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Gavin B. · 04-16-2010, 01:15 PM

Italian B-Movie Soundtrack Composers of the 60s & 70s

Ennio Morricone & Piero Ulmilani were the leading composers of European B-movie soundtracks in the 60s & 70s.

As esoteric as this musical genre is, there is a mother-lode of great music that can be found on B-movie sountracks written by (mostly) Italian composers during the independent European film boom of the 60s & 70s. I feel in love with these soundtracks as a result of my long standing interest in European indie films of that era. I started by searching out the sountracks to the hundreds of B-movie soundtracks composed by Ennio Morricone during that era. You can come across a few in compact disk format but the vast majority of the soundtracks are old vinyl long players that never made it to compact disc.

The good new is that the MP3 format has created an Internet audience for B-movie soundtracks. Most of the music is public domain in the United States and the MorriconeRocks You Tube channel has 400+ vintage soundtracks to listen to or download for absolutely free.

For those unaquinted with the genre the European B-Movie genre includes the spanish surf of 'spaghetti westerns'; the kinky demonic masses of horror films; the bent psychedelia of counterculture hippie exploitation films; the brassy big band themes and outernational global msic of spy movies, the avant-garde delirium of thriller and mysteriy films; the sultry lounge jazz of adult sexploitation films; the driving rhythms of adventure and intrigue films; and the ethereal beauty of haunting operatic scores to romantic love stories.

Morricone has logged over 500 soundtrack credits from 1960 to 2010. That's roughly 10 soundtracks per year. At his peak Morricone wrote and recorded 25-30 soundtracks a year and at age 81 Morricone is still composing and producing soundtracks at the rate of 3 to 5 a year.

My current music collection has about 300 vinyl issues of B-movie soundtracks from that era. Many of these musical gems can be found at flea markets, garage sales, and in the unsorted bins of 50 cent lps of second hand record stores. It helps if you live somewhere in Europe but even in the United States I can find second hand shops located in the most urban areas of the United States that have old soundtracks from European movies. New York and Chicago are especially fertile hunting grounds for collectors. From my perspective, most of the joy is in the ritualized of chasing down these rare soundtracks.

A lot of the classic European B-movie music sound like a kitschy pastiche of pop music musical trends from the United States during that era. But there's more in the music than meets the eye. The Italian school of film composers use American jazz and pop as a musical framework but their classical training allows them to subevert the music and produce an inventive film score that soars with artistic imagination and vision. I'd love to see Thievery Corporation do a remix album of some of the great European B-movie soundtracks from the 60s & 70s.

Ennio Morricone The first song was the master of the B-movie soundtrack. This song; ExocticoErotiko from a 1964 Italian sexploitation film called E la Donna Creo L'uomo. ExocticoErotiko predates Morricone's involvement with the film scores of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns that made an international star of Clint Eastwood. ExocticoErotiko sparse minimalism borrows from cool jazz and the loose interplay between the muted trumpet and flute are straight out of a improvised jam session. Morricone adds some agressive Martin Denny style percussion to give the music a Bohemian beat generation sound.

Piero Umilani was arguably is creative and productive as Morricone and this song Luna Di Miele comes from a 1971 French sexploitation farce entitled Ce Monde Si Mereilleus et si Degueulasse. Umiliani combines a Brazilian samba with the seductive male/female vocals that Serge Gainsbrough used to great effect with in his vocal duets with sex kittens like Bridget Bardot and Jane Birkin.

Alessandro Alessandroni wasn't quite as prolific as Morricone or Ulmilani but the wicked cool jazz of Tema di Londra makes Alessandroni's score to the 1968 Italian spy/caper film Colpo Maestro Al Servizio di sua Mastra by all time favorite soundtrack from the Italian school.

Cover Art

There's another aspect of the B-movie music of the Italian school that obsesses many collectors of the B-movie genre. There's a cult of collectors who collect the out of issue B-movie soundtracks exclusively for artistic value of the lp cover. Those collectors lovingly frame the album covers and (with a certain amount of irony) display covers as valued objects of kitsch art. Hard core collectors will pay $200 or $300 for a mint condition cover of a rare B-movie album cover. I don't... it's more fun to stumble across a rare B-movie album at a garage sale and pay only 10 cents for it. And I don't frame the covers because prolonged exposure to sunlight does serious damage to the album cover.

