lefreeakblog

Resembling the distant howl of a coyote, the humble recorder sounds one of the most recognisable melodies in the history of music. Appearing repeatedly in film, music and television, its the start of the theme to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly written by  Ennio Morricone who has died aged 91. No other composer, bar perhaps John Williams, has had the same cultural impact as Morricone.       Ennio Morricone was born in Rome to a musical father who helped him learn to play several instruments. After an initial stint playing trumpet in jazz bands in the Forties, he became an arranger and was then asked by fellow Roman Sergio Leone to compose a theme for the first of his 'Spaghetti Westerns' 1964's A Fistful of Dollars.  Credited as Dan Savio, Morricone was asked by Leone to base the theme on Dimitri Tionkin's  El Degȕello and using this objective as well as his own lullaby he'd written earlier, he created the theme song.  For A Few Dollars More quickly followed be

Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways  COLOMBIA The 39th album from the poet and songwriter Bob Dylan WHAT IS a seventy year old man to do in lockdown? Why not write and release a classic rock 'n roll album and get it to number one? They say timing is everything but this is some masterstroke. As everyone is in total or partial lockdown, Dylan drops a new album of genuinely great and thought provoking songs. It's his 39th and first of original material for 8 years and it has indeed hit number one in many countries but not quite his home country, where it narrowly missed out, hitting number 2.       This album is everything Dylan fans would have hoped for and matches the standards met by relatively recent classics such as 1997's Time Out Of Mine and 2006's Modern Times . Musically it veers between retrospective waltzy folk musings and harder blue workouts and t hough the album is ostensibly a double album, it is really a single, with the last song Murder Most Foul, a toke