This was 80 cents. I got it mainly for the track I wanted to use as a sample. I kind of got movied-out after going all soundtracks in February so I was not as excited to listen to it again as I thought I would be when I bought it.
Normally, these compilations are easy to listen to, have a good range of material, and are fun to blog about. This one, eh, not so much. It is ok. Just a collection of popular instrumental titles from movies from the 60’s. At first, I was not sure if these are all done by originally artists or not. The album cover would suggest that some are. Others I am not so sure about. Even others, such as Ferrante & Teicher doing “Tara’s Theme” from Gone With The Wind, I am pretty positive are not original. Some of the highlights to me include “You Only Live Twice”, “The Honey Pot”, “Alfie”, and of course, Quincy Jones’ “In The Heat of the Night”.
But I got this for the theme from “For A Few Dollars More”, the Sergio Leone western, so that is what I am going to sample, by gum. Composed by Ennio Morricone, this version was done by XXX. The movie, itself was a sequel to Fistful of Dollars and brought Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef together. Despite Eastwood calling Van Cleef “Old Man” in the movie, there was really only five years between the two. This was also Van Cleef’s first staring role, as he had long been a supporting role actor beforehand. Leone approached Henry Fonda, Lee Marvin, and Charles Bronson before settling on Van Cleef, who cemented his role as a western bad ass in this and future movies to come.
I did not know this but Leone broke many Hollywood rules at the time with this film, most of which if not all were unbeknownst to him. This included a shooter and a victim being in the same shot, a horse getting gunned down, marijuana use, and a rape scene. Anyway, with this being said, here is the theme from “For a Few Dollars More” by the LeRoy Holmes Orchestra.
What do I like about it so, besides being a Morricone number? I think it it the organ part. All good western theme music should have an organ part. That was also what I was missing on yesterday’s post.
As the album goes, it is really meh. Probably just soundtracked-out after February but also probably would have liked the individual soundtracks more rather than this compilation.