Various Artists - Fallout, Season 1 - The Unreleased Complete Soundtrack (2024) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here is another guest post from contributor Mike Solof. This time around, he's chosen to do a post of the complete soundtrack to season one of Netflix’s 2024 drama "Fallout," known for its extensive use of music. Normally, I would write a long introduction about the show and Mike's post of the music. But the problem is that I confess I have never watched the show, played any of the video games it was based on …and basically know nothing about it… other than I like the music. So for this post I’ll keep it short and sweet.

"Fallout," the 2024 Netflix series inspired by the popular video game franchise, plunges viewers into a post-apocalyptic world where remnants of civilization clash with mutated creatures and survivoralist factions vying for power. The show artfully blends dark humor and action, following a diverse cast of characters navigating the desolate wasteland. A standout feature is its extensive use of music from the 1940s and 1950s, which not only enhances the nostalgic atmosphere but also juxtaposes the grim setting with a sense of charm and irony, providing a captivating backdrop to the unfolding drama.

Mike’s PDF file is a "Fallout" soundtrack guide and includes details about every song and when it appears in the show. Much like its video game counterpart, each episode of the Fallout TV show features all kinds of songs that bring the franchise's 1950s aesthetic to life. Many of these songs were popular picks from the era, while other songs were lesser-known selections. 

The Fallout TV show follows the story of its three main characters, Lucy, Maximus, and Cooper Howard, as they each race across the wasteland in an attempt to chase down a valuable head. Fallout's cast of characters have their stories interweave throughout the show, with each of their various adventures being scored by these popular songs. Since there's no official soundtrack album with all the songs, Mike decided to make one. He realized on a Fallout fan wiki that had details about all the songs on the show.

One problem Mike and I faced is how to divide the music up into something listenable. All in all, this makes up two hours and 15 minutes of music. That's way too much for an album. But there were eight episodes, and if you break this up into one album per episode, some of those are too short. For instance, one episode only had two songs in it that weren't in previous episodes. So we decided to split this into four albums, each containing the music from two episodes. 

Thus, this ends up being either one really big album, or four smallish albums, depending on how you look at it. To cover all bases, we made one album cover for the whole thing, then individual album covers for each of the four sub-sections.

The show has been a big hit and already has been renewed for a second season. So let's hope Mike will be game to make a sequel to this if the next season has lots of interesting music like the first one.

By the way, a real technical note here. I used the fan wiki mentioned above to track down the years each song was first recorded (which get mentioned in the mp3 tags, as well as Mike's PDF file). But three songs were so obscure that the wiki didn't know when they were released, and I couldn't figure those out either. So, for those three songs, I just put in the year 2024.

EPISODES 1 & 2:

01 Orange Colored Sky (Nat King Cole)
02 Journey into Melody (Sam Fonteyn)
03 Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes (Perry Como)
04 Who Do You Suppose (Connie Conway)
05 Some Enchanted Evening (Castells)
06 Keep That Coffee Hot (Scatman Crothers)
07 A Nervous Kiss (Carl Coccomo)
08 So Doggone Lonesome (Johnny Cash)
09 All Over Again (Johnny Cash)
10 Brighter Side (Connie Conway)
11 Mariachi de Amigos (Donald Quan)
12 Crawl Out Through the Fallout (Sheldon Allman)
13 Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall (Ink Spots)
14 Don't Fence Me In (Bing Crosby & The Andrew Sisters)
15 It's a Man (Betty Hutton)
16 I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire (Ink Spots)

EPISODES 3 & 4:

01 Maybe (Ink Spots)
02 We'll Meet Again (Ink Spots)
03 Tweedle Dee (LaVern Baker)
04 In the Mood (Glenn Miller Orchestra)
05 Act Naturally (Buck Owens)
06 Let's Go Sunning (Jack Shaindlin)
07 Just Fine (Michael Brown & Company)
08 What to Do (Buddy Holly)
09 It Ain't the Meat, It's the Motion (Swallows)
10 I Can Dream, Can't I (Andrews Sisters)

EPISODES 5 & 6:

01 Jet Tones (Henry)
02 Robin in the Pine (Bonnie Guitar)
03 Battle Hymn of the Republic (Rick Rhodes & Danny Pelfrey)
04 National Pride (Cedric King Palmer)
05 Ladyfingers (Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass)
06 What a Difference a Day Makes (Dinah Washington)
07 It's Just a Matter of Time (Brook Benton)
08 Texas and Beyond (John Scott)
09 Improvisation on Tchaikowsky's Pathetique Andante (Django Reinhardt)
10 Dardanella (Alvino Rey)
11 The Theme from a Summer Place (Percy Faith & His Orchestra)
12 Lonely Hours (Gene Armstrong)
13 Summer in Love (Romolo Grano)
14 Give Me the Simple Life (June Christy)
15 Skitter Skatter (Metrotones)
16 I'm Tickled Pink (Jack Shaindlin)

