Search - Ennio Morricone :: Canto Morricone - The Ennio Morricone Songbook, Vol. 2: Western Songs & Ballads

Il Maestro Morricone has long suffered at the hands of otherwise eager anthologists, if only because his body of work is so vast and daunting. In its four-volume Canto Morricone series, Bear Family has gratifyingly chosen to explore a largely overlooked facet of Morricone's career: his work as a composer, conductor, and arranger of pop and film songs. This volume focuses primarily on the spaghetti Westerns that brought the composer his first international fame (though there are standout cuts from early non-Western efforts like Sacco & Vanzetti and Machine Gun McCain as well). Morricone's work in the genre has been characterized as "Rodrigo bumping into Duane Eddy in a crowded Via Veneto," but the composer's sheer melodic gifts and stylistic invention always rise above mere Continental kitsch. The performers, like Maurizio Graf and expatriate American Peter Tevis, often bring an opera-like dramatic edge to these tales of bloodlust, guns, and gold (including rare vocal versions of the themes to A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More). The set's only minus points are liner-note shortcomings of track and film documentation. --Jerry McCulley