Last week, for a couple of days, it was the theme music to “How the West Was Won.” I’d seen the film for the first time in forty years. Jesus, what a horror casting 54 year-old James Stewart playing a fur-trapper and eventual husband to beautiful, 31 year-old Carrol Baker. WTF were they thinking? Anyway, Lee J. Cobb and Richard Widmark took the film from the bad category to the average. Forget getting a fair and balanced history of Anglo-American expansionism in this film. It’s strictly a romantic period piece. But the music is fabulous and stuck with me for days. I rode my hoss singing it out loud.
Today it’s the simple, early blues of John Lee Hooker, when all there was in the background was the sound of him banging on his old, beat up acoustic guitar:
Boom, boom, boom, boom
I’m gonna shoot you right down
Right off your feet
Take you home with me
Put you in my house
Boom, boom, boom, boom