EPISODES 7 & 8:

01 Sixteen Tons (Tennessee Ernie Ford)
02 Only You [And You Alone] (Platters)
03 Bossa Angela (Roland Kovac Rhythm & Strings)
04 Annie's Song (John Denver)
05 Yeah Yeah Baby (William 'Cool Papa' Jarvis)
06 You're Everything (Danleers)
07 From the First Hello, to the Last Goodbye (Jane Morgan)
08 Oktoberfest (Douglas Wood)
09 I Don't Want to See Tomorrow (Nat King Cole)
10 We Three [My Echo, My Shadow and Me] (Ink Spots)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gYtxA

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5WhqrY3f

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/gDalFJYahfb6har/file

The cover art comes from a promotional poster for the show. Don't look at what the dog has in its mouth!

Louis Jordan - Radio Shows, 1944-1946

Recently, I posted a Louis Jordan album here. I'm kind of amazed that I was able to post some music of his that was unreleased (or only released on "grey market" quasi-bootlegs), because his music dates so far back that you'd think all of it would have either been officially released by now or lost forever. But it turns out there's more unreleased Louis Jordan music out there. I don't know of any decent sounding live recordings in front of an audience from his 1940s prime era, but this is close. These are different performances of his songs that were played on radio shows.

What radio shows exactly these come from is mostly a mystery to me. The source bootleg recordings I found had little to no documentation. I've had to piece much of this together using guesswork and logic. For instance, knowing when each of his singles came out allowed me to guestimate the years for these sessions. That said, the majority of these performances come from radio shows done by the US military during World War II. American soldiers were stationed all over the world, and they wanted to be entertained. Louis Jordan was one of the most popular musical artists of the era, especially with black audiences, so it made sense that he performed on armed forces radio a lot. And since those radio performances were shipped out all over the world (on what were called V-discs), some of them survived to this day.

I find this is an interesting slice of life for life in the 1940s, especially life during World War II. If you listen to the lyrics, you'll notice that some of the songs specifically address issues of the time, such as shortages in "You Can't Get That No More" or going from the military back to civilian life in "Reconversion Blues." And the title of "(My Feet Are Killing Me Marching In) The Infantry Blues" speaks for itself.

I'm really surprised that these recordings haven't been properly released, because the sound quality is pretty good. There even are some songs that he didn't release otherwise, such as "Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe," "You Was Right Baby," and "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie," or only came out in different versions much later, like "Ofay and Oxford Gray." By the way, that latter song is an appeal to racial harmony that wasn't released at the time because dealing with any racial issue apparently was too hot of a topic to touch.

I have another album of his US military radio shows from 1943, but the sound quality is a little bit poorer. Please let me know if you're interested in that. I'm veering so far from the rest of the music I post here that I have doubts if many people are interested.

If you're not that familiar with Louis Jordan's stuff, you might want to give this a shot. This isn't exactly a "best of," but his popularity was peaking during these years, and many of his biggest hits are here. The other songs are almost always lively and entertaining.

This album is 58 minutes long. And by the way, if anyone can help me pin down the exact sourcing for some of the song's mp3 tags, I'd appreciate it.

01 Knock Me a Kiss (Louis Jordan)
02 Five Guys Named Moe (Louis Jordan)
03 Jumpin' at the Jubilee (Louis Jordan)
04 talk (Louis Jordan)
05 You Can't Get That No More (Louis Jordan)
06 The End of My Worry (Louis Jordan)
07 I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (Louis Jordan)
08 Better Off without You (Louis Jordan)
09 talk (Louis Jordan)
10 The Chicks I Pick Are Slender and Tender and Tall (Louis Jordan)
11 talk (Louis Jordan)
12 [My Feet Are Killing Me Marching In] The Infantry Blues (Louis Jordan)
13 How High Am I (Louis Jordan)
14 Hey, Now Let's Live (Louis Jordan)
15 talk (Louis Jordan)
16 Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby (Louis Jordan)
17 Caldonia (Louis Jordan)
18 talk (Louis Jordan)
19 Bahama Joe (Louis Jordan)
20 Nobody but Me (Louis Jordan)
21 talk (Louis Jordan)
22 You Was Right Baby (Louis Jordan)
23 talk (Louis Jordan)
24 Ofay and Oxford Gray (Louis Jordan)
25 talk (Louis Jordan)
26 Reconversion Blues (Louis Jordan)
27 talk (Louis Jordan)
28 Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe (Louis Jordan)
29 talk (Louis Jordan)
30 Don't Worry 'bout That Mule (Louis Jordan)
31 Pinetop's Boogie Woogie [Instrumental] (Louis Jordan)
32 Choo-Choo Ch' Boogie (Louis Jordan)
33 Let the Good Times Roll (Louis Jordan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262607/LouisJ_1944-1946_RdioShows_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I wanted to do something that would fit the artistic style of the 1940s. That's really hard to get right this many decades later though. So I got around that problem by using a color poster to one of his 1940s movies. All I did was crop the rectangular poster to fit a square album cover space, then remove some text and add in some other text.

