The Music of Western Movies and our Vision of the American West.
Music of the American West is really a combination of styles
and rhythms inherent to the place and culture of the people who occupied the
West, whether Native American, European American or African American. The music
represents the cultural heritage of the people who came to call the West home.
This music, however, is not the music that expresses the
grandeur of the western environment or the image in the American mind of a
place called The West. The music that
most of us western aficionados associate with Western America is the music
composed to accompany the numerous TV and movie westerns of the 1950s and
1960s.
The popularity of TV westerns in the late 1950s and 1960s
convinced many in the film industry of the lucrative possibilities of the
western genre; film executives outdid each other in their race to produce
westerns of epic proportions. By so doing, they helped define the West as an
expansive landscape where western characters fought and died on the advancing
western frontier. Even though I have
seen more western movies than I care to admit, it is not always the movie that
leaves a lasting impression, it is the
musical score that brings to mind a feeling and a longing for the many
wonderful attributes we have come to associate with the American West.
A musical composition can relate many things to its
listeners. A composer knows this and spends a lot of time incorporating the
right instrument, chord, or phrase to express what he wishes to convey through
his music. It really is not unlike an author who uses words to create his
images; the composer uses music notation and orchestration. In the end, they
both create a piece of art that tells us something about our world. Of the
composers who have written musical scores to accompany western movies and TV
shows, several stand out for their interpretation of the West-- Russian born
Dimitri Tiomkin (1894-1979), Jerome
Morass (1913- 1983) Alfred Newman (1901-1970, and Elmer Bernstein (1922- ). Of the four, Dimitri Tiomkin was
probably the most influential in creating the western theme.
Dimitri Tiomkin was
born in Kremenchuk, Russia1894. He
studied piano and composition at St. Petersburg Conservatory of music. His
first experience with music theatre was in St. Petersburg, where he played the
piano accompaniment to Russian and French silent films. Tiomkin immigrated to
New York in 1925, where he worked with different theatrical and ballet
companies. His big break came in 1931 when Universal Studio hired him to score
the Russian themed movie, Resurrection,
his first non-musical film. Through his long tenure as a composer, he scored
over 100 movies, which included Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington, 1939), The
Westerner, (1940), It’s a Wonderful
Life, (1947), Red River, (1948), The Big Sky, (1952) and The High
And The Mighty (1955). And, he wrote
the scores for such classic westerns as High
Noon, (1952), Gunfight at the OK
Corral, (1952) and the TV series, Rawhide,
(1959-1966).
High Noon(1952) is what
has been called a classic western in that the story has all the elements that
we have come to associate with the western genre—good v. evil, or the advance
of civilization and the conflict when civilization meets up with the savage
West. And, the hero who has to choose between the fair haired schoolmarm from
the East, or the dark haired woman who knows her man but is too indigenous to
the West to get her man. Just as
popular as High Noon was in the
1950s, so to was the theme song that introduced the movie, “Do Not Forsake Me.”
“Do Not Forsake Me,”
was one of the most popular movie
songs of the era and the winner of an Oscar in the category of the Best
Original Music. The producers of High Noon also saw the commercial
possibilities of recording the song for the growing pop music market--the
production company made a considerable amount of money from royalties. High
Noon set the trend and other film producers soon followed. Between 1950 and
1954 only thirteen percent of American feature films used theme songs in their
openings. But by the 1960s, twenty-nine percent of movies opened with theme
songs—and most of those were westerns. “Do Not Forsake Me” was popular with the
listening public for two reasons—Dimitri Tiomkin’s musical score and Ned Washington’s
lyrics.
When listening to “Do Not Forsake Me,” one cannot mistake
the western flavor of the song. Tiomkin opened the composition with the
constant rhythm provided by a percussion instrument, the Tom Tom. After a couple of measures of the lone Tom
Tom, the slow strum of guitar chords introduced the lyrics. Throughout the song
the Tom Tom continued the rhythm in the background while the guitar,
harpsichord, and harmonica played softly in accompaniment to the melody and the
lyrics.
Ned Washington’s lyrics informed the listener of the
struggle in the story of the main characters, who were forced to vet their
difference in a street fight. Added to
this winning combination of music and lyrics was the performance of “Do Not Forsake Me” by Tex Ritter.
His western (Oklahoma) twang authenticated the “West”
feeling of the song and added to its overall appeal.
Ned Washington wrote the lyrics to many of Dimitri Tiomkin’s
musical scores. In 1952, Tiomkin wrote another classic western song for the
theme to Gunfight at OK Corral
starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Rhonda Fleming.
Again, Washington’s lyrics summarize the story line of the
movie. And in the musical score Tiomkin
employs the same rhythmic techniques in the background as he did in High Noon. The beginning overture to the
movie, however, is more intense than High
Noon. A full orchestra begins Gunfight at OK Corral with a strong
forte’ crescendo that creates tension and energy but quickly fades out to a
lone whistler beginning the melodic line. Accompanying the melody is the
constant background rhythm that mocks horse huffs on dry clay earth.
The listener cannot help but imagine men on horses riding
steadily toward town. Added to this is
what Tiomkin must have imagined to be a truly western attribute to the music,
short musical bridges between different sections imitating Native American
rhythms associated with warriors and the preparation for conflict. In the
movie, these bridges serve as a transition in time and place. Frankie Lane recorded the song.
Gunfight at OK corral--1952
Probably the most popular song for Frankie Lane was the
theme to the TV series, Rawhide,
another Dimitri Tiomkin musical successes.
