We’re heading into uncharted territory now. I’ve been looking at John Barry’s work, for the second week of the month of #Johnuary and until now we’ve only looked at Bond films and a Bruce lee film, all of which I had seen previously. Now we’ve come to some of the films that I hadn’t seen before. Midnight Cowboy.
I’ve never seen Midnight Cowboy and knew absolutely nothing about it. I learned on a bit of research that a young Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman star in it, and that’s still really all I know. I didn’t manage to watch it for this exercise but I did listen to the soundtrack.
There are five tracks on the official soundtrack that are by Barry. I particularly like Fun City, a track that has some great examples of Jazz piano. I bet Barry loved working on that one, as he was such a Jazz lover.
One thing that is prominent through this soundtrack and score is the harmonica. It’s obviously very cowboy-esque and he uses it to full effect in this film. The main theme is beautiful and sounds very different to the majority of John Barry’s other work.
John Barry supervised all the music and composed the score. He won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Theme.