists that he desperately
wanted for this project, I mean, heavy hitters
like Little Richard, Roberta Flack, and Doug
Kershaw, they were all signed to a completely
different label group. Warner Brothers and Reprise.
Yes. Which, if you know anything about the music
industry then or now, that is a massive hurdle.
Oh, it's almost unheard of. Record labels are
fiercely protective of their exclusive talent.
I mean, you don't just casually borrow someone
else's marquee artist to boost your own project.
Wait, but that's the thing. The source makes
it sound almost like a polite exchange. It literally
just says Jones was given permission by A &M
to do the soundtrack, and Warner Brothers just
let their artists participate. Glosses right
over the reality of it. Yeah, because if labels
are as fiercely protective of their stars, as
you say, why on earth would Warner Brothers let
their biggest moneymakers go sing on a competitor's
record? I mean, that makes zero business sense
to me. It's like Marvel lending Spider -Man to
a DC movie just for the vibes. That is a great
analogy, actually. It does seem entirely counterintuitive,
but it really highlights a crucial mechanism
of the music business, which is industry capital.
Okay, industry capital. What do you mean? Well,
Warner Brothers didn't waive their exclusivity
clauses for just anybody. They did it because
it was Quincy Jones. Oh. Right. At this point
in his career, Jones was transitioning from being
this jazz powerhouse to a premier Hollywood composer.
He had the kind of undeniable industry respect
that just transcended typical corporate rivalries.
So he just had that much clout. Exactly. Furthermore,
the film dropped in December of 1971 and they
released a promotional single. It was Money Runner,
backed with Little Richard singing Money Is as
the B -side. So the labels likely recognized
that a high -profile Warren Beatty film, scored
by Quincy Jones, was basically cross -promotion.
It would ultimately sell more of their own artists'
solo records. Oh, I get it. So it was a rising
tide lifting all boats situation, provided the
captain of the ship was respected enough. Precisely.
And you can see that immense gravitational pull,
not just in the vocalists, but in the liner notes
for the instrumentalists, too. Oh my gosh, yes.
If you look at the credits listed in the article,
the sheer density of legendary session musicians
is staggering. Just reading the list is a journey.
I mean, you have Billy Preston on keyboards.
Yeah. Ray Brown on bass, Chuck Rainey on electric
bass, Paul Humphrey on drums. It's insane. It
really is. And if you are listening to this and
wondering what the actual difference is between
a marquee artist and a session musician, it basically
comes down to architecture. Architecture. Yeah.
A marquee artist is the face on the billboard.
Yeah. But a section musician is the master carpenter
who actually builds the house. That is a perfect
way to put it. Players like Chuck Rainey and
Paul Humphrey, they were the absolute top tier
hired guns of the era. They didn't just play
the notes on the page. They invented the grooves
that defined funk and soul. Wow. So putting all
of them in one room wasn't just assembling a
movie soundtrack. It was a summit of musical
titans. Jones leveraged every ounce of his reputation
to secure the absolute best. players on the planet.
Okay, so you've got Marvel and DC sharing characters,
you've got the Avengers of Session musicians
in one room, all led by Quincy Jones. Right.
This has to be a platinum, universally loved
masterpiece, right? Like it should be a complete
home run. You would certainly assume so. When
you gather that much talent, the expectation
is universal acclaim. But actually, the reality
of its reception is sharply divided. Really?
Yeah. This album alienated a massive chunk of
the music press. Which is wild to me, because
looking at the source material, the critical
reception is completely all over the map. It's
very polarized. Let's look at Jason Birchmeyer
over at AllMusic. He writes that while the vocalist
might interest some, he calls it, quote, one
of his less interesting projects. Ouch. I know,
right? He basically says, it's not worth going
out of your way to find and that it's best enjoyed
by fanatics and completists. That is a rather
dismissive take. It's essentially relegating
the entire album to a piece of trivia. Exactly.
But then you flip over to Score Baby, which is
the site devoted to cult soundtracks of the 60s
and 70s. Right. And they vehemently disagree
with all music. They call the dollar soundtrack
essential. They describe it as an inventive blend
of experimental jazz and... them in blues. A
huge contrast. Yeah, they even compare it to
Quincy Jones's incredible work on They Call Me
Mr. Tibbs. It is fascinating to see two completely
polar opposite reactions to the exact same audio
tracks. It really is. And then The Vinyl Factory
kind of splits the difference, but in this really
evocative way, they call it a slightly ramshackle
record, rich with sudden soulful moods and slam
dunk funk. I love that description. Me too. They
specifically mentioned that it oozes a smooth
70s vibe with rose pianos and waka waka guitars.
So what does this all mean? I mean, is being
labeled a record for completists an insult? Or
is it just critic code for too experimental for
the mainstream? What's fascinating here is how
the exact same qualities are viewed as flaws
by one critic and strokes of genius by another.
