Song:Midnight Cowboy
Album:The John Barry Collection
John Barry is one of the all time greats of film composition. He is probably best known for his eleven James Bond scores but he has composed music for many films since the 60s. He was born Jonathan Barry Prendergrast Nov. 3, 1933 in York, England. He was a fan of big bands and also credits Max Steiner's score for Treasure Of The Sierra Madre for his interest in film. He started his own band The John Barry Seven in 1957. They had some hits in England including a cover of Walk Don't Run. But usually they were used as a backup band on TV shows like The Six-Five Special. They signed with EMI's Parlophone label. Barry started writing arrangements for EMI artists but he worked very well with pop singer Adam Faith. The is led to Barry's first film score for the 1960 Adam Faith film Beat Girl. Barry was contacted by the producers of Dr. No. Monte Norman had written the theme for the James Bond film but the producers were unhappy with the score. The rest is history. Barry wrote the scores for 11 Bond films and had a hit single with Goldfinger in 1965. Of course he's worked on plenty of other films including his Grammy winning theme for the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. You can get that and several other themes on this Sony/Legacy comp. Barry last film was Enigma in 2001 but he did compose a musical called Brighton Rock in 2004. I would say he's semi-retired at this point. Here's the video for Midnight Cowboy by John Barry.
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