''The Big Gundown'' is the third studio album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist

John Zorn John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conducting, conductor, saxophonist, arrangement, arranger and record producer, producer who "deliberately resists category". His Avant-garde music, avant-garde and experimental music, ex ...

. 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, Orchestration, orchestrator, conductor, trumpeter, and pianist who wrote music in a wide range of styles. With more than 400 film score, scores for cinema and televisi ...

. 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 filmmaking style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...

of the

same name ''Same Name'' is an American reality television series in which an average person swaps lives with a celebrity of the same first and last name. It premiered on July 24, 2011 on CBS. The series received low ratings, and CBS pulled it after four-ep ...

, directed by

Sergio Sollima Sergio Sollima (17 April 1921 – 1 July 2015) was an Italian film director and script writer. Biography Sollima graduated from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1935. During World War II he was in the Italian Resistance. After th ...

, 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 spaghetti Westerns, particularly t ...

, 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 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 not-for-p ...

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

multitrack recording Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking, is a method of sound recording developed in 1955 that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources or of sound sources recorded at different times to create a cohesive who ...

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

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 the key of E, smaller th ...

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

Reception

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. The magazine was first known fo ...

'' 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 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 Mus ...

review by

Scott Yanow Scott Yanow (born 1954) is an American jazz reviewer, historian, and author. Life and career Yanow was born in New York City and grew up near Los Angeles. Beginning in 1974, Yanow was a regular reviewer of many jazz styles and was the jazz e ...

stated, "There are certainly no dull moments on this often-riotous program".Yanow, S.

AllMusic Review AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the data ...

accessed 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".

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 incl ...

Cyro Baptista Cyro Baptista (born December 23, 1950) is a Brazilian-born 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 ...

–

cuíca The cuíca () is a Brazil, Brazilian friction drum with a large pitch range, produced by changing tension on the head of the drum. ''Cuíca'' is Portuguese for the gray four-eyed opossum (''Philander opossum'') which is known for its high-pitch ...

Joey Baron Bernard Joseph Baron (born June 26, 1955 in Richmond, Virginia) is an American drummer best-known for working in avant-garde jazz with Bill Frisell and John Zorn. Music career Baron, who is of Jewish heritage, was born on June 26, 1955, in Ric ...

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

Tim Berne Tim Berne (born October 16, 1954) is an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist and record label owner. His primary instruments are the alto and baritone saxophones. Biography Berne was born in Syracuse, New York, United States. He has said tha ...

– alto

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

* 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 type of oboe, the soprano oboe pitched in C, ...

English horn The cor anglais (, or original ; plural: ''cors anglais''), or English horn (mainly 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 ...

Polly Bradfield Polly Bradfield is an American violinist from the New York City free improvisation scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her closest musical associates were Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn. She also played on records by William Parker (musici ...

–

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

Anthony Coleman Anthony Coleman (born August 30, 1955) is an American composer and 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 ...

–

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

harpsichord A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one ...

organ Organ and organs may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a group of tissues organized to serve a common function * Organ system, a collection of organs that function together to carry out specific functions within the body. Musical instruments ...

, vocals *

Trevor Dunn Trevor Roy Dunn (born January 30, 1968) is an American composer, bass guitarist, and double bassist. He came to prominence in the 1990s with the experimental band Mr. Bungle. While performing with Mr. Bungle, he would dress similar to the S ...

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

* Carol Emanuel –

harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has 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 orchestras or ...

* Reinaldo Fernandes –

repinique A repinique is a two-headed drum used in samba '' baterias'' (percussion ensembles). It is used in the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo Carnival baterias and in the baterias of Bahia, where it is known as ''repique''. It is equivalent to the tik ...

Anton Fier John Anton Fier III (June 20, 1956 – September 14, 2022) was an American drummer, producer, composer, and bandleader. He led The Golden Palominos, an experimental rock group active from 1981 to 2010. Family Fier, known as Tony, was born in Cl ...