04-16-2010, 01:15 PM	#195 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	Italian B-Movie Soundtrack Composers of the 60s & 70s Ennio Morricone & Piero Ulmilani were the leading composers of European B-movie soundtracks in the 60s & 70s. As esoteric as this musical genre is, there is a mother-lode of great music that can be found on B-movie sountracks written by (mostly) Italian composers during the independent European film boom of the 60s & 70s. I feel in love with these soundtracks as a result of my long standing interest in European indie films of that era. I started by searching out the sountracks to the hundreds of B-movie soundtracks composed by Ennio Morricone during that era. You can come across a few in compact disk format but the vast majority of the soundtracks are old vinyl long players that never made it to compact disc. The good new is that the MP3 format has created an Internet audience for B-movie soundtracks. Most of the music is public domain in the United States and the MorriconeRocks You Tube channel has 400+ vintage soundtracks to listen to or download for absolutely free. For those unaquinted with the genre the European B-Movie genre includes the spanish surf of 'spaghetti westerns'; the kinky demonic masses of horror films; the bent psychedelia of counterculture hippie exploitation films; the brassy big band themes and outernational global msic of spy movies, the avant-garde delirium of thriller and mysteriy films; the sultry lounge jazz of adult sexploitation films; the driving rhythms of adventure and intrigue films; and the ethereal beauty of haunting operatic scores to romantic love stories. Morricone has logged over 500 soundtrack credits from 1960 to 2010. That's roughly 10 soundtracks per year. At his peak Morricone wrote and recorded 25-30 soundtracks a year and at age 81 Morricone is still composing and producing soundtracks at the rate of 3 to 5 a year. My current music collection has about 300 vinyl issues of B-movie soundtracks from that era. Many of these musical gems can be found at flea markets, garage sales, and in the unsorted bins of 50 cent lps of second hand record stores. It helps if you live somewhere in Europe but even in the United States I can find second hand shops located in the most urban areas of the United States that have old soundtracks from European movies. New York and Chicago are especially fertile hunting grounds for collectors. From my perspective, most of the joy is in the ritualized of chasing down these rare soundtracks. A lot of the classic European B-movie music sound like a kitschy pastiche of pop music musical trends from the United States during that era. But there's more in the music than meets the eye. The Italian school of film composers use American jazz and pop as a musical framework but their classical training allows them to subevert the music and produce an inventive film score that soars with artistic imagination and vision. I'd love to see Thievery Corporation do a remix album of some of the great European B-movie soundtracks from the 60s & 70s. Ennio Morricone The first song was the master of the B-movie soundtrack. This song; ExocticoErotiko from a 1964 Italian sexploitation film called E la Donna Creo L'uomo. ExocticoErotiko predates Morricone's involvement with the film scores of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns that made an international star of Clint Eastwood. ExocticoErotiko sparse minimalism borrows from cool jazz and the loose interplay between the muted trumpet and flute are straight out of a improvised jam session. Morricone adds some agressive Martin Denny style percussion to give the music a Bohemian beat generation sound. Piero Umilani was arguably is creative and productive as Morricone and this song Luna Di Miele comes from a 1971 French sexploitation farce entitled Ce Monde Si Mereilleus et si Degueulasse. Umiliani combines a Brazilian samba with the seductive male/female vocals that Serge Gainsbrough used to great effect with in his vocal duets with sex kittens like Bridget Bardot and Jane Birkin. Alessandro Alessandroni wasn't quite as prolific as Morricone or Ulmilani but the wicked cool jazz of Tema di Londra makes Alessandroni's score to the 1968 Italian spy/caper film Colpo Maestro Al Servizio di sua Mastra by all time favorite soundtrack from the Italian school. Cover Art There's another aspect of the B-movie music of the Italian school that obsesses many collectors of the B-movie genre. There's a cult of collectors who collect the out of issue B-movie soundtracks exclusively for artistic value of the lp cover. Those collectors lovingly frame the album covers and (with a certain amount of irony) display covers as valued objects of kitsch art. Hard core collectors will pay $200 or $300 for a mint condition cover of a rare B-movie album cover. I don't... it's more fun to stumble across a rare B-movie album at a garage sale and pay only 10 cents for it. And I don't frame the covers because prolonged exposure to sunlight does serious damage to the album cover. Last edited by Gavin B.; 12-23-2010 at 08:29 AM.