Music in Westerns

Some of my favourite film music is from Westerns: "The Magnificent Seven", "The Big Country", "Shane", "High Noon". A lot of film music cannot stand on its own - it is used often to underline dramatic moments and that's all it's good for. e.g. I don't like the background music to the film "Strangers on a Train" because of its emphatic underlining of the tension so that I start listening to it irritably rather than watching the action. But the music of "Shane" is glorious in the film without distracting one's attention from the action, and also if played on its own - though one cannot help but visualise the film's great scenes when listening to it.
Some less well known films had some good music in them; there were heaps of films with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers that had wonderful songs but most of which are now forgotten.
One that a piece of writing this week brought to my mind was the song "Tumbling Tumbleweed". That and "Cool Water".
Both were written by a would-be cowboy named Bob Nolan and the first was made famous by Gene Autry. But the definitive recording of it is by a group formed first by Roy Rogers, later with Nolan in charge, The Sons of the Pioneers.
"See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Lonely but free I'll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds."
A real, genuine song from The West?
Well it was written by Bob Nolan who had many jobs in his time but ended up singing cowboy songs (mostly his own), but not genuine in the sense that the tumbleweed was a pure American plant. It was brought in by immigrants from the Ukraine but since it grew on flat dry soil, breaking from its roots to be blown around, it became a sort of visual symbol of "The West".
And of course we must not forget all those wonderful songs in John Ford Films (not his Irish ones), my favourite being "I left my love a letter and I put it in a tree, I told her I was off to join the US cavalry," from "The Horse Soldiers".