The Beau Hunks present

The Lost Laurel & Hardy Music Leroy Shield's OUR RELATIONS (1936)

The Beau Hunks & the Metropole Orchestra Jan Stulen, conductor The original music from the Laurel & Hardy comedy Our Relations (1936) represents a world premiere for the Dutch orchestra, The Beau Hunks. This music was only partially used in the released version of the film. The rest, buried and forgotten for 65 years, was recently discovered in a collection of handwritten sheet music. Now, for the first time, we can hear the score just as Leroy Shield originally wrote it; also for the first time, we can understand how familiar tunes like "We're Out for Fun" and "On a Sunny Afternoon" in a larger context... The Beau Hunks In 1992, musician/producer Gert-Jan Blom and graphic designer/researcher Piet Schreuders founded the orchestra The Beau Hunks in order to reconstruct the lovely music from Laurel & Hardy films.

The results: 3 albums with Laurel & Hardy-music, hailed the world over by press and public alike. Newsweek even called The Beau Hunks "the best things from Holland since tulips." Het orchestra soon broadened its repertoire with work by similarly "neglected" American composers, Raymond Scott, Edward MacDowell, and Ferde Grofe. Archival research, painstaking reconstructions, "live" recording techniques and period instruments are essential ingredients of Beau Hunks products, coupled with carefully designed packages and informative booklets. The Beau Hunks developed into a self-styled "documentary orchestra." Although the orchestra changes in size from project to project, there is a core group of devoted musical specialists: reed players Robert Veen, Ronald Jansen Heijtmajer, Frank Timpe and David Kweksilber, trumpet player Menno Daams, and a rhythm section consisting of Ton van Bergeijk (guitar), Gert-Jan Blom (double bass) and Louis Debij (drums). These musicians were all involved with this new album, which can be regarded as a crowning achievement of The Beau Hunks' output so far.

With Our Relations The Beau Hunks return once again to their "roots": the music of Laurel & Hardy. For their first albums, the music was transcribed note-by-note from the hissy film soundtracks because the sheet music was presumed lost. This presumption was proven false when in 1994 and 1995 a collection of original sheet music from Hal Roach films was found in a Los Angeles archive. Part of this collection yielded the notes written by Leroy Shield for the 1936 comedy Our Relations. Producer Piet Schreuders studied the sheet music, identified the dozens of individual themes and combined them with titles and "lead sheets" found in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. Menno Daams and other Beau Hunks arrangers filled in the missing parts where necessary and orchestrated themes of which no parts were found. In this manner about 95% of the original film score could be reconstructed. While the discovery of original music was sensational in itself, it became even more interesting when it turned out that much of this music never made it into the released film. The tune "Carefree" (using elements from Laurel & Hardy's "cuckoo" theme), for instance, or "Captain Winkle", introducing the captain of the S.S. Periwinkle. About half of the original music, which was recorded in May, 1936, ended up on the cutting room floor during postproduction in August, to disappear without trace. Gone was just about every element which made the score into a whole, like the Overture, musical transitions, musical effects and variations. All this can now be heard on this album, for the first time in 65 years.

Recording this project required an extra large orchestra. To this end the Beau Hunks teamed up with the esteemed Dutch radio group, The Metropole Orchestra. The composer: Leroy Shield (1893-1962) When Leroy Shield wrote his first film tunes for the Hal Roach Studios in 1930, he was in effect starting his third career. He had started out as a traveling concert pianist in the classical circuit, and later became musical director for the Victor recording company. For seven years he oversaw the recordings of orchestras such as Paul Whiteman's, Jean Goldkette's, and Horace Heidt's, in the process becoming an expert pianist, conductor, arranger, as well as a magician "behind the scenes", in the control booth. To these skills he added the young art of film composer in 1930. He more or less invented the craft, producing over a hundred of stock themes and musical effects for the comedy series produced by the Hal Roach Studios: Charlie Chase, the Little Rascals, and Laurel & Hardy. The original recordings of Shield's music have never been found.

The performances by The Beau Hunks and the Metropole Orchestra are the next best thing, approximating the original recordings as well as possible. In the detailed liner notes to Our Relations, which can be read as a detective story, we learn how Shield was interested in becoming the studio's musical director by the late 1930s. The studio wanted this too, then appeared to have second thoughts. Eventually Shield left Hollywood to become a respected and busy orchestra leader in Chicago, as musical director for NBC, and later for the ABC network in New York. He liked to work with large symphony orchestras and wrote a number of light classical tone poems in the 1940s. Still, Leroy Shield's greatest achievement as a composer is arguably the light music he wrote, largely anonymously, for the Hal Roach comedy factory. It had such high quality that it was recycled over and over again throughout the '30s, to the delight of film fans the world over.

The sheer volume of the work, its titles unknown to the public and scattered over hundreds of film soundtracks, has caused its musical significance to remain unrecognized. It is hoped that the album Our Relations, which now presents his work as a musical entity, will change this state of affairs. Film historian Richard W. Bann states in his liner essay: "With the arrival of this new album, hopefully Shield will be back, will be rediscovered, and will be celebrated for all the joy his ever fresh-sounding, joyous and infectious melodies have brought to fans -- both music fans and film comedy fans -- for seventy years."

WHO WE ARE Although we are based in England our non-profit colour 'Laurel & Hardy Magazine' (http://www.laurelandhardy.org) has subscribers all over the World. We also run an extensive website has plenty of FREE helpful information. We have a FREE Midi-Juke Box for of L&H TUNES plus three free L&H Photo Galleries and more!! And most important a valuable guide on how to spot FAKE 'Laurel and Hardy' Autographs that are often for sale over the Internet. Our printed magazine contains regular AUCTION WATCH guides with tips on how not to get ripped off. I have seen some poor person pay several hundred Dollars for a 8mm home movie thinking it was rare. Or dolls advertised to be from the 1930's,when they are Taiwan imports from the mid 70's. Our guides are printed to help your ebay experience.

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