The Associated Press reports Italian composer Ennio Morricone has died at age 91. A prolific composer of movie scores, perhaps his most well-known works were the scores for three Spaghetti Westerns directed by Sergio Leone and starring a young Clint Eastwood: A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
I’m no judge of greatness, but I know these scores were loved around the world. The DrsC had them on cassette tapes and would play them as we traveled by RV across the American west in the 1970s and 80s. We called them the “killing music” and they were a perfect score for the deserts of CA, NV, AZ, NM, UT, TX, thundering away out of the tape deck as hundreds of arid miles rolled by under enormous empty blue skies.
Arrivederci, Maestro. Or in the sun-blasted world of the spaghetti western, it's “Vaya con Dios.”
