
John Henry Douglas was born on June 19, 1920 in Hackney, London, England. He composed scores for 37 feature films, among them “The Railway Children” (1971). He was a master at arranging string instruments. He started his own record label 'Dulcima Records' in 1983, which is still in business today re-mastering and recording his more than 80 albums onto CD. Douglas was a musical director for DECCA and recorded over 500 tracks of music. Johnny composed the scores for two Euro-westerns: “Gunfighters of Casa Grande” (1963) and “Kid Rodelo” (1965). Johnny died on 4/20/2003, Bognor Regis, West Sussex, England, U.K.. Today we remember Johnny Douglas on what would have been his 90th birthday.
Biltmore: He also did a cover version of the theme from A Fistful of Dollars for a LP, prior to the release of its US release. In the recent Phantom of the Video magazine, Richard Harrison mentions the preview version of the film had a different score. I wish I still had the LP.
ReplyDeleteBiltmore: Mr Douglas also did a cover version of A Fistful of Dollars, for a western LP (C.1965), prior to the film getting a North American release. I wish I had kept the LP. Richard Harrison in an interview in Phantom of the Videodrome, mentions that Fistful during its preview week had a different non Morricone score.
ReplyDeleteIn the U.S. we had cover versions of the $ films by Leroy Holmes and Hugo Montenegro. Since the release dates in the U.S. were held up for 3 years because of the Kurosawa lawsuit we had to listen to what we could get which just wetted our appetite for the real thing.
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