Buy it... if you are as enthused about Jerry Goldsmith's more pastoral and folksy Western style of the 1960's as you are his robust action themes for the same genre.

Avoid it... if a Goldsmith Western largely absent his trademark brass themes and dominated by conversational underscore for jaw harp, harmonica, and banjo doesn't warrant a tough choice between two equally relevant albums.

Goldsmith

Stagecoach: (Jerry Goldsmith) Remakes happen all the time in Hollywood. Rarely, though, does the director of that remake send a note to the director of the original classic and tell him that the remake was being done because the original, despite public opinion otherwise, was a screw-up. This brazen attitude belonged to director Gordon Douglas, who was given the task of "modernizing" and improving upon the 1939 John Ford original starring John Wayne. While the cast and crew of the 1966 remake was accomplished, and critics generally considered the new Stagecoach to be a worthy update, Douglas' efforts could not ultimately unseat Ford and Wayne in the history books. As expected, Douglas reunited with composer Jerry Goldsmith, with whom a very strong score for Rio Conchos had resulted two years earlier. By 1966, Goldsmith had already been nominated for two Academy Awards and was well established in the Western genre, both on the big and small screens. Indeed, Goldsmith was best known early in his career for his consistently engaging Western scores, with a musical style distinct to his efforts in modernizing the genre's sound. From Rio Conchos to Take a Hard Ride, the sound of Goldsmith's music is easily recognizable in its merging of folksy rhythms and bold action themes. In its basic stylistic characteristics, Stagecoach is no departure from this norm. But it is different, however, in the approach taken towards the film. Whereas most of Goldsmith's other westerns are dominated by their action themes and use the folk rhythms for colorful accents, Stagecoach is far more thematically subdued in its folksy and pastoral approach. This is, quite simply, because the action scenes in the film were left to their own sound effects.

In some ways, this causes Stagecoach to be an interesting interlude to the bombast and whip-cracking sound effects of his other Westerns of the early to mid-60's. For many listeners, however, Stagecoach will lack the excitement necessary to float the pastoral sways and funky honky-tonk rhythms that would be put to far more expansive use elsewhere. The main theme of Stagecoach serves as a weak preview of the pretty and memorable identity for Wild Rovers; it wasn't uncommon for Goldsmith to pull inspiration from one Western score to another at the time, and the solemn trumpet performances of the title theme here are definitely precursors to Wild Rovers. The "Main Title" and "Get Out of Town" cues feature the most notable performances of this theme, with some subtle fragmented usage in between. A notable secondary theme on trumpet (over snare and ambitious strings) in "First Born" is more unique to Stagecoach. Otherwise, the score is largely uneventful. The jaw harp, harmonica, and banjo lead the middle sections of the score in scenes of dialogue, and these mundane cues have little to offer the experienced Goldsmith collector. The composer's standard honky-tonk source music is put to work a few times as well. On album, Stagecoach has been released twice (outside of the pseudo-bootleg Tsunami label in 1995). In 1991, the majority of the score was released by Mainstream Records on the same CD with Goldsmith's concurrent The Trouble With Angels. Seven years later, the score became the first entry in Film Score Monthly's (eventually lengthy) "Silver Age Classics" series, along with a couple of Goldsmith mini-scores for the television series The Loner on that product.

			Learn more about supporting Filmtracks

Unless you're a die-hard Goldsmith collector, neither release will probably be worth your time; FSM would go on to release both Rio Conchos and Take a Hard Ride, both of which superior by significant measures. But if you're in the market for Stagecoach, then neither of its albums, unfortunately, will be completely satisfactory. The Mainstream album lacks some source music cues, but includes the second vocal performance. The FSM album presents the score in proper order, but suffers from a less vibrant mix. And, most importantly, the music isn't the same. The Mainstream album features extra banjos in its mix, which are arguably a neutral element. In the process of providing a clear, intimate mix of the score, FSM has sucked the life out of the recording, giving the Mainstream album a slight edge there. The additional scores also favor The Trouble With Angels, which features a preview of the snazzy style of Goldsmith's much later Gremlins rhythms. It has the loveable attitude of his Flim-Flam Man music and a few funny source cues for vocalists and marching band. While The Loner episodic scores do feature some of the same techniques used in Rio Conchos, the lack of a string section for those recordings (typical for cost-conscious television scores of the era) causes it to leave you wanting more. Its only true highlight is its enjoyable opening titles with narration. The FSM album, while the weaker of the two overall, was still not totally misguided. The inaugural release in the "Silver Age Classics" series would mark the beginning of a wide variety of Western releases, particularly from Goldsmith, and as would be the case with all their albums, their Stagecoach product is enriched by a wealth of notation. This score was, unfortunately, a weaker Goldsmith Western with which to start the series.

Music as Written for Film: ***
Music as Heard on Mainstream Album: **
Music as Heard on FSM Album: **
Overall: **

Bias Check:

For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.22 (in 111 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.36 (in 120,040 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.