Music Album Review: 'Raiders of the Lost Ark: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack'

He is always close at hand, in a very positive way, musically; he’s extremely fond of music. His greatest pleasure, he tells me…and I believe him…is the time when he can come sit on the stage and listen to the orchestra play as we accompany the film. – John Williams on Steven Spielberg, in an interview with Lukas Kendall

Not too long ago in a country not so far away, adventurer-archeologist, Indiana Jones, embarked on a historically significant search for the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Joining him on this supernatural treasure hunt was the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of composer John Williams. Were it not for many crucial bursts of dramatic symphonic accompaniment, Indiana Jones would surely have perished in a forbidding temple in South America or in the oppressive silence of the great Sahara Desert. – Steven Spielberg in his director’s note for the 1981 album of the Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack

In the spring of 1981, Columbia Records – which at the time was still owned by its original corporate parent, CBS – released Raiders of the Lost Ark: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, a 41-minute long compilation of selected themes and cues from Steven Spielberg’s eponymous action-adventure movie.

Following the recording industry’s long-standing technique of releasing “greatest hits from the original score,” the Columbia Records version of the Raiders score is rather spare; the vinyl LP and cassette releases only contain nine tracks arranged by John Williams’ long-time orchestrator Herbert W. Spencer (1905-1992) and with additional orchestrations by Al Woodbury. 

The original Columbia Records album cover featured Richard Amsel's poster art for the June 1981 release of Raiders of the Lost Ark. (C) 1981 Columbia Records and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

1.      "The Raiders March" (a.k.a. "Indiana Jones Theme")

2.      "Flight from Peru"

3.      "The Basket Game"

4.      "The Map Room: Dawn"

5.      "The Well of the Souls"

6.      "Desert Chase"

7.      "Marion's Theme"

8.      "The Miracle of the Ark"

9.      "End Credits"

With a total running time of 41 minutes and 36 seconds, this recording featured some of Williams’ more powerful and romantic 1940s-style music but contained less than half of the material composed and recorded for the 115-minutes-long feature film.

Later in the 1980s, the now-defunct British-owned label Polydor reissued the Raiders soundtrack on LP, cassette, and compact disc. This re-release did not change anything from the Columbia album, but copies sold out quickly and when Polydor folded, the soundtrack went out of print.

Then, in the late 1990s, John Williams fans rejoiced when a wave of new, expanded recordings of the Oscar-winning composer’s film scores became available due to the efforts of various behind-the-scenes personnel. Maestro Williams, who had produced many of the original albums, aided and abetted by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and producer Nick Redman, authorized the release of expanded editions of soundtracks which had originally been released in abridged versions, including albums from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Superman, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

The DCC Classics Expanded Edition album features Amsel's poster art for Raiders' theatrical re-release in 1982. (C) 1995 DCC Classics and Lucasfilm Limited

Official YouTube Video: South America 1936

The Redman-produced expanded edition of Raiders of the Lost Ark was released on November 30, 1995 by DCC Classics under license from George Lucas’s Lucasfilm Ltd. A limited number of records was made in the vinyl LP format. Like their compact disc counterparts, the LPs by DCC Classics contain 19 tracks (see track list below), but the track “The Well of Souls” is reportedly longer.

The CD edition – which is the recording I purchased from Amazon in 2001 – has a shorter version of “The Well of Souls,” but otherwise it features the same content as the vinyl record.

1. The Raiders March
2. Main Title: South America, 1936†
3. In the Idol's Temple‡
4. Flight from Peru
5. Journey to Nepal†
6. The Medallion†
7. To Cairo
8. The Basket Game‡
9. The Map Room: Dawn
10. Reunion and the Dig Begins†
11. The Well of the Souls‡
12. Airplane Fight†
13. Desert Chase‡
14. Marion's Theme
15. The German Sub/To the Nazi Hideout†
16. Ark Trek†
17. The Miracle Of The Ark
18. The Warehouse†
19. End Credits

†New tracks
‡Extended tracks

My Take

A piece like that is deceptively simple to try to find the right notes that will make a right leitmotivic identification for a character like Indiana Jones. I remember working on that thing for days and days, changing notes, changing this, inverting that, trying to get something that seemed to me to be just right. I can’t speak for my colleagues but for me things which appear to be very simple are not at all, they’re only simple after the fact. The manufacture of these things which seem inevitable is a process that is both laborious and difficult. – John Williams to Lukas Kendall, on the Raiders March

Official You Tube Video; Flight from Peru

Raiders of the Lost Ark – the first major collaborative film made by producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg – was made and released in an age that saw a renaissance for the symphonic film score. 

