THE MUSIC

In addition to the original record soundtrack of the movie, Sony Music put out an extended version of the soundtrack on a single CD several years ago.   That CD is now hard to find, but luckily Rhino Records has put out a two CD version of the soundtrack that is currently available (see the Merchandise page for a link). 

For this page, I have included the liner notes from the single disc CD soundtrack (that is version that I own), and after that, the liner notes from the original LP record. At the end of this page is a link to the liner and track notes from the two CD Rhino version. There are also two links on this page to YouTube pages that play selections from two different versions of the soundtrack, so play those two videos in the background while you read this page.
 

Liner notes from the single disc CD soundtrack:

Westerns don't come any bigger than HOW THE WEST WAS WON, nor do movie scores come any grander, lovelier, or more memorable than its soundtrack. Composed, conducted, and arranged by Alfred Newman, with the voices of the Ken Darby Singers and the spirited folk singing of Kingston Trio founder Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers, the soundtrack offered all of the best that Hollywood and the 40 years of American history covered by the plot had to give.

And yet, it was all an unlikely triumph. Originally, Dimitri Tiomkin had been commissioned to write the score for HOW THE WEST WAS WON, but an eye operation made him unavailable and Alfred Newman took his place. Originally, the Kingston Trio had the inside track to sing the folk songs that pepper HOW THE WEST WAS WON's music score, but Ken Darby - Newman's associate and collaborator - chose Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers for their wilder, woolier sound.

Budgeted at $15 million, and assigned to three of Hollywood's most famous directors John Ford, Henry Hathaway, and George Marshal to handle its 40 years of history and 3000 miles worth of action, HOW THE WEST WAS WON was film making on the grandest scale ever undertaken by a studio. It would also be the last such successful effort - in the future, such films would be shot in Europe, and in the further future, would destroy studios (Heaven's Gate) or defy them (Dances With Wolves) in achieving success.

In many ways, HOW THE WEST WAS WON couldn't have been made, or its score written as we know it, at any time later than 1962. Not only were studio economics being altered forever, but so were Americans' perceptions of themselves. By the mid-1960's, the specter of Vietnam would make it impossible for us ever to have as much confidence in ourselves, or the unshakable belief in the fundamental rightness of our actions that underlies project of this kind. And as the 1960s wore on, our awareness of the victims of that western expansion - the Native Americans destroyed as a people and the environment mined forever (the movie's wrap-shot, an airborne close-up of the Hollywood Freeway, is its worst moment, a ludicrous conceit by the moviemaking community and an unthinking reference to the ruination of the Earth would undermine the whole orientation of the film. In that sense, HOW THE WEST WAS WON is a snapshot of a vision of the world that soon after ceased to exist in the minds of its makers.

Alfred Newman's music is easily the most fulfilling and accomplished element of HOW THE WEST WAS WON. The movie itself just about hang's together, despite some sketchiness in the Civil War section and a little too much focus on the least interesting characters (Debbie Reynolds' Lilith Prescott clearly the dry-run for her portrayal of Molly Brown - and Gregory Peck's Cleve Van Valen), but the music flows out rich and robust like the river referred to in the lyric to "Shenandoah."

THE COMPOSER

Alfred Newman (1901-1970) was for 30 years the most influential figure in Hollywood's film music community, with 44 Academy Award nominations and a record nine Oscars to his credit. He was the first of the Mittel-European school of film composers either native-born Americans or European transplants trained in late 19th century and early 20th century technique - to master the art of movie music, and later, as head of 20th Century-Fox's music department, helped along the careers of such notables as David Raksin and Bernard Herrmann.

The first-born of 10 children to an impoverished produce-seller in New Haven, Connecticut, Newman's musical gifts manifested themselves very early with his obvious desire to play the piano. His mother, appreciating his interest and knowing that the family couldn't afford an instrument, arranged for him to plays piano belonging to a friend, and for music lessons, first with a local housepainter who'd once studied the piano. By age eight, Newman was well known in New Haven and earned small amounts of money playing before local clubs and civic groups. By the time he was nine, Newman was taken on as the pupil of Sigismond Stojowaki, one of the most notable music teachers of his era (whose pupils also included Oscar Levant) who later brought the boy to the attention of Jan Ignace Paderewski. His early studies culminated with a New York recital sponsored by the renowned Polish pianist and statesman.

