David Keith McCallum, Jr. (born September 19, 1933) is a prolific Scottish actor and the son of concertmaster violinist David McCallum, Sr.. He is best known for his role as Illya Kuryakin, a Russian-born secret agent, on the popular 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E..
Although McCallum subsequently became a familiar face on television, he was never able to achieve the same level of popular success as he had done with his role as Kuryakin. His best-known roles were in Sapphire and Steel (opposite Joanna Lumley), as the lead in a 1970s remake of The Invisible Man, and as Judas Iscariot in The Greatest Story Ever Told.
In the 1960s, McCallum recorded some albums for Capitol Records with producer David Axelrod, such as Music: A Bit More of Me (1966) and Music: It’s Happening Now! (1967). The most well known of his pieces today is arguably The Edge, which was sampled by Dr. Dre as the intro and riff to the track The Next Episode. There is some controversy over what role McCallum actually played in these recordings, as he did not sing on the tracks (they are instrumentals), nor did he write them.
DJ Majestic Mood played a really nice set a few weeks ago at Palmenhaus. I asked him about a particularly interesting tune and it turned out to be from a weird 60’s album conducted by none other than David McCallum.
I wrote a draft for this entry earlier, but decided to postpone publishing it due to..uhm.. some eBay bidding activity. I am now the proud owner of both of his 60’s vinyl albums. I can’t wait to get back home to listen to them.
As a quick update to our Balkan tour, we’ve succesfully visited Budapest, Ljubljana, Split and the Island of Hvar. On the last night at the island we met an interesting character. He was a local island man, who had studied archeology and came up with the concept of “herbal tourism”. In a word, he was a herbalist. He graciously gave us a whole bunch of wild herbs which he had been collecting earlier that day with a group of Swiss tourists. Sadly, we had to leave for Split and we didn’t have a chance to interview him in more detailed manner. Split was a superb experience as well. Our accommodation was right next to Jupiter’s temple in the Diolectian palace, which is the most active and well preserved site of it’s kind in the world. It is part of the Unesco world heritage program and so is a part of Graz, where we are lodging at the moment.
I’m typing this at the hotel lobby internet terminal while slightly intoxicated, so this will have to do for now. Resuming normal blog update schedule when I’m back in Finland in the beginning of July.
Posted by api at 22:23 - 2 Comments »