On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the first since Dr No not to have a theme song, apparently lyrics were written to Barry's instrumental, but fortunately it was decided to leave it as orchestra alone. Like some of the other Bond themes on these cheap and cheerful EMI releases, the title tune appears halfway through, I suspect it was originally the first track on the second side of the LP release. Although Barry penned his own 007 motif, which first appeared in From Russia with Love, my personal feeling is that the On Her Majesty's Secret Service instrumental is vastly superior. The terse brass chord opening soon gives way to a simple, but effective descending bass line over which the tune is laid. The energy of it is perfect and during tracks such as Ski Chase is film music alchemy providing just the right impetuous to the onscreen action.
Aside from the title tune, perhaps the best known Bond song that isn't really known as a Bond song (even I was surprised to discover its origins) is We Have All the Time in the World. Amazingly, it wasn't hugely successful originally, but after appearing in an advert has become a classic. Barry's beautiful, lyrical melody and Louis Armstrong's idiosyncratic delivery - I seem to recall reading that it was not only his last ever recording, but also had to be recorded line at a time, in such ill health was he at the time. Two further (named, but it also appears within other cues) instrumental versions are presented, the first a lounge jazz version that is essentially redundant, but the final orchestral version is sumptuous and very welcome. On the flip side of that classic, Do You Know How Christmas Trees are Grown? works quite well as a kitsch piece of background music in the film, but is frankly a little embarrassing amongst the quality the rest of the album has to offer. Amongst the songs and smattering of action, there are still a few gems; Journey to Blofeld's Hideaway starts as a beautiful elegy, loosely based on the We Have All the Time in the World melody which them appears fully in an almost comical arrangement which almost seems disrespectful to such a gorgeous tune, but actually works better than it deserves to.
A superb score in every respect, but still rather let down by EMI's aforementioned cheap approach to the CD releases of the Bond scores. A longer release is hopefully in the pipeline, but these things are invariably in the hands of lawyers, which is the last place they should be. Ah well, until then, yet another disappointing presentation of another piece of Bond musical history.
Rating ~ 
Total Time ~ 37:56