This thread deserves a bump and this release deserves to sell out!
I was slow in picking it up because I already had the previous LLL release of the album recording in stereo (paired with The Shootist film tracks). That changed when I found a secondhand copy and WOW I was dumb for not getting this right away. That LP recording had LESS THAN HALF of this great score! It is amazing to get the whole thing in the excellent film performance. Yes, the sound quality isn't as great as LLL's previous CD premiere of the album recording. But it's quite acceptable and clean, especially for music this good.
I must now echo several other people in this thread and declare this to be my favorite Elmer Bernstein western score...BY FAR. I'd never seen the film so I didn't know until I heard the whole thing, but it's just great. Much darker, deeper, and more interesting than a lot of his western scores, which are too happy/bouncy "surface level" Copland homages for my taste. In other words, this one is much less in the shadow of his successful Magnificent Seven than many of his other western scores like The Comancheros (which are good to be sure, just not favorites of mine). It's got more variety, and more melancholy...parts of it even recall melancholy bits of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Also, the most happy/bouncy theme in this score appears to be a direct inspiration for Basil Poledouris's fun main theme to Quigley Down Under. Anybody else notice? Not a ripoff really, but clear inspiration with a similar passage.
Oh, and Jeff Bond's liner notes (with track by track, hurray -- we no longer can take these for granted post-FSM) are ACE as usual! While I'll still go to LLL's release of the stereo album re-record when I am short on time and just need a quick fix, for anybody who likes this score this new complete release is a MUST HAVE. Go get it!
Yavar
P.S. unrelated to Katie Elder but related to other comments in this thread...as of this past summer I also have not only a new favorite Victor Young western score but new favorite Victor Young score, period: The Left Hand of God has been recently surpassed by Johnny Guitar, because I got around to seeing the film for the first time. What a haunting theme and excellent underscore! (I liked the rather unusual film too.) I even love the song at the end, and I'm not usually wild about the old song-as-main-theme trend in western scores that Tiomkin started. I'm totally addicted; it haunted my dreams for a while afterwards. I really hope one of our specialty labels can give that great score a definitive release...and thanks to YouTube I discovered the melody has had a second lease on life thanks to its usage as "source music" in a popular post-apocalyptic video game -- go figure!
It's strange with this one. I generally love Elmer Bernstein scores. I enjoy most western scores. I especially love EB western scores. YET!! Outside of the (typically) great Main Theme for this, I don't enjoy the score overall. It doesn't have the magnificence (sorry) or thrust of MAG 7. It doesn't have the fun and sheer joy of THE SCALPHUNTERS. I can thrill to THE COMMANCHEROS & TRUE GRIT & BIG JAKE. But this one always leaves me somewhat underwhelmed and disinterested, apart from the theme. I know we don't and can't like everything, but it's weird why this one never chimes with me. And I still don't hear QUIGLEY!!
