Along with its sister-series The Munsters, The Addams Family brought a celebration of weirdness to weirdly status-quo sixties TV. It also brought along some very memorable music, not just with its cool, finger-snapping theme tune, but also its zesty incidental themes. A couple of years before it became de rigueur in the pop tunes of everyone from The Beatles to the Stones to The Left Banke, harpsichord was an essential element of Vic Mizzy’s Addams Family score. Could Lurch’s love of the baroque keyboard inspired the arrangements of “Fixing a Hole”, “Lady Jane”, and “Walk Away Renee”?
Original Music from The Addams Family originally lurched into record stores in 1965 via RCA Victor. While the record’s title implies that its music was pulled directly from the series’ soundtrack, the tracks are actually re-recordings of several themes that only appeared on the show as short cues. Length was not the only difference. The songs were rearranged to appeal more to young pop fans, though the reliance on fifties-style sax probably sounded outdated in 1965.
While the purist in me wants to gripe about the lack of fidelity to the series’ actual sounds, I probably would not spin a disc of short cues pulled straight from The Addams Family soundtrack more than once a year (during Halloween season, of course). With a groovier feel more in line with Sun Ra’s unofficial Batman soundtrack or Sergio Mendes and Brazil ’66, Original Music from The Addams Family is more likely to remain in semi-regular rotation. Tunes such as “Gomez” and “Morticia’s Theme”, with its psychedelic easy-listening vibe, make the transition from short cues to proper songs nicely. The only outright clunkers are the too cute “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Tombstones”, which sounds like a cross between the series’ main theme and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, and a version of the essential “Addams House Theme” that substitutes farty sax for elegant harpsichord.
50 years after the original release of Original Music from The Addams Family, the SpaceLab9 label reissued it on vinyl with an alternative cover photo (alas, the family was no longer in mid-snap). Now SpaceLab9 is bringing that OOP edition back again for the original LP’s 55th anniversary. The latest cover is another variation from the 2015 edition. Instead of the previous version’s four varieties of color vinyl, the latest is exclusively available with a “’Lurch’s Lament’ green/black haze” that looks a bit messy to my eyes despite being named after the Addams’ fastidious butler. The cover is different too with green rather than white lettering and a bit of art-nouveau filigree around the photo. More importantly, like the 2015 edition, this latest reissue includes a vocal version of the theme song (though not the one with Ted “Lurch” Cassidy’s interjections of “neat,” “sweet,” and “petite”) a full-color, fold-out insert with photos and liner notes, and features superior sound quality. Neat.
