Music Album Review: 'Jaws: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Music Composed and Conducted by John Williams' 2-CD Set

Animation courtesy of Intrada Records. Art by Roger Kastel  © 1975, 2015 Universal Pictures

"Dick Zanuck and David Brown, thank you both for giving me the opportunity to work with this extraordinary man, Steven Spielberg. The great Universal orchestra, my friend Herb Spencer, thank you, and all the members of this Academy for giving me this honor. I'm a grateful man, thank you very much." - John Williams' Oscar acceptance speech, 48th Academy Awards, March 29, 1976

"In doing the score for Jaws, John Williams has really outdone himself. The soundtrack is a stunning symphonic achievement and a great leap ahead in the revitalization of film music as a foreground component for the total motion picture experience...." - Steven Spielberg, director of Jaws, in the original 1975 LP liner notes


In 2015, Oakland (California)-based Intrada Records released a deluxe 2-CD edition of composer-conductor John Williams' Academy Award-winning score for Jaws. This reissue not only marked the 40th (!) Anniversary of Steven Spielberg's blockbusting adaptation of the novel by Peter Benchley, but also Intrada's 30th year of, as Mike Matessino writes in the liner notes, "releasing great film music." 

This two-disc set, produced by Matessino and with the cooperation of Universal Music, presents a lovingly restored version of Maestro Williams' brilliant and iconic score for the movie that made millions of viewers afraid to go to the beach and get in the water. According to Montessino, this project was challenging because Jaws was released at a time when most films were shown in theaters with monoaural sound systems and not in stereo. As a result, the score, which was recorded at Fox Studios rather than Universal's in-house studio, was not originally made as a true stereo recording, but in a three-track split mono configuration. 

The process of restoring the Jaws score and remastering the original 1975 soundtrack album was complicated, but Matessino's team persevered and succeeded in producing the ultimate recording of Jaws: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Music Composed and Conducted by John Williams.

Like Intrada's more recent 2-CD set of Apollo 13: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Music Composed and Conducted by James Horner, this 40th Anniversary reissue of Maestro Williams' Jaws score consists of two discs. 

Disc One presents the complete 54: 55-minute score for the film that contains over 20 minutes of music that were not released in the original 1975 LP album. In addition to the score, which is made up of many short cues, the first disc also presents nine tracks (The Extras) with alternate versions of existing cues, including Wild Shark Theme. 

Disc Two is a remastered version of the 12-track long original soundtrack album from 1975. By today's standards, this is a modestly-sized soundtrack album - only about 35 minutes of Williams' score was chosen for the vinyl release when MCA Records published it. As in most recordings in the soundtrack genre, the tracks are not arranged in the same order as they are heard in the film, and producer John Williams (he often produces his own soundtrack albums) gives his cues different titles from the ones in the music scoresheets.

The second disc also features bonus tracks that were not in the original 1975 album; six "source music" tracks that are heard "in-universe" (as it were) by the characters in Jaws. These include a Scott Joplin rag (as ragtime was enjoying a brief revival, thanks in no small part to Universal's The Sting), a couple of waltzes by Strauss and Czibulka, In the Good Old Summertime, and two Williams-composed pieces for marching bands. 

As a John Williams aficionado from as far back as 1977, I recommend this hard-to-acquire album, as it represents the beginning of a revival of symphonic film scores at a time when most studios were using either pop music in lieu of formal scores or spare, more "modern" music with electronic elements that eschewed the traditional operatic styles of Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Bernard Heermann. In his collaboration with both Steven Spielberg - who notes that Jaws' music reflects influences of Heermann and Korngold in many of the cues - and George Lucas, Maestro Williams was one of the major forces for the return of Romantic-era style film scores, starting with  Jaws and continuing with the music for Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. 

Although very few of the cues are long (Man Against Beast is the longest track at 5:34), they are memorable, especially the eerie two-note Jaws motif, the adventure-tinged Out to Sea, and the suspenseful Shark Cage Fugue. The versatility and emotional impact of Maestro Williams for what could have been just a pricey B-movie about three guys battling a killer shark helped make Jaws a masterpiece of horror and heroism and earned its composer his second of five Academy Awards.

Currently, this album is temporarily out of stock at Intrada; it's available through third-party sellers who will gladly sell you a copy at highly inflated prices. If you want to get it for its original price of $29.99 (plus shipping and handling), go to Intrada's Jaws 2-CD product page here.  Intrada often refills its stock, but customers who want to get popular recordings direct from them have to keep an eye on the product pages to get their copies before resellers snap them up.

Track List

CD1

01. Jaws – Main Title (0:59)
02. The First Victim (1:45)
03. Remains On The Beach (0:59)
04. The Empty Raft (Extended Version) (1:45)
05. The Pier Incident (2:30)
06. Father And Son (Film Version) (1:59)
07. The Alimentary Canal (1:58)
08. Ben Gardner’s Boat (3:33)
09. Montage (1:35)
10. Into The Estuary (2:53)
11. Out To Sea (Film Version) (1:01)
12. Tug On The Line (2:39)
13. Man Against Beast (Film Version) (5:34)
14. Quint’s Tale (2:48)
15. Brody Panics (1:16)
16. Barrel Off Starboard (1:41)
17. Great Chase (3:02)
18. Shark Tows Orca (0:41)
19. Three Barrels Under (2:17)
20. From Bad To Worse (1:07)
21. Quint Thinks It Over (1:14)
22. The Shark Cage Fugue (2:02)
23. The Shark Approaches (Film Version) (0:53)
24. The Shark Hits The Cage (2:03)
25. Quint Meets His End (1:27)
26. Blown To Bits (3:17)
27. Jaws – End Title (1:57)
     Total Score Time: 54:55

The Extras

28. Jaws – Main Title (Alternate) (1:12)
29. The Typewriter (0:21)
30. Man Against Beast (Alternate) (5:38)
31. Barrel Off Starboard (Alternate Segment) (0:54)
32. Great Chase (Alternate) (3:03)
33. Shark Tows Orca (Alternate) (0:42)
34. The Shark Approaches (Alternate) (0:55)
35. Quint Meets His End (Alternate) (1:32)
36. Wild Shark Theme (1:10)
     Total Extras Time: 15:15      Total CD1 Time: 70:20

CD2  Original 1975 MCA Soundtrack Album

01. Main Title (Theme From Jaws) (2:24)

02. Chrissie’s Death (1:42)

03. Promenade (Tourists On The Menu) (2:48)

04. Out To Sea (2:30)

05. The Indianapolis Story (2:27)

06. Sea Attack Number One (5:25)

07. One Barrel Chase (3:10)

08. Preparing The Cage (3:26)

09. Night Search (3:34)

10. The Underwater Siege (2:34)

11. Hand To Hand Combat (2:34)

12. End Title (Theme From Jaws) (2:21)

     Total Album Time: 34:52

The Extras Music From Amity Town Beach

13. Joplin Rag (Original Rag) (Scott Joplin) (2:07)

14. Winter Stories Waltz (Alphons Czibulka) (1:46)

15. In The Good Old Summertime (George Evans & Ren Shields) (1:29)

16. Thousand And One Nights Waltz (Johann Strauss Jr.) (1:49)

17. Marching Band No. 1 (1:09)

18. Marching Band No. 2 (2:05)

     Total Source Music Time: 14:30

     Total CD2 Time: 45:29