Prior to 1977’s Star Wars, most Hollywood films – with rare exceptions like Spielberg’s own Jaws or Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far – tended to rely on pop songs and more contemporary music, with minimal orchestral music in the underscore. After Star Wars, though, many producers wanted to capture that film’s success like lightning in a bottle, and soon Maestro Williams was leading an army of film music composers that included James Horner, James Newton Howard, Michael Kamen, Howard Shore, Danny Elfman, and others who wedded symphonic scores to the films of many directors across a wide spectrum of genres.

The Raiders score came along in the midst of John Williams’ own Golden Age of composing. By 1981, the much-in-demand Williams had already scored Jaws 2, Superman, Monsignor, Dracula, and The Empire Strikes Back. He was also balancing his film career with his new post as the principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a job that Williams started around the same time he was working on the music for this first Indiana Jones adventure. 

Official YouTube Video: To Cairo

For Raiders of the Lost Ark, John Williams composed music deliberately intended to evoke the sensibilities of the action-adventure serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Made in the 1980s with state-of-the art technology and craft, Lucas and Spielberg’s Raiders “resurrected the old- fashioned serial adventure with breathtaking ease,” as film score expert Lukas Kendall explains in his analysis of the Raiders score.

Per Kendall, “Today, it’s so obvious that the plot and characters are how they are, that a hero could be named after a dog named after a state, that a film could have so many action sequences (four) without them seeming forced, and that conventions like a plane superimposed on a map are what Indiana Jones is all about. Williams provided the extra gel to make us not consider these facts – the movie is a great time; it has and always will be, and his music is unforgettable.”  

Raiders of the Lost Ark has been one of my favorite movies for nearly 40 years; I was 18 when Paramount released it in June of 1981, and Maestro Williams’ musical roller coaster of a score is a huge reason why I enjoy Raiders and the other three Indiana Jones films so much. 

Official YouTube Video: The Warehouse/End Credits

For many years, the only recording I owned of the Williams-London Symphony Orchestra soundtrack album was the 1981 cassette edition. I never owned the Polydor CD; it was hard to find in local record stores close to my house in Miami, and it went out of print around the same time that I was building my CD collection. The only recordings I had on CD of the Raiders march were to be found in The Spielberg/Williams Collaboration and By Request: The Best of John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra. (I did own the soundtrack from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on CD, but it was the abridged 1989 version, alas.)

It wasn’t until 2001 that I found the now out-of-print DCC Classics expanded edition soundtrack album on Amazon. As a matter of fact, this was my first Amazon purchase; I had tried to buy it on CD Now, but that store was shutting down and I was referred to Jeff Bezos’ online store instead.

I never heard the Polydor CD version of the 1981 Columbia soundtrack. My research shows that the first CD recordings were not that great. In his review of the DCC Classics album for AllMusic.com, Steven McDonald writes that the Polydor album “tended (in its CD version) to be a bit shrill.”

Based on my experiences with the 1981 cassette – which contains the same nine tracks as the LP and the Polydor CD – I have to say that the 1995 DCC Classics expanded edition is a superior recording. The digitally remastered tracks – mastered by Steve Hoffman from the original two-track master tapes – are conservatively reproduced to avoid that unnecessary shrill quality in the Polydor release. The result is a happy one – the London Symphony Orchestra, here conducted by Maestro Williams, sounds majestic, powerful, and scintillating.

Even better, listeners get more music for their money. At 73:35. Raiders of the Lost Ark’s 1995 expanded edition offers more than 30 minutes of musical material that was not available in earlier albums. And just as in producer Nick Redman’s other expanded editions of John Williams’ soundtrack albums, the musical cues appear in the same order as they do in the film.

The one-disc album also includes a booklet with production credits, an essay and liner notes by film score expert Lukas Kendall, and excerpts from an interview with John Williams. I found the use of typography a bit aesthetically unpleasant to the eye, but otherwise the written supplements are informative and engaging.

This recording is no longer in print, but the 2008 reissue by Concord Records – which has been available as a separate record since 2009 – is still available. It differs somewhat from the 1995 DCC album; the Raiders march at the beginning has been taken out in order to allow other previously unreleased tracks to be added – but it is remarkably similar.

However, if you happen to find a used copy of the 1995 album on eBay or at a mom-and-pop used record store, be like Indy and snatch it up. I think it’s a highly enjoyable musical adventure, and I strongly recommend it.

Nevertheless, Jones did not perish, but listened carefully to the Raiders score. Its sharp rhythms told him when to run. Its slicing strings told him when to duck. Its several integrated themes told adventurer Jones when to kiss the heroine or smash the enemy. All things considered, Jones listened…and lived. John Williams saves another life, and gives our picture, Raiders of the Lost Ark, a new, refreshing life of its own. Thanks, John. – Steven Spielberg, April 1981