“We Don’t Care” by Manfred Hübler & Siegfried Schwab from Vampyros Lesbos Sexadelic Dance Party (Soundtrack to Vampyros Lesbos) [1970]

David Axelrod met Barbarella in the score of Vampyros Lesbos, a sexy European exploitation film about female vampires. Soft gore with soft core, said one critic of the 1971 cult classic. The soundtrack by Manfred Hübler and Siegfried Schwab (recording under the name Vampires’ Sound Incorporation) itself became a cult classic, enough to earn the CD reissue I found. Have a listen above. Watch the (NSFW) film trailer here (worse quality but with English subtitles here). Read more and find a few links here (also the source of the paraphrase above).

“I Like the Look (Vocal)” by Henry Macnini and His Orchestra [1967]

We’ve been conditioned by the narrative of mainstream history to identify the 1960s with folk (especially protest) music, the British invasion, soul, and psychedelia over other significant forms of music. We forget just how popular easy listening was and how broad an audience it reached. Artists like Henry Mancini, Les Baxter, Herb Alpert and Sergio Mendes found repeated success with a mix pop covers, film themes, and original stand-alone compositions.

“I Like the Look (Vocal)” comes from the soundtrack to the 1967 film Gunn, featuring a score by Mancini. The film, based on the Peter Gunn television series from earlier in the decade, was advertised as Gunn… Number One!, but did not earn enough money or praise to warrant a sequel.

I can’t be sure, but based on the lyrics I think the song is a response to Burt Bacharach’s hit “The Look of Love,” which was first released by Dusty Springfield in January of that year (Gunn hit theaters in June). Either way, the two are quite similar.

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” by Hugo Montenegro, His Orchestra & Chorus [1968]

Like yesterday’s song, today’s 1968 instrumental originated in a film score. With time and greater appreciation for film composers, Ennio Morricone’s original theme to the 1966 Clint Eastwood film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has come to be regarded among the great themes of all time. The original recording—perfectly characterizing both the open spaces and human drama of the old West—will never be topped.

In the late ’60s, however, original scores only occasionally charted. Where Henry Mancini (see link in yesterday’s post) was a jack of all trades, Hugo Montenegro achieved fame with “pop” recordings of music almost exclusively from Spaghetti Westerns. The best, his 1968 cover of the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early June (held from #1 by Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson”), and had one of the longest chart runs of the year at 22 weeks (three weeks longer, in fact, than “Hey Jude”). That long run placed the song at #8(!) on the Billboard year-end chart, above many songs still heard much more often on classic rock and oldies radio.