Ennio Morricone – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly Theme

I’ve always wanted to acknowledge this guy. Ever since I saw and heard The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. His scores are excellent and are just as important to the movies as the actors were. It was hard to pick one, but this one has never left me, and it made the movie what it was as much as Clint Eastwood did.

When the film was released in 1966, the music spread far beyond movie theaters. Radio stations played the theme like a hit single. Rock bands admired it because it sounded raw and modern instead of a Hollywood-finished score. You can hear its influence in everything from surf music to punk and alternative rock. Over the years, the theme has been sampled and used in commercials, sports events, and television shows. Morricone later became one of the most respected film composers in history. He won a competitive Academy Award for The Hateful Eight in 2016. Still, this song remains the one most tied to his name.

This was one of those pieces of music that changed the sound of movie scores. Before it came along, westerns usually used big orchestras or a western guitar. He tried something completely different. He used coyote-like howls, whistling, electric guitar, cracking snare drums, bells, and chanting voices. The strange sound matched the dusty world that director Sergio Leone was creating in his spaghetti westerns. Morricone and Leone had known each other as kids in Rome, and when Leone started making westerns in the 1960s, he turned to Morricone to build something different. Even people who never saw the movie recognized those opening notes.

The recording sessions mixed trained orchestra players with unusual sounds and effects. Singer Alessandro Alessandroni provided the whistle and vocal parts that helped make the track what it is. Leone often played Morricone’s music on the set before scenes were filmed, which was unusual at the time. It helped actors and camera crews move with the rhythm and mood of the score.

The album peaked at #4 on the Billboard Album Charts while staying on the charts for over a year. I went to Aphoristic New Music Reviews on Thursday. He featured an artist named Jessie Ware. When I clicked on play…there was this theme she worked into her song, so it still works after all these years. Graham also showed me a link to the MANY different artists that have sampled this.

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

53 thoughts on “Ennio Morricone – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly Theme”

  1. Hugo Montenegro took this fab theme to number one in the UK in late 1968, a big fave of mine – I have Hugo’s version along with the other Spagehetti Western themes on an EP bought in Singapore around 1970, and I also bought Jessie Ware’s lift of the theme in the naughty Ride. She’s not talking about cowboys and horses! Great track though!

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  2. Pingback: Ennio Morricone – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly Theme – MobsterTiger

  4. A great piece of music. I’m glad you featured it, I’ve known it since I was a kid but never stopped to consider who did it. I haven’t seen the movie but I agree, it seems perfectly fitted to that sort of Western.

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  5. This song became part of my early teenage years. My dad was a big fan of western movies and we watched them together.

    Later on, dad bought an LP featuring the most popular western soundtracks and, obviously, the first track is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”.

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  7. Undoubtedly, a film score classic! If I remember it correctly, the name Ennio Morricone first entered my radar screen in connection with 1981 French action thriller “The Professional,” starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. The picture prominently featured Morricone’s 1971 composition “Chi Mai,” which was played frequently on the radio back in Germany at the time.

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      2. I watched it right after you and I talked about it…I just haven’t written it up yet…I LOVED it of course. Any time I see Jack Elam…I’m happy. Bronson and Fonda…it had to be good…and it was!

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  10. doesn’t matter the genre, as soon as you hear the name of the movie, that’s the sound in your head…like Route 66…the Get Smart opening theme for me is the same ( and now will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day)

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  11. I always liked this instrumental, Max. The song opens with a tom-tom drum beat and then you hear the immediately recognizable two-note melody that sounds like the howl of a coyote.  This wah, wah sound was done with an ocarina and it was accompanied by a harmonica and some kind of flute.

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  12. I loved the movie also. Blondie and Tuco form a partnership which is a con game where Tuco is a wanted man, turned in by Blondie for the reward, and then rescues him just as he is about to be hanged by severing the rope with a well-aimed shot.  There are a lot of funny lines in this movie like when Tuco says, “I would like to piss, it’s rough.  I’ve been shaking up in this train nearly ten hours now.” Mario Brega who plays Corporal Wallace replied, “You smell like a pig already.  Let’s try not to make things any worse.”  

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    1. LOL…that is a great line. I have seen this movie so many times. Everytime I see it…I always go back and watch the other two. I think it’s the only time I can remember when a series of movies….where they get better with every movie…and the first one was great…second better, and this one out of the park.

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  13. Man you stirred up a hornets nest with this one. Lots of cool responses. Ennio is a one and only. You gave lots of new information for me on your take. I still cup my hands and make that sound he got “Wah wah wah wahhhhh”. BY the way Eli Wallach stole the movie. In a good way.

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    1. I could have picked many of them…but this one…just classic…and it changed soundtracks.
      Oh yes…The Tuco character was like nothing else. Not only verbiage but he looked the part through and through. Thats where an actor ceases to be an actor…he is that character.

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      1. I could go on and on about this take. I hear him everywhere.

        Steiger tried duplicating Tuco in another Leone film. Good job but not Eli. One of my favorite film performances. Wallach was good in this one. The sequence of him running through the graveyard looking for the name. Music , cinematography and Eli’s anticipation make it a film experience. Big screen candy.

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      2. His facial expressions is what got me. He was a bad guy in the film but…there was something redeemable about him that I couldn’t put my finger on. When I think of Steiger…I think of The Illustrated Man. That is one odd film but I liked it.

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      3. That is a tricky thing in a performance and Eli nailed it. Making a head case lickable to some of us. His explanation to his brother after he punched him in the face explained a lot about he character.
        I know that film. Rod liked to chew the scenery but it worked a lot of the time. Good actor.

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      1. Oh, it disappeared many an apartment move ago I’d say. He had one or two others that would be collectors items now, a Monkees ‘Head’ one and a James Bond ‘Thunderball’ one.

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      2. Yea both of them would be worth a small fortune…especially the Bond one. I like Thunderball…not one of my favorites, but I love the poster!
        I see one Thunderball poster from 65 at $3,200

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  15. Babe Ruth is a relatively little known British band who incorporated a Morricone song into their catalog. A Fistful of Dollars, I think.

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