Pearson explains that a sound engineer usually adjusts recording levels so that when musicians are playing their loudest, the meters on the console reach zero. "The legend is that the original master tape had 'mad' levels on it," says Harry Pearson, editor and publisher of the audiophile bible Absolute Sound and, by general consensus, the person most responsible for creating the "Casino Royale" cult. The soundtrack, like everything else about the movie, was over the top. Bacharach, who in turn enlisted Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass to play the title cut.
And he hired the hottest movie composer of the time, Mr. He assembled a cast that included Peter Sellers, David Niven and Woody Allen - but not Sean Connery - as only three of the movie's various James Bonds. He threw $12 million, five credited directors and a host of uncredited screenwriters at the material.
Feldman, who had bought the rights to Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel before the movie series became a hit, conceived of "Casino Royale" as the film that would out-Bond Bond. The "Casino Royale" movie is memorable mostly as an artifact of its era. So volatile is the market for this LP that any nugget of news that enhances its considerable mystique can affect the price - and some significant new information, about the deteriorating condition of the master tape, indicates that the price is about to rise dramatically. They swap stories about the legendary recording session in London, spend hundreds of dollars for a pristine copy if and when they can find one, and then, like oenophiles who wouldn't dream of opening a 1945 Lafite-Rothschild, often refuse to listen to it. What interests audiophiles is the quality of sound. "Some people enjoy it," says one rare-record dealer, shrugging. Collectors of "Casino Royale" aren't necessarily interested in the music.
This unlikely choice - a jaunty Burt Bacharach score for a James Bond spoof - makes sense only if one disregards traditional criteria for liking an album. the original soundtrack of the 1967 movie "Casino Royale." It represents "the paradigm," says one audiophile, "the paramount, if you will." Of all the millions of recordings released in the 114 years since Thomas Edison asked, "What hath God wrought?" this album has come closest to achieving the potential of a vanishing medium. As vinyl verges on extinction, one album has emerged as the prime specimen of the species.