Click here to hear some very rare Samuel J. Hoffman tunes...

There is a very comprehensive biography and discography here...


Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman, assuming the moniker Hal Hope, had led an ensemble at the Hotel Monclair in New York before relocating to Los Angeles in 1941.
Once in LA, Hoffman registered himself as a thereminist at the musician's local, and became the only such player listed. One day in 1945, Hoffman received a call from Miklos Rozsa, the famed composer who had recently been assigned the duty of designing the score of Alfred Hitchcock's new film, Spellbound. Rozsa wanted to capture the paranoia of Spellbound's script on the film's soundtrack, and for this, he wanted the eerie sound of the theremin. (Soundtracks of several popular films of the Thirties, including King Kong and Bride of Frankenstein, had previously utilized the theremin, capitalizing on its mysterious low howl and moan, and subtle underscoring value.) Hoffman, being the only thereminist listed in LA, was Rozsa's man by default. The rest, as a film buff may know, is history. After the Oscar-winning Spellbound arrangement, Hoffman worked on over twenty film scores, including 1945's The Lost Weekend, 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still, and 1956's The Ten Commandments.


Departing from his film work, Hoffman worked with British-born songwriter and film composer Harry Revel on a series of recordings featuring his theremin virtuosity and arranged and conducted by Les Baxter: Music Out of the Moon (1947), Perfume Set to Music (1948), and Music for Peace of Mind (1950).
Perfume Set to Music featured music that was literally inspired by the "sound" of popular fragrances of the period. The project had its roots back in 1936 when Harry Revel was sitting at the bar of the Hotel George V in Paris, sipping an aperitif. Suddenly he caught a whiff of a captivating scent wafting by on a striking young woman. "Her perfume had a dreamy, beautiful fragrance that transposed itself into a melodic theme in my mind," he remembered. The composer followed her across the room to ask about the fragrance. The woman revealed it was Toujours Moi, the famous scent of the French perfumer Corday. Revel had her pose by the piano for a moment while he etemporized a quick musical sketch, and later that evening he jotted down ideas for a full composition he called "Toujours Moi." It occurred to him that other fragrances might also yield musical portraits, and before leaving Paris he spent hours examining essences at the Corday offces. He plotted out drafts for a suite, and returned to Hollywood, but finding himself "unable to score them in such a way that they would convey the actual ethereal quality of rare perfume," he set the project aside.
Ten years later, at a party, Revel again encountered a woman wearing Toujours Moi, and that same evening, he attended a premiere of Spellbound. "The sound track used the new Theremin," he recalled, "and the subtle fragrance of Toujours Moi returned. The Theremin was the key." After Revel produced Music Out of the Moon with Hoffman, he approached Corday with the idea of finishing the suite designed around its perfumes. The result was the RCA Victor album Perfume Set to Music.
The six compositions in the collection spin evocative tone poems around the Corday fragrances Toujours Moi, Jet, Tzigane, L'Ardente Nuit, Fame, and Possession. Supporting Hoffman's theremin, waltz and Beguine beats are scented with an ambrosia of choir, harp, strings, woodwinds, French horn, and the Hammond Novachord -- an electronic keyboard instrument. Les Baxter again arranged the pieces and conducted the sessions. RCA called it "the most unusual tie-in promotion in the history of the record industry."
The project was sponsored by Corday, which launched a $25,000 national advertising campaign in December 1948 to promote the album with 4-color, full-page consumer ads. "Inspired by six of Corday's most famous perfumes," the copy read, "here's an album of unusual, magical music! You hear the strange and hauntingly beautiful tones of the theremin, with a full orchestra and Chorus."
The three-record 78 r.p.m. set soared to the number one position in Variety's chart of top selling albums for mid December, topping Bing Crosby's Merry Christmas album and Gene Kelly's Song and Dance Man. One week later Perfume had slipped to number seven in the Billboard survey, but still ran a respectable dead heat with Christmas Songs by Sinatra. "The ingredient which makes the difference is the theremin played by Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman," Variety wrote. "As a medium to project what Revel seeks to express, the theremin is ideal as well as showmanly; it also is new and exciting enough to captivate quite a few platter purchasers. Revel ... is to be commended for persisting in pioneering a musical form of vast, relatively new interpretation."