There is again a constant background
rhythm played against Ned Washington’s lyrics, which sum up the gist of the
program—the lonely cowboy tending to the herd. The listeners can almost see the
cowboy’s rawhide whip snapping in the air as he yells, “move’em out.”
Tiomkin’s constant rhythm in the background of Rawhide however, is not instrumental but
performed by backup singers who add the same western flavor to the song as
Frankie Lane’s rendition of the lyrics.
Rawhide—1959-1966
In 1958 Jerome Moross wrote the score to another successful
western, (and one of my favorites) The
Big Country staring Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons.
Moross was another accomplished musician who wrote musicals,
ballets and concert pieces. He was born in New York City in 1913. As a child,
he studied piano and graduated from the New York School of Music at age
eighteen. As a senior he held the Julliard conducting fellowship and was
awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947-48.
He is probably most known for his song, “Frankie and Johnny.”
He started his career in Hollywood first
as an orchestrator for films in the 30s and 40s and by 1948, as a composer. Of
the western films he scored, Big Country
is the best known.
Biographers wrote
that Moross’s western musical style was shaped from his experience in the Great
Plains in 1936 while traveling by bus from Chicago to California. Moross explained, “as we hit the Plains, I got so excited that
I stopped off in Albuquerque and the next day I got to the edge of town and
walked out onto the flat land with a marvelous feeling of being alone in the
vastness with the mountains cutting off the horizon. When it came to writing
the main title of the film, I wrote the string figure and the opening theme
almost automatically.” The main theme to Big
Country reflected Moross’s wonder at the grandeur of the West.
The opening theme to Big
Country starts with full orchestra, at double forte’, stings carrying the
background rhythm. The music goes from forte’ to a quieter melody line played by strings, but in the background
bass instruments bring home the driving rhythm until the orchestra comes in
again at full force, the bigness of the country expressed in the music can not
be missed.
Elmer Bernstein was another successful composer who has many
movies to his credit; most recognizable is The
Magnificent Seven.
Bernstein was born in New York City in 1922. As a young man, he performed as a dancer, actor and artist,
winning several prizes for his paintings.
He also studied piano with a teacher from Julliard School of Music. In
his long career, he was nominated fourteen times for an Academy Award and in
1967 won for his score of Thoroughly
Modern Millie. His other nominations were The Man with the Golden Arm, Summer
and Smoke, To Kill a Mockingbird,
The Return of the Seven, Hawaii, True Grit, Walk on the Wild
Side, just to name a few.
Like musical scores of other westerns, Bernstein opens the
score to The Magnificent Seven with
full orchestra, which quickly moves into a strong rhythmic background lead by
percussion and brass. Bernstein introduces a variation to the western theme
with his use of Latin rhythms in the percussion and guitar, which incorporated
the Spanish flavor of the American Southwest. Throughout the theme, strings and
woodwinds play the melody against the constant and strong background beat
The musical style used by Dimitri Tiomkin influenced others
who followed Tiomkin with their own musical compositions written to accompany
The Western. Most apparent in the different western movie themes was the constant
beat in the background that imitated Native American rhythms. Also, the use of percussion instruments to
give special effects like galloping horses, and incorporating such folk
instruments as the guitar, the harmonica, and the whistle into the score
produced a unique sound that became associated in the American mind with the
music of the American West.
There is one other song that is almost synonymous with
westward immigration and has been incorporated in many western
scores—“Shenandoah.” The song has been
around since early America, but there seems to be quite a bit of debate about
the origins of the song. One popularly accepted explanation, taken from a 1931
book on sea and river chanteys by David Bone, has the songs origins in
Virginia. Bone maintained that, “Oh Shenandoah” originated as a river shanty
song and became popular with crews on sea faring vessels in the 1800s,
basically a boatman’s song. Another more
feasible explanation is that it originated with Scot-Irish settlers and the lyrics
referred to their term of confinement as indentured servants. “The seven (long) years since I last saw you”
was the common term of indenture servitude in early America. Over the years,
the song has been known by different titles including, “Shennydore”, “The Wide
Missouri”, “Across The Wide Missouri”, “The Wild Missourye”, “The World of
Misery”, “Solid Fas”, “Rolling River” and “Oh Shenandoah.”
At any rate, by the 1950s and 60s, “Shenandoah” was solidly
anchored in the American music culture. The Kingston Trio wrote their popular
version of the song and included it in their albums and concerts. But, probably the person to reintroduce the
song into American music culture was Alfred Newman, who incorporated the song
into his score of the epic western, How
the West Was Won.
The listener
cannot help but feel the arduous journey westward with such lyrics as, “Away,
Bound Away, A Cross the Wide Missouri.”
In 2006, Bruce
Springsteen released yet another version of Shenandoah on his album, “We Shall
Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.” Springsteen’s arrangement of the song, and the
instrumentation, gives the song the “feel” of western migration. The song opens with the slow and soft chords
of the guitar and fiddle. Gradually the
music builds as the accordion and banjo take over. As the introduction
continues to build, the banjo player plucks slow distinct chords that give the
listener the feel for the rhythm of the river. The music begins to build as
Springsteen sings the familiar lyrics. The listener cannot help but feel the
energy of the song as Springsteen brings the song to climax and the music
begins its fade to the soft chords at the end. What ever the origins of the
song may be, Springsteen’s interpretation gives the listener the distinct
feeling of pioneer moving west.
Music is timeless and how one interprets music is an
individual experience. For me, whenever
I hear a theme from one of the many westerns of the 1950s and 1960s, I imagine
the large landscape and beautiful mountain vistas of Western America. But, the
music also relates the conflicts inherent in settling the land. Just as it was
all played out on the “big screen,” it was also played out in the musical score
that accompanied the action.