Published on: 2026-11-05
Source: Melodiya – An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
“Melodiya” marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the most popular 1980s audio fairy tale “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” with a vinyl reissue. The light and cheerful musical interpretation of the famous Eastern plot was loved by listeners, sold over three million copies, and without exaggeration became part of the cultural DNA of the late Soviet era. Virtually all participants in the production need no introduction — they are the most prominent representatives of the domestic acting school of those years and first-rate stars engaged in theater and film. Veniamin Smekhov, who initiated the project and wrote the script and song lyrics, managed to attract his friends to it — Oleg Tabakov, Leonid Filatov, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, Alexey Grabbe, Sergey Yursky, and Natalya Tenyakova.
The idea of “Ali Baba” came to the editor of the Melodiya company, Irina Yakushenko—listeners owe her such fairy tales as “The Little Humpbacked Horse,” “The Kid and Karlsson,” “Ole Lukøje,” and many others. Yakushenko knew about Smekhov’s passion for Persian poetry and suggested creating their own version of the eternal plot—a musical-satirical one. “It is the result of my lazy stag parties and a parody of the most boring ‘Scheherazade’,” Smekhov later recalled. Initially, a film adaptation was even planned, with Vladimir Grammatikov set to direct and Rolan Bykov to play the lead role. But soon it turned out that a Soviet-Indian film about Ali Baba’s adventures was already in production, and Bykov had been cast as the leader of the robbers. In the end, Smekhov’s project was realized exclusively in audio format, and to bring it to life, the actor made a creative compromise by agreeing to create a patriotic cycle based on Maxim Gorky’s works for Melodiya on the anniversary of the Komsomol.
The original edition of “Ali Baba” is accompanied by an introductory word from the always amazing and touching Zinovy Gerdt — as a senior comrade and people’s master of ceremonies, he presents to the listener the creators of this superstar project: “…and they undertook this thousand and first version in a genre not yet tested for this — the gramophone play — cheerful, playful people, not only literarily and musically gifted, but also — most importantly! — endowed with the gift of childlike faith in the truth of the fairy tale. Faith that simplicity is more appealing than cunning; that generosity is more attractive than greed; that modesty is more charming than vanity; in short, faith that good is much better than evil, and that good always overcomes that very evil. If in a fairy tale, then it overcomes it.”
After several leading film composers of the country refused to work on the music for the fairy tale (Yuri Butsko, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, and Vyacheslav Ganelin were approached), it was decided to offer this role to “non-professionals” — the poet-bards Sergey Nikitin and Viktor Berkovsky. The fairy tale features more than twenty-five songs, in which the actors themselves perform solos. As for the music and choral parts, their recording was handled by the ensembles “Melodiya” under Georgy Garanyan (orchestrations and arrangements were made by bass guitarist Igor Kantyukov, who had experience working with both jazz and pop performers and was one of the best in his field at that time) and “Panorama” under Mikhail Ganeev. Certainly, the genre of “kapustnik” (amateur theatrical variety show) left its imprint on the musical component of the fairy tale — the performers worked for their own pleasure, providing a maximally unconventional backing for the main stars of the production. Occasionally, the recording reveals motifs familiar from another “folk” hit by Nikitin — the “Big Secret for a Small Company” released two years earlier.By voicing the love dialogue of Ali-Baba and Zeynab performed by Tabakov and Tatyana Nikitina, the “Melodiya” ensemble, for example, delivers excellent smooth jazz, and the music for the robbers’ dance is aesthetic and full of energy funk, largely resonating with the “oriental” fusion sound of those years. The music for the performance is full of remarkable fragments, many of which will interest a new generation of “Soviet groove” enthusiasts.
The matrices were made from original analog films, and the sound engineer for the restoration and remastering of the reissue was Maksim Pilipov.
Ilya Rasskazov, Musical Life, 22.10.2026
Please note; This information is raw content obtained directly from the source of the information. It is an accurate report of what the source claims and does not necessarily reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.