Monty Norman

Monty Norman ( born April 4, 1928 in London) is a singer, lyricist and composer of musicals and film scores. He became internationally known through the composition of the title " Bad Sign, Good Sign ", which hunts by John Barry instrumental tracks re-arranged for the James Bond film music from James Bond Dr. No was. The James Bond Theme was for acoustic hallmark of this film series.

• 3.1 James Bond

Curriculum vitae

Norman was born in the East End of London, the son of Jewish parents. Norman's father was an immigrant from Latvia. During the Second World War he was evacuated from London and served as a young assistant in the National Service of the Royal Air Force, where he began to take an interest in singing later.

At the beginning of the 1950s and 1960s, Norman was a singer member of the Big Bands by Cyril Stapleton, Stanley Black and Ted Heath and stood beside known actors, such as Benny Hill, Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Worth, Tommy Cooper, Jimmy James, Tony Hancock, Jimmy Edwards and Max Miller, also in various variety shows on. One of his songs, False Hearted Lover, even reached international fame.

In the late 1950s, Norman moved more and more on composing. He also created songs for the artist Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele, Count Basie and Bob Hope, as well as texts for theater productions, as for the musical Make Me An Offer ( the English version of the musical " Irma La Douce " ) or Expresso Bongo ( the later became known as the first rock and roll musical) and later also for films, including the sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth caught fire " ( the Day the earth caught fire, 1961), the horror film "Beat 12 in London" ( the Two Faces of Doctor Jekyll, 1960) and the comedy " Bob on Safari " ( Call Me Bwana, 1963) with Bob Hope belong.

The most famous single tracks by Monty Norman appears to be the " James Bond Theme " from the first film of the series. There are already two trials were held on the authorship, in which Norman authorship was awarded. In the DVD documentary Inside Dr. No Norman sings the first verse of a song he had written years earlier for a stage production and in various passages has already echoes of the James Bond theme (see Chapter Completing The Circle ).

Since 2004, Norman is working on an autobiography entitled A Walking Stick Full of Bagels, as well as the setting of the novel Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and a new edition of his musicals Quick Quick Slow by 1970.

Completing The Circle

In autumn 2005, Norman released a double CD with his older and newly written songs under the title Completing The Circle. Of particular interest are the five pieces on the second CD, which are all musical in conjunction with Norman's work for Dr. No. Norman has first released the original version of the James Bond theme here, the song Bad Sign, Good Sign, which served him as mentioned above as a template for the famous theme. On the album the song is heard as he had written it for the never realized Musical A House For Mr. Biswas. The commercial success of Completing The Circle remained modest, as the producer of the album Gerry Bron told on request.