Yeah. When all music calls it a project for completists,
they are really reacting to a lack of traditional
pop structure. Yeah. But that ramshackle nature
that the vinyl factory points out. Yeah, the
ramshackle thing. That is the defining mechanism
of experimental jazz. You have to understand
the medium they were working in. Film soundtracks
often allowed brilliant producers like Jones
a unique kind of freedom. Freedom, because they
aren't trying to sell a three -minute pop single
for the radio. Exactly. On a traditional pop
album, there is immense pressure from the label
to deliver radio -friendly hits, you know, with
a chorus, a bridge, and a clean fade -out. Right,
the standard formula. But a heist movie needs
tension. It needs atmosphere. It needs strange,
sudden shifts in mood to match the action on
screen. That makes a lot of sense. So Jones could
test boundaries, blend R &B with avant -garde
jazz, and experiment in ways he simply couldn't
on a mainstream record. OK, that makes total
sense. And honestly, those Rhodes pianos that
The Vinyl Factory mentioned, they're doing a
lot of the heavy lifting for that atmosphere.
Absolutely. If you've never seen a Rhodes piano,
it looks like a standard keyboard. But inside,
instead of strings, it has these metal tines.
that gets struck by rubber hammers. It's a very
unique mechanism. Yeah, and it creates this warm,
bell -like electric tone. But if you hit the
keys hard, the sound distorts and gets this incredibly
gritty, aggressive bite to it. It is the literal
sound of 1970s tension. That physical, mechanical
reality of the instruments is crucial here. It
wasn't just synthesized on a laptop. Which is
a perfect transition, because here's where it
gets really interesting. The experimental label
that the critics threw around wasn't just about
the genres they were mixing, like jazz and funk.
It was about the literal physical techniques
they used to record these tracks in the studio.
The analog reality of 1971 engineering. Yes.
Throughout the album, there are these harmony
vocal backgrounds credited to the Don Elliott
voices. The Don Elliott voices, yes. The source
notes they provide backing to otherwise instrumental
pieces. But the absolute jaw -dropping reveal
for me is on the Roberta Flack track. When you're
smiling, the whole world smiles with you. Oh,
this part is amazing. You listen to it, and Flack
is backed by this lush, sweeping 20 -voice choir.
But the source reveals that 20 -voice choir is
actually just one man. Just one? Don Elliott,
who was a frequent collaborator of Jones, it's
just him, multi -tracked over and over and over
again. It is an absolute mammoth feat of audio
engineering. But wait, how do you even get 20
voices stacked on top of each other without a
computer? I mean, there's no Pro Tools in 1971.
No, not at all. There's no digital software where
you just copy and paste a vocal take. I am trying
to wrap my head around the painstaking physical
reality of recording one guy 20 separate times
onto analog magnetic tape. It is incredibly difficult.
It requires a process called bouncing, and the
margin for error is effectively zero. Zero margin
for error. Literally zero. Picture yourself sitting
at a mixing desk in 1971. You're working with
a four -track or maybe an eight -track tape machine.
Okay. So to get 20 voices, Don Elliott has to
sing three distinct harmony parts onto three
separate tracks. Then the engineer has to mix
those three tracks perfectly and bounce or combine
them down onto a single open track. Just to free
up the tape so he can sing more layers. Yes,
exactly. But here's the mechanism that makes
this so dangerous. Every time you bounce analog
tape, you suffer what is called generation loss.
Generation loss. Yes. The magnetic tape literally
degrades. It has a layer of static and tape hiss.
Oh, wow. So if you do this 20 times poorly by
the final bounce, the vocals will sound like
they're buried under a waterfall of white noise.
That sounds like a nightmare. It is. Quincy Jones
and his engineers had to manage the acoustic
frequencies and the physical tate so flawlessly
that by the 20th voice it still sounded like
a pristine sweeping choir behind Roberta Flack.
That is just, I mean, one slight mistake on the
mix down and you ruin hours of work. You can't
just hit undo. No, you have to physically rewind
or in some cases, take a literal razor blade
to the tape, cut out the mistake and splice it
back together with adhesive. Razor blade. That
is so stressful. Even think about. But it speaks
to the broader philosophy of the album. Jones
wasn't just composing notes on a page. He was
using the recording studio itself as an instrument.
He was pushing the physical limits of magnetic
tape to architect unique sounds. Which totally
explains some of the other bizarre and brilliant
inclusions the article mentions. Right. Like
you've got Doug Kershaw, who is primarily known
for country and Cajun music, playing a solo violin
on a funk track called Red Eye Run and Train.
A very unexpected pairing. Totally. And then
there's this massive sprawling track called Brooks
50 Cent Tour main title collage that clocks in
at an exhausting nine minutes and 35 seconds.
And it features vocals by Little Richard. And
that is exactly why The Vinyl Factory highlights
those sudden soulful moods. When you have a nine
and a half minute collage or a 20 voice choir
constructed from one man's vocal chords, you
are creating an emotional texture that a standard
three minute pop song simply cannot achieve.
Yeah, it's completely different scale. Exactly.
It requires time, space, and a profound willingness
to be entirely unconventional. So we have this
wildly unconventional, incredibly difficult to
record album. And despite all the genius behind
it, that meticulous sonic architecture really
might have just faded into obscurity as another
forgotten 1970s movie tie -in. I mean, it was
tied to a Warren Meade film that came out, had
its theatrical run, and largely faded from the
mainstream. consciousness. If things had progressed
normally, it would have easily remained a piece
of obscure trivia. It would be locked away for
those completists the All Music Review mentioned
to hunt down yard sales. But it didn't stay buried.
