Things get off to a promising start with Elmer Bernstein's rousing Hallelujah Trail which is probably the only gospel western theme and comes across as a choral version of The Comancheros, which is fun, if a little unintentionally amusing. However with Tiomkin's The Green Leaves of Summer from The Alamo, we're plunged straight into crooning western songs of a kind I really don't care for at all. Unfortunately, there are quite a few other ballads such as Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin' from High Noon and the hysterically funny Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. I can't imagine that people at the time thought they weren't laughable, but with the somewhat over earnest performances of Jason Howard and Keith Ferreira, the more unintentionally silly they seem. The most ironic thing is that intentionally funny Blazing Saddles comes off as less silly than most of the genuine ones. Only a decent rendition of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid comes out well by virtue of Burt Bacharach's wonderful laid back writing style and the fact that it is entirely dissimilar to any of the other songs.
One glimmer of hope should have been the generous selection of Ennio Morricone, but between the dreary arrangements and unconvincing performances, few are left in tact. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly getting especially mangled through erratic tempo changes, many of which seem to be there to allow the players to play the trickier passages. Only Man with the Harmonica from Once Upon a Time in the West survives reasonably unscathed. The best tracks are almost certainly those by Jerome Moross from The Big Country, The Jayhawkers and The Proud Rebel. These are most definitely the diamonds in the rough, being superlative music and given excellent performances. However, I'd recommend getting Silva's double CD Moross compilation from which these tracks were culled, but with longer suites from each.
The second half of disc two contains some more up to date entries with Alan Silvestri's actively generic Morricone inspired The Quick and the Dead, Basil Poledouris' off the wall Quigley Down Under and Gathering Forces from Alex Norths' classic Viva Zapata. A few western TV themes are included throughout, most well known being the fun Bonanza and The Lone Ranger - if Rossini were alive, he'd be rolling in his grave.
One of Silva's few bad missteps of late with an album that most younger listeners will find generally a bit silly and dated, fans of classic scores will likely prefer the originals, Morricone fans will probably be weeping quietly and everyone else will be wondering why after four CDs of western music, there is only one track by Jerry Goldsmith and one by Bruce Broughton, even though both have contributed some of the truly great western scores. The finale track from Broughton's Tombstone would make any album worth being on that alone. One for die hard western fans only I think.
Rating ~ 
Disc 1 ~ 72:16
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Disc 2 ~ 67:52
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