Music Blog

Smooth Saturday Sounds: Midnight Cowboy Theme

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

“The Midnight Cowboy Theme”
Written by: John Barry
Recorded:  1969
Engineer: Chris Malone
Arranger: John Barry

Released: August, 1969

Available on:
Midnight Cowboy – Original Motion Picture Score
Best of John Barry
Multiple recordings released worldwide

Personnel:
Toots Thielemans – harmonica
Featuring The John Barry Orchestra
Various Artists

Although “Everybody’s Talkin’” by Nilsson is the most memorable and popular song from Midnight Cowboy, the film’s actual title song is “The Midnight Cowboy Theme,” a haunting instrumental written by the prolific songwriter John Barry, who has done numerous soundtracks. The theme is immediately recognized by the lonely harmonica which serves as the main instrument. There are lyrics, though the song has rarely been recorded as a vocal.

Midnight Cowboy was one of the first films to make extensive use of pop artists and songs. John Barry supervised the music and composed the score, winning a Grammy for Best Instrumental Theme. The movie is still shown at the cinema school at UCLA as the epitome of how songs should be used in the movies.

John Barry also composed eleven soundtracks for James Bond films between 1963 and 1987 as well as the famous “James Bond Theme” from Dr. No, the first Bond film. He also wrote the award winning scores to the films Dances With Wolves and Out Of Africa as well as the scores for The Lion in Winter, Born Free, and Somewhere in Time.

Midnight Cowboy is the only X-Rated movie to have won an Academy Award for Best Picture.

This is “The Midnight Cowboy Theme”

May your Saturday be smooth sailing. Thanks for stopping by.

See you on the flip side. 😎

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24 thoughts on “Smooth Saturday Sounds: Midnight Cowboy Theme”

  4. “Midnight Cowboy” shouldn’t have been given an X rating, especially after the porn industry started using it as a badge of honor. The MPAA really needed a rating between M and X, which they finally did about 30 years ago with the NC-17 rating.

    Toots Thielemans recorded this for the movie, but John Barry is an excellent harmonicist. I’ve heard him play this, and he’s very good.

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  5. I was still a minor in 1969 and not allowed to go to X-rated movies, so I never saw the original version. By the time I got around to watching it, it had been cleaned up considerably. Because it had won Best Picture, and because I’d heard so many people rave about what a great movie it was, I had very high expectations for it, and I ended up being disappointed. Is the original uncut version better than the sanitized one?

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    1. Blue, I saw the movie only once and that was when it first came out, with it’s now-ridiculous x-rating. I’ve never seen the watered-down version. I have it on my Amazon Prime watchlist but it’s rated R, which is disappointing. I’d like to see the original again but no luck finding it …. yet. Sorry, I wish I could give you a better answer than that; all I can say is I thought the original was exceptional and it should have been left alone.

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  10. Instantly recognisable, and I love the harmonica. John Barry was very prolific and much in demand in those days, though I think the best part of the Out Of Africa soundtrack was written by an interloper: some guy called Mozart, with one of the most beautiful tunes ever.

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