Newman should have had a major performing career in front of him, but by 1914 his family's situation was so dire that he had to concentrate on earning money for them. He went info vaudeville, and performed at the Harlem Opera House in a program devoted to young talent, and eventually made his way to the Broadway orchestra pit. Despite the surroundings, Newman's ability showed through, and he was engaged as a conductor for The George White Scandals. This marked his professional breakthrough, and throughout the 1920s Newman was one of the busiest conductors on the Great White Way, and well known to all of its composers.

His introduction to Hollywood took place in 1930 when Irving Berlin was engaged by Douglas Fairbanks Sr. at United Artists to write music for a screen version of Reaching for the Moon. Berlin insisted that Newman be brought out to direct the movie's music, and a contract from United Artists followed in short order - no sooner did he get to the movie-making capital, however, than Newman discovered that Reaching for the Moon wasn't ready for scoring, and he was lent out to Samuel Goldwyn to compose and conduct the music for The Devil To Pay. An all-but-forgotten light comedy starring Ronald Colman and Loretta Young, The Devil To Pay marked the beginning of along relationship between Newman and Goldwyn that was to quickly move him to the top of his profession. Hollywood at the time was coming out of a three-year encounter with talent off the Broadway stage, brought about by the introduction of synchronized sound, that was yielding decidedly mixed results with performers and directors but not so with Newman, whose decade of experience in the orchestra pit ass conductor, arranger, and composer put him years ahead of anyone in the filmmaking capital, and whose popularity with composers and business-like attitude wore well with studio heads as different as Samuel Goldwyn and Darryl F. Zanuck.

For the next 10 years, Newman shuffled between Goldwyn and United Artists, with side-trips to Fox, scoring Street Scene (1931), Arrowsmith (1932), Rain (1932), Nana (1934), Our Daily Bread (1934), Les Miserables (1935), Dodsworth (1936), Stella Dallas (1937), Dead End (1937), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Gunga Din (1939), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), and Foreign Correspondent (1940). He didn't confine his musical activities to film, however - when Arnold Schoenberg arrived in California, Newman was among his earliest pupils. Newman later provided a vital service to the composer and history by recording, at his own expense, the Kolisch Quartet performing Schoenberg's four String Quartets on the Goldwyn company's sound equipment, at a time when almost no chamber music of any kind was being preserved by the record companies.

In 1940, Newman became the head of the music department at 20th Century-Fox, a position he held for the next 20 years, during which he scored such notable films as Heaven Can Wait (1943), Song of Bernadette (1943), The Razor's Edge (1946), Captain From Castille (1947), The Robe (1953), and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), and assigned the scoring of Laura (1944), Hangover Square (1945), Forever Amber (1947), and The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) to composers such as David Raksin and Bernard Herrmann. It was an enviable record by any standard between 1937 and 1987, there were only two years (1949,1957) in which Newman wasn't nominated for at least one Oscar, and in 1938 he received three nominations, a record for one person in a single category. In 1980, Newman left 20th Century-Fox to work as an independent composer-conductor and won yet another Oscar nomination the following year for Flower Drum Song.

By this time, however, it was clear Newman's influence and authority over his end of the motion picture business were fading along with the studios he had served. Even as he was winning his ninth and final Oscar for HOW THE WEST WAS WON, new audiences and tastes were evolving along with anew generation of composers. Newman, Bernard Herrmsnn, Miklos Rozas, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner, and the others of their generation were either retired or relegated to the role of elder statesman in their field, while younger musicians such as Jerry Goldsmith, Richard Rodney Benneft, John Barry, Maurice Jarre, and Johnny (later John) Williams were increasingly sought out. And, yet, even in 1970, long after the kind of old style "big" picture that he specialized in had lost favor along with his scores, Newman earned a final, posthumous Oscar nomination for his score for the Universal blockbuster Airport.

THE MUSICIANS

Newman's associate from the mid-1950s onward, who shared his Oscar for Camelot (1968), was Ken Darby, a former radio singer from the 1930s whose career began with Paul Whiteman. Darby supervised the vocal work on Newman's later scores, and together the two crested some startling arrangements and timbral effects in HOW THE WEST WAS WON. The film also lists Robert Emmett Dolan, the longtime producer and music director on Bing Crosby's major films, as music coordinator, and Dolan shares arranging credit with Darby on "Raise a Ruckus" and "What Was Your Name in the States," both sung by Debbie Reynolds.

The other major contributors to HOW THE WEST WAS WON's soundtrack were Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers. Guard, born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1934, had already made music history in 1957 ass Business Administration graduate student at Stanford University when he and another M.B.A. student, Bob Shane, and a friend of Shane's named Nick Reynolds, formed a folksinging group called the Kingston Trio. Within a year after debuting at the Purple Onion in San Francisco, they had an album out on Capitol Records and the No.1 single in the country with "Tom Dooley." During the next three years the trio ruled the charts and became international stars spearheading a folk-song revival that not only rescued blacklistees like Pete Seeger and the Weavers from obscurity, and led to the emergence of performers like Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan, but also eventually resulted in the formation of rock groups such as the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

In August of 1961, Guard left the Kingston Trio to pursue folk songs in a more serious way. He retreated to his home in Palo Alto, California, and began recruiting musicians for a new group, the Whiskeyhill Singers. The final line-up of the quartet consisted of Guard, Iranian-born guitarist-singer Cyrus Faryar, a tall folksinger with a very big voice named Judy Henske, and bassist-singer David Wheat, who'd just come off a tour backing Guard's former group. The Whiskeyhill Singers were signed to Capitol Records, but it was with HOW THE WEST WON that they had the biggest success of their two year history.

"The original idea was for the Kingston Trio to do the movie," Guard recalled in a March 1991 interview, "but Ken Derby heard us and liked our wilder sound better than the Trio's smooth approach and used us. He was very good to us. Ken Danny became a kind of father figure to the group."

In addition to "The Ox Driver" and "900 Miles," the Whiskeyhill Singers performed "Erie Canal" in the film, included here for the first time on a soundtrack album. "We were supposed to do the singing on the title track, 'How the West Was Won,' but it didn't work out because of a miscalculation by Ken Darby," Guard recalled. "We were brought into this recording studio big enough to hold a full orchestra and choir, and they played the recording of the title song on these seven foot-tall speakers that were bigger than anything we'd ever seen before, in those days, and it sounded like the 1812 Overture. It was just too overwhelming -- we tried it, but it just wasn't right for us, so they gave it to the full chorus to do."

Derby and Newman did Academy Award-caliber work for the remainder of the decade. Cyrus Faryar and David Wheat continued playing on the west coast after the break-up of the Whiskeyhill singers, and Judy Henske went on to record four solo albums before marrying Jerry Yester, later of the Modern Folk Quartet and the Lovin' Spoonful. Together they recorded an album called Farewell Aldeberan for Bizarre Records.

Dave Guard taught music for a time in California before emigrating to Australia in the mid-1960s, and while there wrote a book celled Colour Guitar. In the years since, he's returned to the states, and has written two books -- Deirdre, based on a 2000-year-old folk tale, and Hale-Mano, based on a 400-year-old Hawaiian folk tale (both available from Celestial Arts Publications, Los Angeles) -- produced a record called Pure Gabby, of music by Hawaiian guitarist Gabby Pahinui for George Winston's Dancing Cat label, and made a solo record of his own entitled Up And In (available from Melody Pond Farm, Rollinsford, NH). And just to round out his career, Guard has also produced a video celled Workout for Equestrians with Ingrid Gsottschneider for Golden Arrow Enterprises, which has been released throughout the world. An elder statesman of the American folk community, he remains an optimistic, forward-looking figure in the final decade of the 20th century.

THE SCORE

HOW THE WEST WAS WON marked a watershed in Alfred Newman's career. For a composer who worked best on big cinematic canvases, it was the biggest of his career, and it came along ate time when the soundtrack was in its heyday-stereo sound had been perfected, and M-G-M's link-up with the super-widescreen Cinerama process gave Newman unparalleled opportunity for experimentation with orchestrations and arrangements that exploited these elements.

Newman's replacing of Dimitri Tiomkin was all the better for the film. Although a respected composer in the 1940s and '50s, Tiomkin seemingly ran out of steam after working on George Stevens' Giant (1955). The score contained a theme good enough to be adopted by the Texas legislature as an official song for the state, but nothing he'd done since had matched it, and certainly not his lackluster work on The Alamo.

HOW THE WEST WAS WON played directly to Newman's strengths, which lay as much in orchestration, conducting, and arranging as they did in composition. The title theme is one of Newman's requisite "big tunes" for which he was famous -- the march from Captain From Castille, the cavalry charge from Gunga Din, and the title theme from Airport are prime examples of Newman's ability to create rousing, memorable central themes. "How the West Was Won" is his best, however, a grand, sweeping eight-note melody carried by the horns, with lots of underscoring through the brass and strings, all of it surging forward powerfully and unceasingly, with the inevitability of Manifest Destiny. It isn't polished on the level of an Aaron Copland work, but it achieves the same effect on a listener in a traction of the time.

