The Morricone Collection: “Navajo Joe” (1966)

Never so bold!

-Lyrics from “Navajo Joe” main theme.

Though it was released under the pseudonym Leo Nichols, the score to Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Spaghetti Western, “Navajo Joe” is unmistakably the work of the Maestro. Despite a screenplay co-written by Fernando Di Leo (“Calibro 9“) “Navajo Joe” is certainly not Corbucci’s best film (that would be “Il Grande Silenzio“), but the music for which it was composed should be counted amongst Morricone’s greatest contributions to the genre.

“A band of outlaws, headed by a sullen leader named Duncan, sweeps across the country like the plague, destroying everything in its path, including an Indian village. The outlaws arrive in the town of Esperanza, where they are hired by a crooked doctor to hijack a bank train and share in the wealth. But the sole survivor from the Indian village, a renegade Navajo named Joe (Burt Reynolds), fells the plan by relocating the money. An irate Duncan holds an innocent Indian girl hostage until Joe surrenders; the brave citizens of Esperanza, under siege by the bandits, risk their lives to free Joe, who is their only hope of surviving. Joe once again takes on Duncan and his ruthless comrades with unforgettable vengeance.”

James Southall’s review of Morricone’s “Navajo Joe” album:

“Sergio Leone’s masterpieces with Clint Eastwood were just beginning to make their mark on America when Navajo Joe came along, attempting to do a similar kind of thing but in an even grittier way; a different Sergio was in the director’s chair (Corbucci, who had made the seminal Django), and Burt Reynolds was in place of Eastwood.  One constant was the composer – of course, Ennio Morricone, whose work in this genre I would rank as the most extraordinarily creative and brilliant film music there has been.

The main title theme for Navajo Joe is a hoot, unexpected even from this most unpredictable of film composers – it begins with a woman’s screech, a primal and startling sound, before a choir sings the name of the character and occasionally utters some words of wisdom about him (eg: ‘Never so bold!’) – a memorable, striking, vintage piece of Morricone, famously used in Alexander Payne’s ‘Election‘ over thirty years later.  And there aren’t many film scores which become ingrained in popular culture because two entirely separate pieces from them cropped up in entirely different films decades later, but as well as the main title in Election, Quentin Tarantino used ‘A Silhouette of Doom‘ in ‘Kill Bill‘ – it’s a driving, suspenseful piece for the villains of the story, built around a five-note motif hammered at the low end of a piano which forms a key building block of the score as a whole.

Those two pieces dominate, cropping up in countless variations over the 45-minute score, but always given fresh impetus with each new appearance thanks to the composer’s ingenious knack for building up whole scores sometimes from relatively small (in terms of volume) ideas.  It also helps that there are one or two other set-pieces along the way – the inevitable saloon music, ‘The Peyote Saloon‘, with the piano and banjos, the wonderfully outlandish ‘But Joe Say No‘, the two ‘Navajo Harmonica‘ source cues and the breathtakingly beautiful ‘The Demise of Father Rattigan.’

A kind of legend has built up about this score over the years due to numerous factors – no doubt the fact that it is such good music is the key one, and the use in other films has also helped, the fact that Morricone wrote the score (somewhat mysteriously) under the pseudonym Leo Nichols (and the possibly apocryphal story that Burt Reynolds was furious that the producers were too cheap to hire Morricone so got this Nichols fellow instead) but its peculiar release history also plays a part, with various LPs being issued through the 1960s and 70s which were all unsatisfactory for one reason or another, and the only CD release (in the mid-1990s) suffering from very poor sound.  Now Film Score Monthly has put out the definitive release, of the whole score, plus 10 minutes of bonus tracks, in easily the best sound yet (though it is still certainly not problem-free).  Even by their standards the liner notes are good, with a short essay by John Bender, track-by-track analysis from Lukas Kendall and Jim Wynorski and a brief note from the latter about his history with the score.  Top-notch.”

http://www.movie-wave.net/titles/navajo_joe.html

Corbucci would also engage Morricione to score his next film, “The Hellbenders” (aka “I Crudeli“), as well as “The Great Silence” (aka “Il Grande Silenzio“), “The Mercenary,” “Companeros,” and “Sonny & Jed.”

Above, the original “Navajo Joe” theatrical poster served as inspiration for the fictional “Comanche Uprising” poster featuring Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood.”

Links:

Find a copy of the vinyl for “Navajo Joe” on Discogs here:

Listen to the 13-minute “Navajo Joe Suite” here:

Watch the trailer for “Navajo Joe” here:

Watch the train robbery sequence from “Navajo Joe” here:

Watch Quentin Tarantino talk about the fictional meeting between Sergio Corbucci and his “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” protagonist, Rick Dalton, here:

Watch Netflix’s Sergio Corbucci documentary, “Django & Django,” featuring Quentin Tarantino here:

If you are in the Toronto area, say hi to my Filmography podcast co-host, Bjorn, and find a copy of “Navajo Joe” at “the last great video store” Bay Street Video here:

Outside of Toronto, purchase a blu-ray of “Navajo Joe” on Amazon here: