Monty Norman - The first man of James Bond music

This was not a problem for Barry's orchestration either as he was also into the big band sound. And so what Monty created out of Bad Sign Good Sign was the finished number called The James Bond Theme. Monty is on record saying that John Barry's orchestration is still, for him, the definitive orchestration of his theme.

The rest, as they say, is history. Dr No was the beginning of the whole successful Bond industry.Nobody could have predicted how successful it would be. Note: After over 40 years Monty has recorded Bad Sign Good Sign for his album Completing The Circle. It has been recorded exactly as it would have been if A House For Mr Biswas had been produced on stage with Sitar, Tabla and original lyrics.

Broccoli and Saltzman were obviously happy with every aspect of its success and to Monty's delight, offered him their next film, starring Bob Hope, called Call Me Bwana.

Saltzman was the executive producer on this one. Monty wrote a theme title song for Bob Hope to sing and spent many happy hours at the studio teaching his childhood comedic hero the words and music. Nevertheless it was taking up more time then the call of duty required and it was beginning to eat into other important schedules.

Still, when all the work was concluded and recorded it was nice to know that everyone, especially Bob Hope and Harry Saltzman were happy with the outcome.