NAVAJO JOE (1966)
Film Score Monthly Vol. 10 No. 14 / TT: 55:26 / 3,000 Ltd. / Stereo & Mono

Make that multiple screams from a chorus on crack. Ennio Morricone’s audacious score to the Italian western NAVAJO JOE (1966) is one of the composer’s kitschiest, most inspired accomplishments, and it finally comes to CD from the prolific vintage soundtrack label, Film Score Monthly.

The film NAVAJO JOE remains a cult item because of its star, a young Burt Reynolds in the title role of a mysterious Navajo who agrees to protect a town from the vengeful tyranny of a half-breed scalp hunter and his gang. But this act comes with a price: a dollar a head from every man in town for each bandit killed.

Already experienced playing an American Indian on the TV series GUNSMOKE for several seasons, Reynolds was hoping the overseas project would ignite his career in the same way his friend Clint Eastwood’s was upon starring in Sergio Leone’s landmark A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964). That the eventual movie (directed by another Sergio—Sergio Corbucci) didn’t make nearly the splash the actor was hoping for mattered very little, for we all know Reynolds was soon signed on to the TV series HAWK (playing yet another Indian!), with a steady stream of Hollywood feature-film hits to follow.

While NAVAJO JOE didn’t enjoy the success Eastwood’s westerns, it did at least benefit from the involvement of Sergio Leone’s favored composer, Ennio Morricone, the man who more or less invented the “spaghetti” western sound.

The album opens with a hail of primal screams and war chants, a cacophonous protest over the villain’s heinous act of scalping Joe’s wife. But this is just a short prelude to the launching of the 2-part, heroic main theme, an amazing amalgam of twanging surf guitar, thumping war drums, throaty harmonies from vocalist Gianna Spagnulo and a divided male-and-female “Indian” choir repeatedly chanting “Na-va-ha Joe…Na-va-ha Joe!”

With its two parts either divided or combined, the “Navajo Joe” theme song accompanies the hero throughout his ordeal, incessantly chanting his name as he enters frame, charges over hills on his piebald stallion or engages the bad guys in gun-to-tomahawk conflict. Yes, it’s corny as hell, but wonderfully so. Morricone gives us one of his greatest gifts from this fertile period: an unabashed and totally inspired collision between ethnic styling and Sixties-pop sensibilities. John Bender, in his liner notes to the CD, puts it best when he says, “the music was not meant to slavishly trace a fictional narrative involving a character named Navajo Joe—the score is Navajo Joe.”

Typical of Morricone (and Italian film composers in general) there is quite a bit of repetition of the main theme, which can be a bit taxing in album form, but at least he varies it a little bit each time, at one point even eliminating the orchestra entirely for a beautiful, hushed a capello version as Joe finds an attraction to beautiful squaw Estella (Nicoletta Machiavelli). The vocal support is so frequent and so strong, in fact, that the score en total feels a lot like a Native American Carmina Burana.

The villain has a theme, as well. Over an ominous string line, a hateful, hammering five-note piano figure is alternated with dissonant honks from a horn. As the repetitive music accelerates, the string line is overtaken by an eerie organ, fierce tom-toms set a driving beat, the strings shriek out a two-note figure, faster and faster—and then, the final touch—Spagnulo’s wailing voice—bringing it all to an incredibly tense and violent crescendo. This relentless piece, which Quentin Tarantino later borrowed for KILL BILL VOL. 2, repeats several times, including the sequence where Joe is tortured by the bandits.

In sharp contrast to this assault, Morricone gives us a tranquil theme for traditional guitar and strings. Derived from the first part of Joe’s motif, it provides heartfelt accompaniment for the villain as he reflects on his troubled childhood. This serene, dirge-like music returns for the finale, as Estella, intuiting that the mortally wounded Joe will not return from his final confrontation, prevents the townspeople from corralling his horse. She sets the piebald free, telling it to “Go back to him.” As the animal gallops away, Spagnulo’s haunting voice returns. With bracing strength, she no longer wails in outrage, but mournfully sings the melody… and all the inherent sadness and nobility of the Indian race seem to be summed up in this astonishingly beautiful, soaring piece of music.

FSM’s CD, the most complete version of the score to ever appear, is mastered from multiple sources, including three stereo tracks previously mixed for LP, a mono album master of 13 additional tracks, plus additional monaural cues that were found in storage in Italy. The producers have done an exceptional job with dicey material, and the switches from stereo to mono are not at all disconcerting. Sound can be a bit harsh at times in the loudest passages, but that’s to be expected from Italian recordings of this vintage.

Excellent liner notes are provided by John Bender, who gives us the history, Lukas Kendall, who provides track-by-track commentary and B-movie director Jim Wynorski, who explains the importance of Morricone’s score to him and how this album was the culmination of a 40-year dream.

Check out audio samples and place an order for this wonderful CD from the fine folks at www.screenarchives.com
– Bill Cooke