That title theme is used throughout the film, in association with James Stewart's character, Linus Rawlings, and the westward movement of his family and descendants. In the river pirate episode, it is embellished with more emphatic percussion, while during the wagon train journey by his sister-in-law (played by Debbie Reynolds), it has longer lines on the horns, and in the more tender moments it is picked up by the oboe in a more reflective manner.

Around the title theme Newman placed various folk songs and melodies and original songs derived from period song - "Shenandoah," which originated in the 1840’s as a song about a white frontiersman's love for an Indian princess, and was picked up by the cavalry and later by sailing men as a capstan shanty, is the most venerable of them. The originals include "Endless Prairie" end "I'm Bound for the Promised Land," the latter used as the counter-melody to Patrick Gilmore's Civil War standard "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." "Greensleeves" becomes the basis for the signature theme for Lilith Prescott, under the title "Home in the Meadow," with lyrics by Sammy Cahn that work surprisingly well despite their florid nature.

The transitions in and out of the orchestral and folk song sections of the score gave HOW THE WEST WAS WON a rich musical texture, its myriad sounds and performing units -- orchestral, choral, and traditional folk group -- making it a continual delight to the ear. Newman even found room amid these grandiose settings for some superbly subtle and sophisticated use of that oft-maligned instrument, the accordion, on "Come Share My Life", "He's Linus' Boy," and "Climb a Higher Hill." In the end, it became the quintessential western film score, outselling and eclipsing even Tiomkin's Giant and making it all but impossible for filmmakers to pursue such scoring -- future composers would have to work in the realm of parody (A Fistful of Dollars) and electric instruments (Hang 'Em High).

For this newly-remastered and expanded version of HOW THE WEST WAS WON, the producers have put on additional tracks and extended others. The most notable addition is the on-screen version of the title theme, which is not only a more exuberant performance than the one on the original LP but also runs three times longer then the album version. Also new to the HOW THE WEST WAS WON soundtrack are the magnificently orchestrated narrative passages by Spencer Tracy, read in his best stentorian style to Newman's music, and the film's original exit music.

From the back of the 1962 soundtrack record album:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer-Cinerama's "How the West Was Won" is the story of people.

Against the multi-hued backdrop of the scenic wonders of western America, it tells simply and honestly the story of people heading West - most of them searching for a new home, but some of them spurred on by a burning curiosity to discover what was beyond the next mountain.

Through the eyes of three generations of one family, "How the West Was Won" portrays the excitement and romance of a nation growing up to attain a destiny that even its founders never anticipated.

These people were not aware that they were making history. They were too busy coaxing mules and oxen onward, through mountain snows, through desert heat, through valley mud. They fought the Indians only in self defense, for they were peaceful, God-fearing people. At times they were forced to gun down men of their own kind who had turned robber or killer.

"How the West Was Won" covers five phases of American history: the movement of settlers down the Erie Canal - Ohio River Valley in the 1830s; the California Gold Rush of 1849; the Civil War in the West; the building of the first trans-continental railroad and, finally, the bringing of law and order to the Southwest in the 1880's.

Five never-to-be-forgotten action scenes highlight this great motion picture: a raft-load of settlers swept up in a raging river rapids; the bloody Battle of Shiloh; a covered wagon train-Indian battle on the trail to California; the stampede of 2,000 buffalo into a railroad construction camp, and a gunfight between lawmen and robbers aboard a runaway train.

"How the West Was Won," filmed in the you-are-there magic of Cinerama, is a new experience in motion picture entertainment.

This album was produced by JESSE KAYE

ALFRED NEWMAN, the man and the musician, has become a legend in his own time. Most honored of all motion picture composers, he has brought to every film score of his remarkable career the fullest integrity of an inexhaustible and awesome talent! Half a hundred Academy Award Nominations attest to the ardent respect of his contemporaries - and the eight gold "OSCARS" he has received bear public testimony to his genius, both as a creative composer and a dynamic conductor. Here, in this album, he stands before the finest symphony orchestra ever assembled in Hollywood and displays once again his superb artistry. "Song of Bernadette," "Captain from Castile," "How Green Was My Valley," "The Robe," "Anastasia," and "The Diary of Anne Frank" are a few of the more than two hundred films for which he has written memorable music. To this list of achievements is now added "How the West Was Won" - perhaps the best and most expressive score of them all!

