''The Big Gundown'' is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist

John Zorn John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of j ...

. It comprises radically reworked covers of tracks by the Italian film composer

Ennio Morricone Ennio Morricone (; 10 November 19286 July 2020) was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and trumpeter who wrote music in a wide range of styles. With more than 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as more than 100 classi ...

. The album is named after a 1966

Spaghetti Western The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...

of the same name, directed by Sergio Sollima, starring

Lee Van Cleef Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef Jr. (January 9, 1925 – December 16, 1989) was an American actor. He appeared in over 170 film and television roles in a career spanning nearly 40 years, but is best known as a star of Italian Spaghetti Westerns, parti ...

, and scored by Morricone. The album was first released in 1985 on the Nonesuch/Icon label. In 2000 a remastered 15th Anniversary Edition with additional tracks was released on CD on Zorn's

Tzadik Records Tzadik Records is a record label in New York City that specializes in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995. He is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases. Tzadik is a n ...

label. In 1985 Zorn had been working in New York City's experimental music scene for almost a decade (the album was originally to be called "Once Upon a Time in the Lower East Side"), but ''The Big Gundown'' launched him to wider prominence. In the notes for the 2000 reissued CD, Zorn describes ''The Big Gundown'' as representing a creative breakthrough as well for being the first time he worked extensively with multi-track recording,

overdubbing Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...

and ornate orchestration. Though his main instrument is

alto sax The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in E, smaller than the B ten ...

, Zorn did not play on most tracks, adding only a few touches of piano, game calls, harpsichord or musical saw.

Reception

The

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Music ...

review by

Scott Yanow Scott Yanow (born October 4, 1954) is an American jazz reviewer, historian, and author. Allmusic Biography/ref> Biography Yanow was born in New York City and grew up near Los Angeles. Since 1974, he was a regular reviewer of many jazz styles a ...

awarded the album 4 stars stating "There are certainly no dull moments on this often-riotous program".Yanow, S. AllMusic Reviewaccessed July 22, 2011 ''

The Penguin Guide to Jazz ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' is a reference work containing an encyclopedic directory of jazz recordings on CD which were (at the time of publication) currently available in Europe or the United States. The first nine editions were compiled b ...

'' selected this album as part of its suggested "Core Collection" and awarded it a "crown", calling it "utterly remarkable in every way and one of the essential records of the '80s". The ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'' review by Steve Futterman was less enthusiastic, and Futterman stated, "Despite high-spirited contributions from a first rate cast, Zorn's tentative and analytical remakes tend to bleed Morricone's high drama and joyous kitschiness dry".Futterman, S., "Records: The Big Gundown", ''

'', Issue 498, April 23, 1987, pp 152

Track listing

# "The Big Gundown" - 7:26 # "Peur sur la Ville" - 4:16 # "Poverty (Once Upon a Time in America)" - 3:49 # "Milano Odea" - 3:02 # "Erotico (The Burglars)" - 4:27 # "Battle of Algiers" - 3:50 # "Giu la Testa (Duck You Sucker!)" - 6:06 # "Metamorfosi (La Classe Operaia Va In Paradiso)" - 4:37 # "Tre nel 5000" - 4:37 # "Once Upon a Time in the West" - 8:44 * The album was re-released and remastered in 2000, with six newly recorded tracks: :11. "The Sicilian Clan" - 3:20 :12. "Macchie Solari" - 3:29 :13. "The Ballad of Hank McCain" - 5:27 :14. "Svegliatti & Uccidi" 3:03 :15. "Chi Mai" - 3:06 :16. "The Ballad of Hank McCain (instrumental)" - 5:28 :All compositions by Ennio Morricone except "Tre nel 5000" by John Zorn

Personnel

* Orvin Aquart –

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica in ...

Cyro Baptista Cyro Baptista (born December 23, 1950) is a Brazilian percussionist in jazz and world music. He creates many of the percussion instruments he plays. Career Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Baptista arrived in the U.S. in 1980 with a scholarship to C ...

– cuíca *

Joey Baron Bernard Joseph Baron (born June 26, 1955 in Richmond, Virginia) is an American avant-garde jazz drummer who plays frequently with Bill Frisell and John Zorn. Music career Baron was born on June 26, 1955, in Richmond Virginia. When he was nine, ...

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...

* Tim Berne – alto

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of Single-reed instrument, single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed (mouthpi ...

* Laura Biscotto – sexy Italian vocals * Vicki Bodner –

oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. ...

English horn The cor anglais (, or original ; plural: ''cors anglais''), or English horn in North America, is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family. It is approximately one and a half times the length of an oboe, making it essentially an alt ...

* Polly Bradfield –

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

Anthony Coleman Anthony Coleman (born August 30, 1955) is an avant-garde jazz pianist. During the 1980s and 1990s he worked with John Zorn on '' Cobra'', '' Kristallnacht'', ''The Big Gundown'', ''Archery'', and '' Spillane'' and helped push modern Jewish music ...

–

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

, vocals * Trevor Dunn -

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

* Carol Emanuel –

harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orc ...

* Reinaldo Fernandes – repinique * Anton Fier – drums * Duduka Da Fonseca – caixa *

Bill Frisell William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger. Frisell first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts ...

