You just have to look at the subtitle to know how this goes: criminals, murderers, bent cops, drugs and jazzers – quite a homogeneous bunch, at least in the 1950s minds of the people who made the seven Hollywood soundtracks here. And, on the surface, there's a homogeneous bunch of clichés to be heard: the lonely trumpet, the sultry alto, raunchy tenors, spiky pianos and threatening drums. All in the name of ‘atmosphere’, jazz has often been used by philistine film-directors in order to reduce the musical input to mere colours, like the perennially uncredited vibes on Private Hell 36.

Selwyn Harris, who superintends Jazzwise's film page and annotates this set, makes the relevant point that Private Hell 36 (Leith Stevens/Shorty Rogers) has one of the jazziest scores here but, like Ellington's Anatomy Of A Murder music, it's not given its value in the actual film-track. Glance at the personnel listed above, which only has space for those heard in brief solos, and you realise how much major talent was under-utilised by the big studios as a result of directors thinking they knew what they wanted but “keeping it in its place”. It was Sam Goldwyn, not represented here, who reacted to an instrumental solo with “Why I am paying for 75 musicians when there's only one guy playing?“

The other soundtrack albums included are A Streetcar Named Desire, Man With The Golden Arm, Sweet Smell Of Success, Odds Against Tomorrow and Touch Of Evil (half of which is excellent rock-and-roll with Plas Johnson helping out Mancini five years before the first Pink Panther). Issued in the 1950s on many different labels, they’re now available to be gathered together in this informative package. Apparently, there's a Vol.2 on the way and, copyright problems apart, you can see a much longer series developing.