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Film Music Masterworks - Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone · 2006 · Track 5
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The story behind
The theme for *The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly* doesn’t begin with a melody: it starts with two short notes that sound like a distant howl, as if the desert itself were breathing before the story begins. Those two sharp strikes—almost an instrumental sigh—are Ennio Morricone’s signature in this 1966 piece. The rest of the track is built around that minimal gesture, adding layers of whistles, taut strings, and percussion that seem to mimic the gallop of horses or the biting wind of Sergio Leone’s landscapes. There are no voices, no lyrics—just sounds that set the scene before the characters appear on screen. That economy of resources—a couple of notes and a handful of instruments—is what makes this music stick in the memory like an echo.
The original recording was made in Rome for the soundtrack of the film of the same name, with Bruno Nicolai conducting the orchestra. But where the track truly came to life was in 1968, when Hugo Montenegro and his team decided to give it a pop twist. According to musician Tommy Morgen in Hyatt’s book, the session lasted just one day at RCA Studios, and the result was a version that stormed the charts. Art Smith’s ocarina and Muzzy Marcellino’s whistle gave it a more accessible feel, without losing that Western essence that Morricone had envisioned. It reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June of that year, just behind Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” and held the top spot on the British charts for four weeks in late 1968. Interestingly, Montenegro wasn’t trying to compete with the original, but rather to capture its energy in a format that would sound fresh to radio stations of the time.