Canto Morricone Songbook
VOLUME 2: WESTERN SONGS AND BALLADS
BCD 16245-AH
This second volume of our Morricone tribute anthology is devoted to the composer's Western songs and political ballads from the '60s and '70s. These works tell of heroic deeds and bloody battles, some wrought for social justice, some fought for vengence or gold. These muscular themes are always totally subservient to the special needs of the genre films they mascot, and yet they never deny Morricone's intensely personal inclinations as an artistic genius. It should not be necessary to describe Morricone's involvement in the creation and evolution of the "Italian Western sound". Suffice to say that he, along with Bruno Nicolai, Francesco DeMasi, Piero Piccioni, Alessandro Alessandroni, Nico Fidenco, Benedetto Ghiglia, and a few others, completely changed the temperament and implications of the traditional American Western soundtrack format. The focus of Italian cowboy films shifted to a severely allegorical/mythological agenda which put accent on "male style", specifically as regards death - how, when, and why a man lives or dies becomes the focal point of the Italian Western warriors.
Christy (together with Edda Dell'Orso, Nora Orlandi and Lydia MacDonald) was, during the peak period of the '60s and '70s, one of the most prominant and impressive female voices of Italian film music. She is present on Canto Volume 1, and opens this collection with the revengeful and defiant Al Messico Che Vorrei from TEPEPA. Morricone's inciting battle cry concerns itself with social turbulence in revolutionary Mexico. Christy's proud strong voice returns with Corri Uomo Corri (Run Man, Run) from the soundtrack of LA RESA DEI CONTI (THE BIG GUNDOWN). It should be rather difficult to think of many other vocal demonstrations which have been ignited with such a degree of conviction, Christy performs Run Man, Run with an almost irrational ferocity.
Raoul, the powerful vocalist on most of Francesco DeMasi's excellent Western scores, probably possessed the most appropriately masculine voice of all the Italian Western singers. Raoul performs the English version of Da Uomo a Uomo, the intimidating and relentless main theme for DEATH RIDES A HORSE, a superb Italian Western with a furious and mystical Morricone score.
Three highly romantic and majestic ballads are offered here as performed by American expatriot singer Peter Tevis, A Gringo Like Me, Lonesome Billy and Per Un Pugno Di Dollari. Tevis is actually a component of the true seed from which the Italian Western sound sprung forth. His 1962 single, RCA PM45-3115, included a rendition of a Woody Guthrie composition called Pastures of Plenty. Morricone's arrangement of the piece involved, for the first time, effects such as a male chorus barking macho noises and epitaphs - "In the wind,...in the wind!". Sergio Leone, who had been searching for a new sound for his revolutionist Western A FISTFULL OF DOLLARS, knew he had hit the jackpot when Morricone played him the Tevis record. One can imagine Leone yelling "That's it!" Having been written just prior to A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, A Gringo Like Me and Lonesome Billy are the last two Western songs Morricone wrote which would still bear some formal, if not contextual, resemblance to the best of American film and TV Western themes such as RAWHIDE and THE RIFLEMAN. Both songs are indicative of the Italian "pre-Leone" habit of escalating the epic sentimentality of the American Western.
Primarily in that it is so impeccably energetic and life-affirming, the infectiously optimistic Mexican-flavored VAMOS A MATAR COMPANEROS is justly considered a conspicuous classic of the genre. That it differs so wildly from the grim sagebrush/gothic temperament of his music for the Leone and Corbucci Westerns is indicative of Morricone's allegiance to the individual needs of the films he works on.
Three more monumental songs belong within this elite grouping of "horse-flesh and gunsmoke" arias, Angel Face, The Return Of Ringo, and Eye For An Eye from FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, the second of the Clint Eastwood "Man With No Name" films. Each of the three are theatrically rendered by Maruizio Graf, perhaps the most famous of all the Italian Western singers. Angel Face and The Return Of Ringo are very melodramatic and larger-than-life. In light of the cynicism of current times it's certainly possible to find the sincere and heroic righteousness of these songs refreshing.
The 1969 mobster movie GLI INTOCCABILI (MACHINE GUN McCAIN) is peppered throughout with individual stanzas of the Ballad Of Hank McCain. Sung by Jackie Lynton, the composition provides a much more overt musical presence than most American filmmakers would ever allow, in fact, the American print of MACHINE GUN McCAIN has had the Ballad completely removed! The disarmingly undisguised character-oriented tone of the music and the lyrics create a condition not unlike that of opera, and, of course, Morricone had already instituted this fascinating stylistic twist on film music with his Western scores. More didactic than operatic is the open-hearted Ballad Of Sacco And Vanzetti, written and performed by Joan Baez (co-composed by Morricone) for Giuiano Montaldo's 1970 film SACCO AND VANZETTI. The movie exposes the tragic true story of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, victims of political injustice who were executed in 1927. Miss Baez's lyrics for the Ballad were actually inspired by her reading of Sacco's diary and his letters to his father. Scott Walker's magical voice dominates another version of this song, taken from his LP THE MOVIEGOER. This is the same Mr. Walker who sings Andre Hussein's title theme for an Italian Western, CEMETARY WITHOUT CROSSES, which was written by the famous director of many violent and stylish murder mysteries, Dario Argento. Walker's version of Sacco and Vanzetti is one of the few non-Morricone orchestrations represented in the Canto series. Another is the French language version of the hymnic Here's To You, also from SACCO AND VANZETTI, by chansonnier Georges Moustaki. It was arranged by Hubert Rostaing, and makes for an interesting comparison with the Joan Baez original.
JOHN BENDER, CLAUDIO FUIANO, STEFAN RAMBOW
Pittsburgh/Rome/Munich, 1998
On to Volume Three
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