–

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

Fred Frith Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith (born 17 February 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser. Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock ...

– electric guitar, bass guitar *

Diamanda Galás Diamanda Galás (born August 29, 1955) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, visual artist, and soprano. She has campaigned for AIDS education and the rights of the infected. Galás's commitment to addressing social issues and her involve ...

– vocals *

Melvin Gibbs Melvin Gibbs is an American bass guitarist who has appeared on close to 200 albums in diverse genres of music. Among others, Gibbs is known for working in jazz with drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and guitarist Sonny Sharrock, and in rock music ...

– electric bass guitar * Jody Harris – electric guitar * Shelley Hirsch – vocals *

Wayne Horvitz Wayne Horvitz (born 1955) is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer. He came to prominence in the Downtown scene of 1980s and '90s New York City, where he met his future wife, the singer, songwriter and pianist Robin Holcomb. He ...

– piano,

celeste Celeste may refer to: Geography * Mount Celeste, unofficial name of a mountain on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada * Celeste, Texas, a rural city in North Texas ** Celeste High School, public high school located in the city of Celest ...

, electronic keyboards * Bob James – tapes *

Guy Klucevsek Guy Klucevsek (born February 26, 1947) is an American-born accordionist and composer. Klucevsek is one of relatively few accordion players active in new music, jazz and free improvisation. Klucevsek was born in New York City, and raised outside ...

–

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a ree ...

Arto Lindsay Arthur Morgan "Arto" Lindsay (born May 28, 1953) is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He was a member of the pioneering 1970s no wave group DNA, which featured on the 1978 compilation '' No New York''. I ...

–

batucada Batucada is a substyle of samba and refers to a percussive style, usually performed by an ensemble, known as a bateria. Batucada is characterized by its repetitive style and fast pace. As is Samba, the Batucada is a Brazilian musical expression wit ...

contractor, electric guitar, vocals *

Christian Marclay Christian Marclay (born January 11, 1955) is a visual artist and composer. He holds both American and Swiss nationality. Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film. A pioneer of using gramophone records ...

– turntables * Mark Miller – drums,

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionall ...

Big John Patton John Patton (July 12, 1935 – March 19, 2002) was an American jazz, blues and R&B pianist and organist often known by his nickname, Big John Patton. Patton was one of the most in-demand organists during the golden era of the Hammond B-3 orga ...

– organ * Mike Patton - vocals *

Bobby Previte Bobby Previte (born July 16, 1951 in Niagara Falls, New York) is a drummer, composer, and bandleader. He earned a degree in economics from the University at Buffalo, where he also studied percussion. He moved to New York City in 1979 and began ...

– drums,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, timpani, vocals *

Robert Quine Robert Wolfe Quine (December 30, 1942 – May 31, 2004) was an American guitarist. A native of Akron, Ohio, Quine worked with a wide range of musicians, though he himself remained relatively unknown. Critic Mark Deming wrote that "Quine's eclect ...

– electric guitar *

Vernon Reid Vernon Alphonsus Reid (born 22 August 1958) is an English-born American guitarist and songwriter. Reid is the founder and primary songwriter of the rock band Living Colour, Reid was named No. 66 on ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's 2003 list of the ...

– electric guitar *

Ned Rothenberg Ned Rothenberg (born September 15, 1956) is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer. He specializes in woodwind instruments, including the alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, and shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). He is known ...

–

shakuhachi A is a Japanese and ancient Chinese longitudinal, end-blown flute that is made of bamboo. The bamboo end-blown flute now known as the was developed in Japan in the 16th century and is called the .

ocarina The ocarina is a wind musical instrument; it is a type of vessel flute. Variations exist, but a typical ocarina is an enclosed space with four to twelve finger holes and a mouthpiece that projects from the body. It is traditionally made from cl ...

, jaw harp * Michihiro Sato – tsugaru shamisen * Luli Shioi – vocals * Claudio Silva –

pandeiro The pandeiro () is a type of hand frame drum popular in Brazil. The pandeiro is used in a number of Brazilian music forms, such as samba, choro, coco, and capoeira music. The drumhead is tunable, and the rim holds metal jingles (''platinelas'' ...

* Jorge Silva –

surdo The surdo is a large bass drum used in many kinds of Brazilian music, such as Axé/Samba-reggae and samba, where it plays the lower parts from a percussion section. It is also notable for its association with the cucumbi genre of the Ancient Near ...

* Jim Staley –

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...

, bass trombone *

Toots Thielemans Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans (29 April 1922 – 22 August 2016), known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian jazz musician. He was mostly known for his chromatic harmonica playing, as well as his guitar and whistl ...

– whistling, harmonica * David Weinstein –

Mirage A mirage is a naturally-occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays bend via refraction to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French ''(se) mirer'', from the Latin ''mirari'', meanin ...

, microcomputer *

– alto saxophone, saw, vocals, harpsichord,

game call A game call is a device that is used to mimic animal noises to attract or drive animals to a hunter Hunting is the human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to h ...

s, piano * Martin Bisi - extra recording/engineering

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Big Gundown, The John Zorn albums Nonesuch Records albums Tzadik Records albums Covers albums Ennio Morricone albums