Les Baxter – Hell’s Belles (Soundtrack)

This is a soundtrack to a 1960s biker film called Helles Bells. Les Baxter is the composer.

Les Baxter is a household name in Exotica and Lounge music, but music hardcore people know he is the epitome of big, Wagnerian lounge music going back to the 1950s–total cheese, but that is the Baxter in-joke.

Helles Bells is not. This is not rock, but as rock influenced as most late 1960s non-rock scores got. If you think of the big sounds Stu Philips used on his  Beyond the Valley of the Dolls  score–more rock concept than actual rock, the comparison is close.

I don’t have nearly enough biker film soundtracks in my collection, and sooner or later I am going to have to beef this up for both musical and music-collector-ego-stroking-disease reason. But until I do, I am glad to have begun here.