– drums *

Duduka Da Fonseca Duduka Da Fonseca, born Eduardo Moreira Da Fonseca (Rio de Janeiro, March 31, 1951) is a Brazilian jazz drummer who is a founding member of Trio da Paz with Romero Lubambo and Nilson Matta. He leads the Duduka da Fonseca Trio, with David Feldman ...

– caixa *

Bill Frisell William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American jazz guitarist. He 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, notably as a participant ...

–

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...

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 a founding member of the English avant-rock group Henry ...

– electric guitar, bass guitar *

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

– 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 Jody Harris is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer who was born in Kansas and became a central figure in the seminal no wave scene in New York City in the 1970s. Career history Harris was lead guitarist in the Contortions, an ...

– electric guitar *

Shelley Hirsch Shelley Hirsch (born June 9, 1952 in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York) is an American vocalist, performance artist, composer, improviser, and writer. She won a DAAD Residency Grant in Berlin 1992, a Prix Futura award in 1993, and multiple award ...

– vocals *

Wayne Horvitz Wayne Horvitz (born September 1, 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 Robi ...

– piano, celeste, electronic keyboards * Bob James – tapes *

Guy Klucevsek Guy Klucevsek (February 26, 1947 – May 22, 2025) was an American accordionist and composer known for his fusion of polka, minimalism and experimental music. He began playing accordion at age five and later studied at the California Institute of ...

–

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"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 Reed (mou ...

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''. In ...

–

batucada Batucada () is a substyle of samba and refers to a percussive style, usually performed by an Musical ensemble, ensemble, known as a bateria. Batucada music is characterized by its syncopated style and fast pace with a marked rhythm. Originally fro ...

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 art, noise music, photography, video art, film and digital animations. A p ...

– turntables * Mark Miller – drums,

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion instrument, percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a Membranophone, membrane called a drumhead, ...

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 organs ...

– organ *

Mike Patton Michael Allan Patton (born January 27, 1968) is an American singer, songwriter, producer, and voice actor, best known as the lead vocalist of the rock bands Faith No More and Mr. Bungle. He has also fronted and/or played with Tomahawk, The ...

- 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 percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

, 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 American guitarist and songwriter best known as the founder of the rock band Living Colour. Reid was named No. 66 on ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Ti ...

– 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 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 (otherwise known as a potato flute) 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 bo ...

jaw harp The Jew's harp, also known as jaw harp, juice harp, or mouth harp, is a lamellophone instrument, consisting of a flexible metal or bamboo tongue or Reed (mouthpiece), reed attached to a frame. Despite the colloquial name, the Jew's harp most like ...

Michihiro Sato Michihiro Sato ( 佐藤通弘, ''Satō Michihiro''; surname Sato; name sometimes listed as Sato Michihiro; (born 1957), is a prominent Japanese player of the ''Tsugaru-jamisen''. Born in Machida, Tokyo, Japan, his mother was a traditional danc ...

– 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 bass drum or a large floor tom-like 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. The instrument was created by Alcebíades Barcelos duri ...

* Jim Staley –

trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...

, 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 playing the chromatic harmonica, as well as his guitar and wh ...

– 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'', mean ...

, microcomputer *

– alto saxophone,

saw A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, Wire saw, wire, or Chainsaw, chain with a hard toothed edge used to cut through material. Various terms are used to describe toothed and abrasive saws. Saws began as serrated materials, and when man ...

, 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. Animal species attracted to game calls include deer, turkey, ducks, geese, moose, elk, raccoons, wild pigs, coyotes, bears, wolves, cougars, foxes ...

s, piano *

Martin Bisi Martin Bisi (born 1961) is an American producer and songwriter. He is known for recording records by Sonic Youth, Swans, John Zorn, Material, Bill Laswell, Helmet, Unsane, The Dresden Dolls, Cop Shoot Cop, White Zombie, Boredoms, Angels of L ...

- extra recording/engineering

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Big Gundown, The John Zorn albums Nonesuch Records albums Tzadik Records albums 1980s covers albums Ennio Morricone albums