KEN DARBY is a person of many abilities: Choirmaster, choral arranger, composer, lyricist and conductor. Through the skillful performance of these related talents he has quietly gained the admiration of his peers and the plaudits of listeners everywhere. He holds in great esteem his friendship and association with Alfred Newman with whom he has participated in bringing to the screen such outstanding musicals as "Carousel", "South Pacific," "The King and I" and Flower Drum Song." He has been honored with Academy Awards for "The King and I" and "Porgy and Bess." The Newman-Darby collaboration now achieves a new and dramatic triumph in the production and presentation of the music for "How the West Was Won".

THE MUSlC you are about to hear was recorded only after long and painstaking research. Not a note was written nor a single folk melody accepted which was not entirely germane to the Western scene. The enormity of this task is best understood when you remember that the pioneers who conquered and settled the West were a polyglot mixture of every nationality in the world. Therefore, it became of prime importance to Newman and Darby that these folk idioms be carefully authenticated and preserved in the music of the film. Mr. Newman has inspiringly captured the strong, native characteristics of "folklore" in his principal theme. This theme is dominant throughout his score, appearing in many interesting forms and serving to bind all the varied separate parts into a powerfully unified whole. In this theme, and the others so exactingly recorded in this album, you will hear the vibrant sounds of an expanding young America; the surging hopes of her pioneers, the vigor and determination of her builders, the lusty dedication of her warriors, the sorrow of her bereaved - and the tenderness of her lovers. Here it is: "The beautiful, the promised land" captured in rnusic!

SIDE ONE

1. THE OVERTURE is a vocal tour de force featuring the Ken Darby Chorus and the orchestra of Alfred Newman. It begins - and ends - with the spirited folk song "I'm Bound For the Promised Land". In between you will hear "Shenandoah," "Endless Prairie" with lyrics by Ken Darby, and "The Ox Driver's Song," the latter sung by Dave Guard and the Whiskeyhill Singers, who appear in this album through the courtesy of Capitol Records. (4:20)

2. HOW THE WEST WAS WON (MAIN TlTLE)  music is the first presentation or the Principal Theme by Alfred Newman, performed under his direction by the full orchestra of fifty-two strings, eleven woodwinds, ten brass, six horns and seven percussion. This stirring rendition tests the very limits of high fidelity recording. You will find it an astonishing experience to hear the smallest instrumental detail in the midst of so massive a sound and you will long remember this heroic melody.   (1.32)

3. THE BEREAVEMENT - THE FULFILLMENT  This begins in the sombre mood of grief. There is a fleeting reference to "Rock of Ages" and then the mood changes, progressing in strings and woodwinds through a poignant love scene and developing into the rich sonority of the secondary theme, "Home in the Meadow."    (3:11)

4. THE RIVER PIRATES is music both hearty and subtly ominous with undertones of sly humor. It portrays the frontier's first "confidence men" who disarmed their victims with banter and buffoonery before bludgeoning them. Featured are low woodwinds and a semi-grotesque march rhythm over which you will hear a scintillating use of light percussion instruments.   (1:40)

5. HOME IN THE MEADOW is sung by Debbie Reynolds (Lilith) with a simple accompaniment of harp, flute and string quartet. In the middle of the nineteenth century this type of performance was often heard in the plush salons of the elegant river-boats. The words are by Sammy Cahn and the music was adapted from "Greensleeves" By Robert Emmett Dolan, and conducted by Robert Armbruster.   (1:56)

6. CLEVE AND THE MULE is a jaunty musical picture of a long-legged man (Gregory Peck) astride a short-legged burro. The melody begins in flutes and piccolo over sturdy afterbeats in the low strings. Intermingled with these are the celeste, harp and bells. As you may surmise by the music, Cleve is an outrageous opportunist, overlooking no bets and set on achieving personal gain by fair means or foul. He is not beyond redemption, however, an ameliorating fact which is stated clearly by the violins in the central portion of this clever and whimsical piece.   (1:53)

7. RAISE A RUCKUS is an authentic reproduction of a pioneer "round-dance" or hoe-down, if you prefer. Accompanied only by guitar, banjo, harmonica, concertina and an occasional swipe of an old fashioned washboard, Debbie Reynolds wakes up an entire wagon train of weary travelers with her song. Soon they are dancing and singing lustily. The supporting voices were selected from the Whiskey-Hill Singers and the Ken Darby Chorus. Johnny Mercer did the research on this lyric and added some thoughts of his own so skillfully that the new words are one with the old. The music was adapted and conducted by Robert Emmett Dolan.    (1:43)

