Westerns

The West, particularly the romanticized West of our imagination, Zane Grey novels, and Hollywood cowboy epics, inspired some of our most talented musicians to set themselves a task thorny as a Saguaro cactus: capture that huge and majestic territory in sound. Some, like Elmer Bernstein in "The Magnificent Seven," made it appear even larger than life, while others, such as singing cowboys Gene Autry (in "Back in the Saddle Again") and Roy Rogers (in "Happy Trails"), took the micro view, with the West reduced to a campfire, a sagebrush, and a hot cup of joe after a long day of cattle punching.

As you push farther into the badlands, the music begins to take on the flavor of the land itself. Ry Cooder's laconic lap-steel on "Paris, Texas" ambles along, slow-moving as the Pecos, while the nylon-string-guitar sound of "Claudia's Theme from Unforgiven" lassoes in a little of the region's Mexican sabor. And for a more martial approach, Jerry Fielding's "Theme from the Outlaw Josie Wales" glistens like the brass buttons on a cavalryman's uniform.

Even New Yorkers wanted to get into the act, as Rodgers & Hammerstein did in their classic "Finale, Oklahoma" from what was, at the time, the longest-running show in Broadway history (2,212 performances). You gotta dig that five-beat opening "O" in the word "Oklahoma" in this sample. And Bruce Rowlands' pastoral "End Title (from "The Man from Snowy River")" takes new age music to the great outdoors — in sharp contrast to the more grandiose sound that came to signify the West.

From the head-to-toe hipster black of Paladin to the piping-and-fringe Nudie wear of Roy Rogers to the flea-bitten serape and rum-soaked crooks of Clint Eastwood, the Western has always been about style. And nothing says style like music, especially your own theme. With Elmer Bernstein's majestic, sweeping vistas of the plains at one end of the spectrum and Ennio Morricone's high-lonesome whistle and tribal chants at the other, the West inspired some of our greatest composers to animate the good, the bad, and the ugly elements of what became known as Manifest Destiny, as America pushed its boundaries from sea to shining sea.