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RAINTREE COUNTY: Composer: John Green

Film Score Monthly vol. 9, #19, 2 discs TT: Disc 1: 74.02, 17 tracks; Disc 2: 70.25, 25 tracks (stereo)
***** (Top Rating)

Producer: Lukas Kendall Production Executive: George Feltenstein Performed: MGM Studio Orchestra
& Chorus, Nat “King” Cole, vocal soloist, Conductor: John Green, Orchestrations: Assorted MGM
Orchestrators & Arrangers

by Ross Care

As impressive as FSM’s monumental restoration of Kaper’s Mutiny on the Bounty is this equally

impressive reconstruction of John (aka Johnny) Green’s classic score for MGM’s Civil War epic,

Raintree County. Green’s score was the first to be issued in two commercial releases, a single LP version,

and an expanded two-disc set that still did not include all the music from this very major score. RCA

Victor released both versions, and since Nat Cole (who performs the title song) was under contract to

Capitol Records, his haunting vocal was not included in the RCA releases either. Drawing from a

number of sources this two-CD restoration includes virtually all the music in the 182-minute version of

the film, plus bonus tracks. It also reunites the Cole vocal with the rest of the score for the first time in

Raintree’s considerable musical history.

Composer Johnny Green had a distinguished musical career both before and after Raintree

County, his single major original film score. Green was an economics major at Harvard University but

during the 1930s developed as one of the great American songwriters, creating music for such classic

standards as “Body and Soul” and “Easy Come, Easy Go.” He was also an arranger/conductor at the

Paramount Astoria Studios in New York, where he worked with Adolph Deutsch, all the while garnering

considerable theatrical experience on Broadway. During the ’40s he was hired by MGM and became the

studio’s general music director in 1949. After MGM he was musical director for such classic musicals as

West Side Story and Oliver!, as aspect of his work that has somewhat overshadowed his original scoring.

Raintree County (1957), based on the innovative modern novel by Ross Lockridge Jr., was one

of the last of the big-screen studio epics produced by MGM in the 1950s. Though the lengthy book was

condensed for the film version this story of John Shawnessy, a young idealist who is swept up in two

complex love affairs and ultimately the Civil War itself, still required considerable musical delineation.

Green’s solution was to create a score built around a restrained title song and a Wagnerian assortment of
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leit motifs for the various characters, settings, and relationships. (There are at least four themes

representing various aspects of the hero’s emotional/love life).

The score as a whole is orchestrated for a relatively standard symphony orchestra that is

sometimes augmented by (wordless) chorus. (See the gorgeous “Swamp” and “Tell Me About the

Raintree” cues). The modern tone of Lockridge’s book is suggested by the on-going psychological

development of the various motifs and by contemporary studio recording techniques that support the

score by aurally suggesting the stream-of-consciousness mode of both the original book and the film’s

involved characters. This aspect of the music is especially emphasized in the haunting “Burned

Mansion/Lament for Henrietta” cues in which Shawnessy visits the childhood home of his beautiful but

disturbed southern bride. Susanna’s dementia is also first suggested here in a mildly dissonant “mad”

theme scored for alto sax (in a none-jazz mode) and distant finger cymbals. The technical complexities of

this cue are described in detail in the liner notes and, like the rest of the many motifs, the mad theme

recurs and is developed throughout the score. Major sections of the score are, however, derived from the

lyrical melody of the title song and the major love theme. Bonus cues include the RCA choral Main Title,

vocal versions of the love theme (“Never Till Now”), Nat Cole’s never released vocal for the End Title,

and the beautiful Steven Foster waltz heard at the New Orleans ball. This version also provides the

magical “There’s Another Tree” cue, heard early in the film and never included in any of the other

soundtracks.

As the notes point out, this 2-disc set is “a new program designed to encompass as much of the

complete score as possible while retaining certain RCA versions with notable musicality.” A 28-page

booklet describes the film and score’s history and offers a detailed cue-by-cue description and

comparison between the original RCA tracks and the restoration. The original out-of-print RCA LPs

became two of the most sought after collector’s items of the vinyl era, and interest in the Raintree score

remains high, as verified by the over 10,000 hits on just one of the four Raintree County threads on the

FSM message boards when the CD set was released.

Suffice to say this Raintree County is the ultimate realization of one of the most unique, epic,

and beloved Americana film scores of all time.

Link to my original Library of Congress article: http://www.raintreecounty.com/Care-LoC.html