8. COME SHARE MY LIFE is straight out of Americana. The accordian of Carl Fortina sings the lovely old tune and is surrounded by the gentleness of muted strings in this adaptation by Ken Darby. It underscores the hopeful, but futile courtship of Lilith by the wagon master (Robert Preston).   (2:13)  (watch and listen to Carl play this song live with an orchestra! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZifdRXFGpQ)

9. THE MARRIAGE PROPOSAL is the Finale of Act I. It starts softly in the strings and accompanies the love scene on the riverboat between Cleve and Lilith, growing in intensity and wonderment as the scene draws to its inevitable joyous conclusion. This is a sensitive and highly skilled adaptation by Alfred Newman of Lilith's theme and brings side one to satisfying close.   (1:43)

SIDE TWO

1. "ENTR’ACTE" includes a group of American Songs which spans the quarter century between 1840 and 1865. "Home in the Meadow," reprised by the Ken Darby Singers, is startingly interrupted by the clanging bell of the Iron Horse and the familiar railroad ditty, "900 Miles" which features Dave Guard and the Whiskeyhill Singers. Then "On the Banks of the Sacramento" makes audible the gay fever of the gold rush of 1849. This is followed by an arrangement in which two songs are sung simultaneously: "I'm Bound for the Promised Land" giving way to to the overpowering domination of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Then, emerging from the last sorrowful bugle call of the Civil War, comes the prayerful introduction of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which builds to a triumphant paeon of thanksgiving. Here is a spectacular and brilliant collaboration between orchestra and voices, under the direction of Alfred Newman and Ken Darby respectively. (3:50)

2. CHEYENNES! Here is a refreshingly original concept built around a very shopworn subject; an abrupt and audacious storm of music which vivifies the most spectacular Indian attack ever filmed! Everv instrument in the orchestra is called upon to expend itself in violent virtuosity. The woodwinds and violins deliver a high frenzied cadence in defiance to the portentous recurrent figure pronounced by the contra-basses. The brass punctuates the savageness of battle and the horns proclaim the relentless spirit of man’s fight for survival.  (2:39)

3. HE'S LINUS' BOY is a delicately rhapsodic development of the principal theme with overtones of sorrow and deep loss. The music conveys, even without the visual aid of the film, the heartbreak of a mother whose son is leaving to join the ranks of the Civil War. Listen for the hushed, almost inarticulate male voices counterpointed by the call of distant bugles: "- and Johnny followed the fife and drum to fame and glory in Sixty-One --." And the strings, like a veil of sadness, hang quietly above the tune of "Johnny Comes Marching Home."   (2:58)

4. CLIMB A HIGHER HILL. From the first tragic chord in muffled horns and brass, through the rise of woodwinds to the passionate keening of the violins, you will feel the desolation and pain left in the wake of a devastating buffalo stampede. You will hear the growing resolve of one man to seek and climb a higher hill from which to survey his life and make it purposeful. Then, in the single voice of the accordion you will feel his unutterable loneliness. This is the first appearance of the theme later titled "No Goodbye."   (3:39)

5. WHAT WAS YOUR NAME IN THE STATES? Debbie Reynolds pours forth a volume of sound and lyrics in this "crowd-pleaser" with a rowdy gusto both typical and entertaining. The bawdy, gold-crazy boom-towns and the free-spending, free-drinking miners loved their song-and-dance-girls and Debbie delivers every nuance and innuendo of Johnny Mercer's provocative lyric with raucous "tent-show" realism. Mr. Dolan adapted and conducted the music. (1:41)

6. NO GOODBYE is an original melody by Alfred Newman which contains all the genuine character of pure folk music. In this recording, the accordion speaks the opening phrase, followed by muted strings which develop the theme into a true love song to score a warmly emotional scene between Zeb Rawlins and his wife (George Peppard and Carolyn Jones).   (2:31)

7. HOW THE WEST WAS WON The driving pulse of the opening oars is established by multiple guitars. Then the mixed chorus and orchestra perform the thrilling climax of the picture and the album. To Alfred Newman's great theme is now added the lyric of Ken Darby and together they express in powerful terms the grandeur of the Great West, the hope and dreams of the pioneers - and HOW THE WEST WAS WON! (1:40)

Music notes by Ken Darby

LYRICS - Click here to see the lyrics from some
of the popular How The West Was Won tunes

TO BUY THE 2 CD HTWWW SOUNDTRACK, CLICK HERE

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