Once Upon A Time In The West: The Original Soundtrack Recording

Be sure to pick up the 2005 edition of the soundtrack, also available here at Amazon: The remastering (sound quality) is better *and* there are 20 tracks, instead of the 12/13 on the previous releases, like this one from 1988/1990.

So I give this release 3 stars, but would give the newer release 5.

I was driving through the Utah desert years ago and popped this CD in. I chose to play it because, well... I couldn't find my Donny and Marie tapes. No. I played it because it was the perfect soundtrack to a solo drive through every western I've ever seen or heard. Morricone is, of course, one of the great composers. From "The Mission" to "Cinema Paradiso", his music haunts and stays with you long after the credits roll.

"Once Upon a Time in the West" was a brilliant movie. From the insanely haunting title track to the soft beauty of "A Dimly Lit Room", this soundtrack will touch you. Listen to "Death Rattle" and you'll imagine yourself standing in the middle of the desert with the hot sun beating down on you - waiting for something bad to happen. Your mind will play tricks on you. Is that... is that a mirage off in the distance or.. are they coming for you? Can you feel it all around you - the smell of death?

One of the...Read more

In popular terms, when one thinks of composer Ennio Morricone, the first thing that they're likely to think of is "spaghetti westerns"--namely the scores he composed for director Sergio Leone's "Dollars" trilogy of the 1960s. Morricone's output, of course, is much bigger than that now. But one of the best scores he ever did for any film, western or otherwise, was the one he composed for Leone's 1969 western epic ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. And like the film itself, Morricone's music has gained a foothold as one of the very best film scores ever composed for a western.

Amazingly, Morricone composed the film score by reading the screenplay by Leone and Sergio Donati, and doing this before a single frame of film was exposed by Leone himself. This meant that Leone could choreograph the main characters' movements in the film. Thus, you get certain sound elements weaving throughout the score--a lush, haunting score (with a wordless female voice) for Claudia Cardinale's...Read more