No, it didn't. Because there is a specific group
of people who meticulously hunt for forgotten
sounds. The crate diggers. The architects of
the next era. Exactly. The hip -hop producers
of the 1990s. This is where the story of the
dollar soundtrack takes on a f - fascinating
second life. It shifts from a 1970s film score
to the backbone of a new genre. The source material
lists out this incredible afterlife. GameStar,
Absolute Royalty, and East Coast Hip -Hop sampled
the track Snow Creatures. Plassy. Then you have
Mobb Deep sampling a track called Kitty with
the Bent Frame. And the article explicitly notes
that this Mobb Deep sample is connected to their
legendary track, Shook Ones Part 2. Which, for
anyone familiar with 90s rap, is arguably one
of the most famous, atmospheric, and menacing
beats in the history of the genre. I have to
admit, as a fan, the journey of these songs is
completely staggering to me. It really is something.
Quincy Jones creates Kitty with the Bent Frame
to score a tense scene in a 1971 Hollywood heist
film. The critics call it a ramshackle mess.
And then, decades later, that exact piece of
audio becomes the dark, gritty foundation of
90s East Coast hip hop. It's poetry, really.
But wait, I need to ask. Why this album? With
millions of records pressed in the 70s, why were
90s producers so obsessed with an obscure Quincy
Jones film score? If we connect this to the bigger
picture, it really illuminates the entire philosophy
and mechanism of hip hop sampling. OK, how so?
You see, the exact elements that made this album
seem ramshackle and experimental to a traditional
1970s critic are precisely the qualities that
provided the raw, atmospheric textures that 1990s
hip -hop required. Oh, wow. So the lack of a
traditional pop structure was actually a selling
point for a producer in the 90s. Absolutely.
A hip -hop producer using an Akai MPC sampler
isn't looking for a finished polished song to
copy. Right. They're looking for isolated moments.
They are hunting for what is called a break.
The break. Yeah. That's the few seconds in a
track where the melody drops out and the drummer
just keeps the rhythm going. That isolated drum
break by Paul Humphrey can be looped infinitely
to keep a dance floor moving. Just playing that
same couple of seconds over and over. Exactly.
or they're looking for a weird resonant chord
from that Rhodes piano we discussed, or the eerie
tension of a 20 -voice choir made of one man.
So they aren't taking the whole song at all.
They're literally slicing it up. Exactly. It's
like taking a magnifying glass to a massive,
complex Renaissance painting. You find one tiny
brushstroke of strange dark blue paint in the
background. and you zoom in on just that one
stroke to paint a completely new, gritty, modern
portrait. I love that image. Quincy Jones built
a sonic landscape so rich and layered that producers
30 years later could just chop up a two -second
waveform, pitch it down so it sounds deeper and
more menacing, and build an entire world out
of it. That makes the completist insult look
pretty foolish in hindsight. I mean, the music
didn't die, it evolved. It found its true audience.
And it wasn't just hip -hop that repurposed it,
either. The article mentions international and
cross -genre covers that kept this music alive
across the globe. The reach extended far beyond
the boroughs of New York. Right. You've got La
Mangus Band, which is a Spanish funk band, doing
a full cover of Money Runner. Yeah. And then
Corduroy, an acid jazz band covered Little Richard's
Money, is on their 1992 debut album, Dad Man
Cat. and then they played it again on a 1994
live album recorded all the way in Japan. That's
amazing. The cultural penetration of this one
obscure soundtrack is everywhere. It speaks to
the universal appeal of those raw, isolated grooves.
Once the music was decoupled from the heist movie,
it became a toolkit for musicians across the
world, regardless of their native language or
genre. And that, ultimately, is why you should
care about this dupe dive. It proves that true
creative genius, whether that's Quincy Jones
manipulating analog tape to sneak a 20 -voice
choir into a movie score or assembling a cross
-label supergroup of session players just to
get the perfect funk groove, it never really
dies. It just transforms. Exactly. It doesn't
matter if the critics don't get it right away
or if they dismiss it as an experimental mess.
It just goes underground. It waits in the dusty
vinyl crates acting as a time capsule, patiently
waiting to be rediscovered by the next generation
of visionaries who know exactly what to do with
it. And this raises an important question, something
really compelling to think about long after we
wrap up today's deep dive. What's that? Well,
if an overlooked, supposedly completist soundtrack
from a 1971 heist movie ended up secretly shaping
the atmospheric sound of 1990s hip hop, what
supposedly throwaway or background piece of media
being produced right now might end up being the
secret foundation for the music of 2050. Oh,
man. That is a wild thought. Right. Imagine some
random compressed menu music from a smartphone
game today being slowed down and looped to become
the backbone of the next global musical revolution
30 years from now. It's entirely possible. It
just goes to show you never really know what
you're going to find when you crack open that
time capsule. You might just find the future.
Very true. Well, thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive. Keep digging, keep listening,
and we'll catch you on the next one.