Bill Conti/Maynard Ferguson -- Gonna Fly Now

 

When it comes to Sylvester Stallone, folks have known him to be the tough-as-nails cop or military maverick who will take down the worst of the worst in various guises whether it's Rambo or the first Judge Dredd or Cobra. He's even shown up in the Marvel Universe in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" sequel a few years ago.

However, despite all those roles and decades in show business going all the way back to the late 1960s, I will always recognize Sly as Rocky Balboa, the local boxing palooka from Philadelphia who gets his miraculous shot at greatness against the world champion Apollo Creed. Even though I never caught the very first "Rocky" as a kid on the big screen, I remember seeing the iconic montage of Rocky training and running up those steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. At the same time, reading the "Cracked" magazine parody of the movie helped me to learn about eating raw eggs, feeding turtles and punching frozen sides of beef. On a more serious note, the movie was one of the first examples that I discovered about a guy winning even though he still lost.

Of course, the theme song for "Rocky", "Gonna Fly Now", was the secret sauce for the greatness of the movie. When it was first created by composer/conductor Bill Conti and performed by his orchestra, it was all about following the epic rise of the boxer through 1970s downtown rock n' soul music (launched by that horn fanfare) as the chorus of DeEtta West and Nelson Pigford kept pushing forward with "Trying hard now", "Getting strong now" and "Gonna fly now". Since then, it's not only been the go-to song for any training montage but also the inspiration number for any tough project.

I hadn't been aware that "Gonna Fly Now" was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song (losing to Barbra Streisand's "Evergreen"), although the movie itself won for Best Picture. Released as a single in November 1976 on the same day that "Rocky" came out, it hit No. 1 on the US Billboard Top 100 and finished the year as the 21st-ranked song.

Canadian trumpeter Maynard Ferguson also put out his own faster and disco take on "Gonna Fly Now" in 1977. I've heard this version as often as I've heard the Conti original.

It's also been mentioned in the Wikipedia article for the song, but although "Gonna Fly Now" has often been used at sports events, especially in Philadelphia, in my Toronto, both the Conti and Ferguson versions have been used for the "Citypulse" news broadcasts on City-TV for years. I gather that there's nothing like this particular song to pump up the reporters. Also in my final year in band class in high school, our class tried to play the song. Let's say that neither Conti nor Ferguson had anything to fear but we had something to fear in the form of Stallone punching us in the side!

Once again, we come to the part in our weekly ROY article where we do the comparative thing and find out what singles were released in Japan at around the same time. As usual, a couple of the songs have some discrepancies in terms of when they were released depending on the source. "Showa Pops" says that all of them were released in November 1976 when the Conti original came out but J-Wiki has stated other months which I will also now include.

Naoko Ken -- Abayo （あばよ）(September 1976)

Shogo Hamada -- Ai no Kakehiki （愛のかけひき）(October 1976)

Kentaro Shimizu -- Shitsuren Resutoran (失恋レストラン）(November 1976)

Maynard Ferguson -- Theme from "Star Trek"

 

Coincidentally, I had found out how old actor and bon vivant William Shatner was just a few days before his birthday came around yesterday. I know that he's been around for a long time but my eyes still boggled when I realized that he turned 90 years old on March 22nd. 

I've shown my "Star Trek" geekiness occasionally on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", and yep, with all due respects to Chris Pine (who I also liked in the character), I think Shatner is still the one true Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the starship Enterprise. And even from a blog that centers around Japanese music from the Showa Era, I still wanted to pay tribute to this old Montrealer with the distinctive thespian delivery. 

So I'd been wondering what the song would be. When the original "Star Trek" was shown in Japan under the title of "Uchuu Daisakusen"（宇宙大作戦）, it didn't come up with any original theme of its own created by any Japanese songwriters. I even checked out the Japanese voice actor who dubbed Kirk, Masaaki Yajima（矢島正明）, to see if he had released any songs of his own, but no dice there.

Then I realized that during my years in Japan, from time to time on Japanese variety programs, often travel-related, the theme song from the original "Star Trek" was used to accompany the footage of heading out to the far-flung areas outside of the nation such as Hawaii or Los Angeles. I gather that was the case because of the wondrous and romantic nature of travel and the whole thing about the premise of "Star Trek" was going out into the unknown to explore strange new worlds and civilizations.

However, it wasn't the original theme by Alexander Courage that was the travel footage's melodic companion, but a disco cover of the song by jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson. Like Shatner, Ferguson also hailed from a part of Montreal, Canada, and in the West, he's probably much more well known as the musician behind "Gonna Fly Now", the theme song for Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky" (1976). I will probably have to do a ROY article on that one fairly soon.

Still, I like Ferguson's take on "Star Trek". I figure if Meco can come up with disco "Star Wars", then why not a glitter ball-friendly version of "Star Trek"? Wouldn't it be nice to view the NCC-1701 soar through the sky while drinking down that cocktail by the beach?

Both "Gonna Fly Now" and his cover of "Star Trek" are on his March 1977 9th album "Conquistador", Perhaps Ferguson himself, who passed away in 2006, may not be all that well known to the population at large in Japan nowadays, but I think both of those songs still have some resonance and recognition although folks would probably be able to identify the movie for "Gonna Fly Now" faster than that for the other theme song.

Anyways, happy 90th to William Shatner!