Ennio Morricone Trumpet

Today, a repost from exactly two years ago in tribute to Ennio Morricone, who died aged 91 today in Rome. The man was an absolute colossus in the field of soundtrack composition and what a magnificent legacy he has left behind.

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If you don’t already know this obscure little gem then you’re in for a real treat. Honestly, don’t even think about leaving this page without reading on!

Ennio Morricone is the maestro behind the music of such films as A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in the West through to The Untouchables and The Hateful Eight. His work has been sampled by a long list of acts from Big Audio Dynamite, Goldfrapp to The Prodigy and, of course, Stereolab.

He is also one of the rare musicians that I would firmly class in the category of genius.

Even so, I’ve still seen less than half the 500 plus films that he’s supplied the scores to and I can’t claim to have seen Vergogna Schifosi (or Dirty Angels, to give it its English translation) apart from some poor quality clips on YouTube.

It doesn’t seem to be available to buy from eBay or to download anywhere so Mauro Severino’s 1969 movie might be an underappreciated masterpiece or, alternatively, utterly awful, but even if it is a dud there’s still an exquisite Morricone soundtrack to enjoy.

According to someone commenting on YouTube, the opening track Matto, Caldo, Soldi, Morto… Girotondo sounds like a ‘satanic erotic mantra’ and I can see where they’re coming from but from the little I can glean from the internet, the song has some kind of connection to Giro Giro Tondo, an Italian nursery rhyme that is the equivalent to something like Ring Around the Rosie.

Featuring the honey-saturated soprano of Edda Dell’orso, whose voice here conjures up visions of earthly paradises, I’ll go for a Capri beach with golden sands, inhabited by Monica Vitti lookalikes in bikinis and the most intensely coloured rainbow you’ve ever seen in the sky.

Glorioso!

PS. I only very recently came across Dirty Angels on YouTube although it’s in Italian with no subtitles. Despite living with an Italian in the 1990s, I sadly only know a handful of words and phrases in that language but I do still intend to watch it soon.

Finally, some more Morricone magic. A Fistful of Dynamite, to give it the title it’s known as in Britain, is an entertaining spaghetti western featuring James Coburn’s never terribly convincing Irish accent, Rod Steigers’s never terribly convincing Mexican accent and explosions galore.

The soundtrack is superb throughout and here is its main theme – and, yes, Coburn’s character is called Sean.

Ennio Morricone: 10 November 1928 – 6 July 2020