“The Magnificent Seven”-Elmer Bernstein`s Classic Western Soundtrack!
August 25, 2009
Filed under Music
It looks like this week we will be parked in a dark movie theater! Tomorrow will be very special, so be here on time for my feature presentation. Today I wanted to write about how ‘talkies’ came about, but when I began probing this topic, I got mired in a quagmire of inventions and an indescribable tangle of wires & gadgets comin` out the ears. EGADS! SHOCKING! I come to find out that ‘Peep Shows’ were really the vestibles for the first talkies? Let me just suggest that The Jazz Singer was actually one of the later films to be released with sound. I will mouse-a-lie enter this dungeon of data, but don`t know if I`ll ever come out alive! The Magnificent Seven (1960) will do for now, one of our greatest westerns of all time. Based on The Seven Samurai, and with a score by Elmer Bernstein, it has an all-star macho cast that was a model for many to come, like The Dirty Dozen. 
The theme song is with me constantly-in the shower, taking out the trash *(adds nobility to an otherwise nasty task), doing the dishes, and when I open up my Ford F-150 on a afternoon drive through our lovely Hill Country. By the way, it was that Marlboro Cigarette commercial in the 1960s that most people will associate the theme with. But the motley crew always come to mind, naturally: YUL BRENNER, ELI WALLACH, STEVE MCQUEEN, CHARLES BRONSON, ROBERT VAUGHN, JAMES COBURN, BRAD DEXTER, & HORST BUCHHOLTZ. The biggest star, really, is ELMER BERNSTEIN, who composed the score, most noted for the robust staccato passages. He became the ‘Western King’ of composers, doing the scores for many of John Wayne`s greatest films:The Sons of Katie Elder, The Camancheros, & Big Jake, just to name a few. Now it`s back to the Preview Room!
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