Badlands Soundtrack

My friend Mickey sent me a great percussion piece featuring marimba today, after our discussions re. film soundtracks. I haven’t included that here, just details on the soundtrack to Badlands, one of my favourite films, and soundtracks, ever – and the original inspiration for exploring the marimba / xylophone for film music.

From Robert J. Thomas’s DVD review, some soundtrack details for Badlands (1973):

“Musica Poetica”*
by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman

“Trois Morceaux en forme de Poire”
by Erik Satie

Theme “Migration”
by James Taylor

“A BLOSSOM FELL”
Written by H. Barnes, H. Cornelius, D. John
Performed by Nat “King” Cole
Courtesy of Capitol Records

“LOVE IS STRANGE”
Written by M. Baker, B. Smith, S. Robinson
Performed by Mickey and Sylvia

*Some tracks are on “The Best Of Carl Orff”, BMG 75605 51357 2, 1999:

..Carmina Burana – highlights – about half the 1 hour long masterpiece.
..Schulwerk (School work) – excerpts (collaboration with Gunild Keetman)
…. Rundadinella
…. Guten Morgen, Spielmann (Gunild Keetman)
…. Der Wind, der weht
…. * Gassenhauer (Gunild Keetman)
…. Wer da bauet an der Strassen
…. Malaguena (Gunild Keetman)
…. C’est le mai
…. Carillon
…. Sommerkanon
…. Lügenmärchen
…. Stücke auf Ostinato (Gunild Keetman)
…. Schlaf, Kindleinm schlaf
…. * Passion
…. Tanzstück (Gunild Keetman)

Edit: Apparently the film’s composer, George Aliceson Tipton, composed more original music for the film than is usually acknowledged (thanks to Adrian below for pointing this out). He can be found discussing this in Rosy-Fingered Dawn a 2002 documentary on Malick’s films (which I’ll now try to track down).

This entry was posted by a.h. on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 1:45 am. It is filed under Blog, Snippets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

5 Responses to “Badlands Soundtrack”

  1. Thank for this. Badlands is simply one of the greatest movies ever made. In my books, it is the greatest.

    This is the first place that I’ve found that lists the whole soundtrack. Suprised the soundtrack is no avaliable to buy. I would buy it for sure.

    Thanks again.

  2. Thx Elle! But I think thanks are in fact due to Robert J. Thomas who posted this originally in a DVD review for the movie on amazon.com

  3. Hi Elle – do you know what track was used for the theme of the film? The opening music & theme tune?
    Thanks,
    Megan

  4. This is terrific, but it is far from a FULL soundtrack listing – pity the poor composer, George Aliceson Tipton, who not only arranged many of the pieces sourced, but also composed other pieces in order to blend the entire musical track into an organic whole ! His contribution to the greatness of the film is huge. There is a rare Italian doco on Malick (the great man doesn’t appear himself!) in which Tipton is interviewed in his music studio, and he discusses the work he did on the film. He holds up his score for a piece that fans of the film often mistakenly attribute to Carl Orff !! (as did the David Chesworth Ensemble when it released its lovely ‘Badlands Suite’ on CD. When I asked Chesworth where he got the sheet music for the pieces he said there was none, he just transcribed the tunes from the film itself).

  5. Ah, thx for the extra info Adrian! How can we find out more about Tipton, and the doco on Malick??

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