Louis Jordan - Unique Soundies & Radio Broadcasts (1942-1947)

Here's something out of left field compared to what I usually post here. I've never posted music from the 1940s before. Generally speaking, I only have a limited appreciation of music before the rock and roll era (which began around 1955), but I'll make a big exception for Louis Jordan. I enjoy the "jump blues" style that he was the king of. In my opinion, it was the most rocking music prior to rock and roll, and it has lots of humor and period charm. I think he gets underappreciated these days compared to some other famous pre-rock and roll artists, but he was massively popular with black audiences in the 1940s, and with good reason.

I never posted any of his music prior to this, because everything I had from him was officially released, and I don't like to post that sort of thing unless I have a special reason. But recently I discovered that there's a bunch of his songs that STILL have never been officially released, and they're generally really good! 

The reason many of these recordings exist due to a strange, short-term phenomenon called "soundies." You can see the Wikipedia entry about that here:

Soundies - Wikipedia

Here's how I see it. When soundies began in 1940, television as we know it hadn't even been invented yet. Soundies were much like music videos of later decades, giving fans a rare chance to actually see as well as hear the musicians they loved. You put a dime into a machine and then were able to watch a visual performance of a song. Louis Jordan made more soundies than most, probably because he was so popular, plus he and his band had a lot of visual charisma that fit the format well. At the same time, albums hadn't caught on much yet (his first album wasn't released until 1946, despite him having many hits prior to that), so he could only release a limited number of songs as singles. Thus, many of the songs he performed as soundies were never otherwise recorded in the studio. 

I was able to find a collection of his soundie videos (through SoulseekQT) and converted them to mp3s. There are many more than what I've presented here, but I've only included songs that I believe aren't on any of his archival albums. In addition, about half of the songs are ones that he performed for various radio shows but again weren't recorded in the studio. (Technically, many of these songs have been released on album, but I believe those are dubious "grey market" releases that aren't officially sanctioned, so I don't count those.)

By the way, the soundies phenomenon ended in 1947, when the main company making them folded. I suspect that was due to a changing market after World War II (which ended in 1945), especially the sudden rise of television.

I think many of these songs are among his best. I particularly like the first one, "Old Man Mose." You can watch the soundie for that one and many of the others on YouTube. In that video, he gives an amusing parody performance of an evangelical preacher.

The only problem with these soundie recordings is that some of them are fairly rough. There were a couple of songs I excluded because they were too rough. There are three more I've only included as bonus tracks, due to sound quality issues. A couple more that I did include here, such as "Good Morning Heartache" are borderline. But the most of the songs sound surprisingly good for unreleased recordings going all the way back to the 1940s.

This album is 37 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

By the way, I've recently come across some other interesting and rare Louis Jordan music. Let me know if you're interested in me posting that here, since this type of music is different from what I usually post.

01 Old Man Mose (Louis Jordan)
02 Down, Down, Down (Louis Jordan)
03 Fuzzy Wuzzy (Louis Jordan)
04 Jordan Jive [Instrumental] (Louis Jordan)
05 If You Can't Smile and Say Yes [Please Don't Cry and Say No] (Louis Jordan)
06 Let Your Hair Down, Baby (Louis Jordan)
07 When I Grow Too Old to Dream (Louis Jordan)
08 Re-Bop [Instrumental] (Louis Jordan)
09 Baby, You're Just Too Darned Good to Be True (Louis Jordan)
10 Seventh Avenue (Louis Jordan)
11 Honey Child (Louis Jordan)
12 Tillie (Louis Jordan)
13 Sweatin' on Swing Street [Instrumental] (Louis Jordan)
14 Good Morning Heartache (Louis Jordan)
15 Wham, Sam [Dig Them Gams] (Louis Jordan)

Hold On (Louis Jordan)
In the Land of the Buffalo Nickel (Louis Jordan)
Long Legged Lizzie (Louis Jordan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262603/LouisJ_1942-1947_UnqueSoundiesRadioBroadcasts_atse.zip.html

I'm happy at how the cover art turned out. I based it on a poster for a 1946 movie called "Beware" that starred Louis Jordan. I cropped it, changed the text, and made other changes to get the best parts of the rectangular poster into a square space. I also added the record company logo and a couple other little touches to mimic the look of his earliest albums.