A few years ago, when we were all sent home to work for what we thought would be a couple of weeks, it quickly became obvious that a couple of weeks wasn’t even close to what it would be. I don’t have cable, just a couple of streaming options and an HD antenna to bring in the FOA signals. Free Over the Air. When cable became the broadcasting standard years ago, part of the agreement was that the networks and local channels would still need to broadcast a free signal for those that opted out. A great many channels that are included in basic cable channels all have signals floating through the air. If you were living alone during the pandemic, it was even quieter than it may have already felt. I’d be home working all day, then force myself to go out for a walk, but I wouldn’t see anyone outside either. So not too far in to 2020, I latched on to one of these channels in particular, and I think a lot of people did too. Not knowing what would be unfolding, when we’d be back to offices or even socializing, it seemed necessary to connect with simpler times. Where I live, Channel 33 is MeTV, a channel largely consisting of classic TV reruns, from The Andy Griffith Show to The Three Stooges on Saturday nights. In the afternoons, there is a solid 5 hour block of Westerns, including Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Wagon Train. Wagon Train starred Ward Bond in its first few seasons, perhaps best known as Bert the cop in It’s A Wonderful Life. But one show that I have grown to love is one that airs daily for an hour with back-to-back episodes, The Rifleman, starring Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain, a widowed Civil War veteran, raising his son Mark, portrayed by Johnny Crawford, in North Fork, New Mexico.

The show ran for 168 episodes from 1958 to 1963. Paul Fix portrayed the Marshall of North Fork, Micah Torrence. He had been in scores of movies since the late 1920’s, including Giant, portraying Elizabeth Taylor’s father.

There were some well-known guest stars throughout the series run, from Sammy Davis Jr. to Buddy Hackett, Robert Culp to James Coburn. Lee Van Cleef was in several episodes. Future TV and movie stars such as Dan Blocker, Ellen Corby, Martin Landau, Dennis Hopper, Harry Dean Stanton, George Lindsay, and Richard Kiel. Also making appearances are Western film legends such as Jack Elam, Warren Oates, Katy Jurado, and Slim Pickens. Each of these actors would later be directed in films by the man who wrote the very first episode of The Rifleman, “The Sharpshooter,” and who also directed the second episode of the series.

In 1972, when filming commenced in Durango on the film he envisioned as his ultimate statement on the Western film genre, Fix, Elam, Coburn, Stanton, Pickens, and Jurado, along with Jason Robards, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Jaeckel, and Bob Dylan, would be on set for their roles in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, directed by the legendary Sam Peckinpah, who was born 99 years ago today in Fresno, California.

The production of the film is the stuff of Hollywood legend: an alcoholic director with a vision for his film, clashing with the script writer and rewriting the film’s narrative, Hollywood executives sticking their noses in, wasted days of shooting due to the wrong lighting and misbehavior, and actors divided into camps both sympathetic to and bothered by Peckinpah. By the time the film was completed in 1973, late and over budget, the final cut was not the Director’s Cut. The film had been taken away from Peckinpah, re-cut and mostly disowned by the cast and crew. Some of the music Bob Dylan had scored for specific scenes would end up elsewhere, though “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” would be exactly where Dylan had intended, in the scene where Slim Pickens is shot and his wife Katy Jurado watches him stagger towards the river. For all of his vision, Peckinpah actually left the song out of his own version which would finally be released as-is in 1988.

Dylan’s soundtrack is fantastic, though his working methods didn’t exactly sit well with Jerry Fielding, Peckinpah’s usual music man who was brought in with a chip on his shoulder to somewhat oversee the sessions. Good luck with that. Some of Dylan’s best melodies can be found on the soundtrack, re-released recently by Mobile Fidelity on a great vinyl pressing. “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” would hit the Top 20 on both sides of the Atlantic. Dylan had become part of the film when his friend Rudy Wurlitzer, the script writer, asked him to contribute a couple of songs. Peckinpah had never heard of Bob Dylan, but when Bob played the main title theme “Billy” for Peckinpah, directly to him on acoustic guitar, Peckinpah was moved enough to have Dylan act as well as score the film. While “Knockin’…” would go on to be performed 460 times, none of the other tracks from the album would ever be played. Except for once. There are three versions on the soundtrack of “Billy,” the main title theme. The one he played for Peckinpah, “Billy 1,” would be performed in Stockholm on March 22, 2009. Who knows why.

Sessions for the soundtrack began in Mexico City, though only “Billy 7” would make the soundtrack. In February ’73, Dylan recorded 19 pieces for the score, many of which remain officially unreleased. But one song recorded, “Rock Me Mama,” would be adapted by the band Old Crow Medicine Show in 2004, becoming “Wagon Wheel,” both a huge hit and a modern era Country standard.

Dylan’s soundtrack would be released in July ’73 to largely unfavorable reviews, mainly because it was reviewed as a Bob Dylan album rather than as a movie soundtrack. Dylan is backed on the album by Roger McGuinn, Byron Berline, Booker T. Jones, Bruce Langhorne, Rita Coolidge and Jim Keltner among others. Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that the music is “so oppressive that when it stops we feel giddy with relief, as if a tooth had suddenly stopped aching.” Robert Christgau gave it a C in Creem Magazine. Jon Landau called it “inept, amateurish and embarrassing” in Rolling Stone. Oh well. The album hit the Top 20.

Dylan wrote about the experience of filming Pat Garrett… in the liner notes for his Biograph boxed set in 1985:

“I moved with my family to Durango for about three months. Rudy Wurlitzer, who was writing this thing, invented a part but there wasn’t any dimension to it. And I was very uncomfortable in this non-role. But time started to slip away and there I was trapped deep in the heart of Mexico with some madman, ordering people around like a little king … It was crazy, all these generals making you jump into hot ants, setting up turkey shoots and whatever and drinking tequila ‘til they passed out. Sam was a wonderful guy though. He was an outlaw. A real hombre. Somebody from the old school. Men like him they don’t make anymore.” 

In honor of Sam Peckinpah, The Rifleman, and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Today’s Playlist is a SomethingIsHappening compendium of songs for Westerns:

#SamPeckinpah #ChuckConnors #TheRifleman #JohnnyCrawford #BobDylan #PatGarrett #BillyTheKid #KnockinOnHeavensDoor #WagonTrain #SlimPickens #KatyJurado #KrisKristofferson