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Let's hear it for David Raksin's main titles for Apache, Big Hand For A Little Lady and Invitation To A Gunfighter.
Great choices ! I like Will Penny too.
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One of my favorites is 1955's SMOKE SIGNAL, with the score composed by William Lava, Irving Gertz, and Henry Mancini. A wealth of musical ideas (no surprise considering three composers wrote it), but everything holds together beautifully. An underrated western, too. Starring Dana Andrews.
David, I've always loved the music in George Sherman's Border River (1954). I used to have it taped on reel to reel many years ago. It's a great little score. I always wondered who wrote the theme ?
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Posted: |
Mar 15, 2006 - 10:09 PM
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By: |
MMM
(Member)
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Universal-International was the source of a lot of great western scores in the fifties, including a number of Audie Murphy oaters. An excellent one is NO NAME ON THE BULLET, which is also one of my favorite 1950s westerns. It's now available in widescreen, so don't miss it if you haven't seen it.
As for BORDER RIVER, that's another great U-I score, with the new music for it composed by Herman Stein, including the "Main Title" and the next three cues in the picture. Stein loved writing for cello, and you can hear some lovely examples in this score. The "theme," if we're talking about the same thing, sounds like one of Herman's. A number of cues were also composed by William Lava and Henry Mancini, with the majority of Mancini's being in the last couple of reels. The "End Title" and "End Cast" were also composed by Stein.
There was also some tracked music in BORDER RIVER's score from the pens of Stein, Frank Skinner, Milt Rosen, and Mancini, coming from films like THE RAIDERS, LAW AND ORDER, TAKE ME TO TOWN, PIRATES OF MONTEREY, HORIZONS WEST, DUEL AT SILVER CREEK, and RIDE THE PINK HORSE. With the exception of PIRATES OF MONTEREY, all these films tracked music into a large number of other Universal-International pictures.
DAWN AT SOCORRO also has an excellent "patchwork" score, with quite a bit of new music by Skinner and Stein. Cues from this picture also turned up in many later U-I westerns.
But go check out SMOKE SIGNAL if you want to hear a "Main Title" as glorious as anything composed for a 1950's western. William Lava is a VERY underrated composer.
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I may be the only one here besides David (MMM) who has seen SMOKE SIGNAL. But then, I saw it on the big screen at the Ridgeway shopping Center in Stamford Connecticut when I was eight years old, so I can't claim to remember the music. But as always, I trust David's judgment completely.
Even when he discusses Universal westerns without mentioning Hans Salter. BEND OF THE RIVER was one of his best, for one of the classic Anthony Mann/James Stewart westerns. Elsewhere, he did a particularly good job on WICHITA, (not to be confused with his TV series, WICHITA TOWN, also a fine job, also starring Joel McCrea). The standard bearer for this particular style of western scoring I'd say was Max Steiner at Warner Brothers, with DODGE CITY, VIRGINIA CITY and a host of others. Tiomkin's been mentioned briefly here, but he wrote a LOT of major western scores, including DUEL IN THE SUN, THE ALAMO, GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL and of course HIGH NOON.
Off the top of my head, there's also George Duning w/COWBOY and 3:10 TO YUMA., George Stoll and RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, (recently an FSM release). waxman's THE INDIAN FIGHTER and CIMARRON (the latter also on FSM).
Oh yeah, Victor Young and SHANE.
Anyhow, that's for openers.
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Posted: |
Mar 15, 2006 - 11:20 PM
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By: |
MMM
(Member)
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The only reason I didn't mention Salter is because I was discussing BORDER RIVER and SMOKE SIGNAL. But you are right about BEND OF THE RIVER. It''s a "classic" western score, and one that begs to be newly-recorded. Thank goodness the original tracks made it out into the marketplace via Tony Thomas. I agree about WICHITA, too. An excellent score. I believe I have some commercial sheet music from it, although I can''t imagine it sold enough copies to really be called "commercial."
Salter''s Universal western music from the ''40s and the ''50s was a major part of the Universal "recycling" library, with cues from films like THE BATTLE OF APACHE PASS, TOMAHAWK, and many others being used again and again because they were so good the first time! While he wrote superb music for many westerns, I think BEND OF THE RIVER easily belongs on the list of the best western scores.
Also, Bernstein's THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER is an excellent "fun" western score. It probably doesn't get the respect it might deserve because it hasn't been issued on commercial CD. But the LP version offers some excellent examples of what makes the score so good.
And of course Max Steiner's THE SEARCHERS, DODGE CITY, DISTANT DRUMS, PURSUED, THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON, VIRGINIA CITY, and many, many others. You can hear many of these classic scores thanks to Marco Polo, Screen Archives Entertainment, Brigham Young University, the RCA Classic Films Score series, etc.
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Posted: |
Mar 16, 2006 - 12:12 AM
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By: |
John Morgan
(Member)
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Those Universal boys could do just about anything, musically speaking. Despite the efforts of David, me and others, I am afraid Universal's method of screen credit has done a great disservice to those talented composers.
I do have a soft spot for Max Steiner, who pretty well defined the western sound until Copland-esque tonalities intruded into the European soundscape.
Scores like HOW THE WEST WAS WON, DODGE CITY, THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON, BEND Of THE RIVER, SMOKE SIGNAL, RED RIVER, SILVERADO, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE ALAMO, THE BIG COUNTRY, SHANE, THE WILD BUNCH, the Morricone westerns, etc. all have contributed mightily to our western musical heritage.
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Posted: |
Mar 16, 2006 - 3:11 AM
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By: |
Rexor
(Member)
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I am doing research and would be grateful to fellow MB posters for their input on the best scores or favorite soundtracks written for Westerns. We probably all agree about THE BIG COUNTRY and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and SILVERADO and anything written by Jerry Goldsmith. But what about other Western soundtracks? I would appreciate your thoughts on the matter.
I'm, sorry but I for one don't agree with the "anything written by Jerry Goldsmith" comment. I just think that some of hs Western scores are beter than some of his other Western scores. My taste is more aligned with the big, bold, and expansive Western sound so my favorite (or best) Western scores- other than one's you've listed- would be stuff like Newman's, How The West Was Won, or Tomikins, the Alamo and Red River. I also love stuff like Morricone's, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and Goldsmith's Rio Conchos. I must admit that I'm not a big fan of JW's Missouri Breaks score (prefer The Cowboys), or Morricone's Once Upon a Time in the West score (prefer his themes from Il Mercenario and Faccia a Faccia).
-Rexor
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Let's not forget Miklós Rózsa's lovely TRIBUTE TO A BAD MAN (available from FSM), one of the composer's only two Western scores, and perhaps the only Greek-melody-flavored one ever written.
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