Clint Eastwood is one of the few directors that has championed jazz in the cinema as well as selectively featured it as the centrepiece of a soundtrack in films through his directorial career. The Gauntlet is a lesser known film of his but its score is perhaps his most recognisably jazz score outside those with jazz as its subject material, the most notable example being the biopic Bird. Issued with the original comic book hero artwork, this limited edition was remastered by Warners Brothers from the original 1997 issue and comes in at around 30 minutes and includes some perhaps inevitable edited or faded out cues. The composer Jerry Fielding, who became one of the key experimental film scorers of the period, first worked with Eastwood on the third edition of Dirty Harry, stepping in for Lalo Schifrin who wrote the score for the groundbreaking original. Fielding is infl uenced by the sparsely ominous orchestral funk jazz of that score here, a typical jazz score of the time, with familiar 1970s big band exotica thrown in to the mix as well. A bolero-based track pays homage to the track ‘Solea’ on Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain and the engaging soul jazz title theme is based on the spiritual, ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee’. The latter has a trumpet theme by the then upcoming Dizzy apostle Jon Faddis and he is the main soloist with good sounding examples of his glass-smashing, high ‘sooty’ register as well as an on form Art Pepper's heated cool bluesy alto sax, in a good period for the troubled horn man. Film music historian David Meeker notes a number of arrangers on the session among them Lennie Niehaus, a chief collaborator of Eastwood's, and the orchestra includes a few of the west coast jazzers grabbing the Hollywood dollar at the time. Aside from Faddis’ and Pepper's contributions, not one to get jazz collectors of this period excited, but a very welcome addition to the jazz on film repertoire nonetheless.