Cassavetes intended to have the jazz music of Charles Mingus on the soundtrack, but Mingus composed a number of songs that could stand on their own rather than impressionistic film music to follow the story. Three hours of Mingus and his band were recorded, and much of this material was placed in the first version of "Shadows", screened in 1958, but almost all of it was removed during the 1959 reworking of the film. Two of Mingus' compositions for the film were subsequently included on the 1959 album "".