Friday, April 24, 2015

Movie Music Musings – Mining for Goldsmith Part 2

In the previous installment of Mining for Goldsmith I explored film composer Jerry Goldsmith’s work for the television miniseries. This time I’m going to look at a genre that we don’t see too much of these days. But in the late 60s and early 70s the Western was still being made in Hollywood with some regularity. While Goldsmith missed the true heyday of the Western, he did manage to provide excellent scores for a few.

One thing he was great at was creating catchy main themes for this genre. Here are three of my favorites:

Rio Conchos (1964)


Bandolero! (1968)



Take a Hard Ride (1975)

4 comments:

  1. There is a continuity in these three that I find hard to explain verbally but which I can hear.

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    1. Yeah Goldsmith has a distinctive style with his westerns. I think it may be because he was trying to avoid sounding like the typical 50s western (like "Magnificent Seven") but also avoid sounding like a spaghetti western (like Morricone's stuff). So he opted for something closer to his own action style, but with a particular americana charm to it. I think his instrumentation in these three examples is really similar too. He did another score to a movie called "100 Rifles" that has a much more Mexican flavor to it. A really rowdy score with some very aggressive and strident action music. Closer to "Planet of the Apes" than anything else. I really like that score, but some folks find it too bizarre.

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  2. I was raised on westerns to some degree, starting out mostly with television and then on to a lot of John Wayne features. I don't think I've seen any of the three movies these scores came from. I'll have to add them to my NF queue.

    It's hard to beat his score for Planet of the Apes as for me it meshes so well with the movie, or even his Star Trek score. I am trying to be more in tune (no pun) with them as I watch movies now. They certainly help to convey the right mood when they are working well.

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    1. Yeah Goldsmith didn't get a chance to score any of the classic big name westerns. But he did provide music to one of Wayne's later films, "Rio Lobo". He also provide the score to the "Twilight Zone" western, "Dust". Yeah the score to "Planet of the Apes" is amazing in so many ways. It is unlike any other score of its time (and not much afterward sounded like it either). It fits the movie like a glove. It is a challenging experience on album, but the creativity involved is amazing. Not a single element in the score is made by electronics. All those strange sounds and percussion were made in the studio by a whole host of unique items, including metal mixing bowls and a bass slide whistle. Amazing stuff.

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