Today in the Texas Government course I’m teaching here in Houston, I taught them about how the Mexican army played the "De Guello" song before charging and killing all the Texans inside the walls of the Mission. Here’s TR Fehrenbach in his excellent book, Lone Star:
The smartly columned army, marching with its regimentals, bayonets flashing in the dawn, its bands blaring the “Deguello,” a blood-tune that reached back to Moorish days, stumbled into a swarm of lead
According to Wikipedia, the meaning of the song is “throat-cutter”- no quarter. Only the wife of a Texas lieutenant and a slave boy survived the Alamo. It’s a pretty awesome song, and fit right in the movie soundtrack for the old John Wayne Alamo (1960 )
And of course there are several excellent riffs on that tune by the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone. In the first movie of the “Dollar” trilogy with Clint Eastwood, the director Sergio Leone apparently wanted the exact “Deguello” song played in the finale, but compromised with Morricone on a remix:
Leone originally wanted to use Dimitri Tiomkin's "El Deguello," which was used in the 1959 Western Rio Bravo, because he mistakenly assumed it was a much older song that was already in the public domain. Morricone was so offended by the idea that he quit.
"I told him, 'If you use it, I quit.' And I did - in 1963, a year in which I was penniless!" Morricone recalled in his 2019 autobiography. "Shortly after, Leone stepped back and allowed me more freedom, although he was annoyed. 'Ennio, I ain't asking you to imitate it, just come up with somethin' similar.'
What was he trying to say by that? That I had to stick to what that scene meant to him: a death dance fitting a southern Texas atmosphere, where, according to Sergio, the tradition of Mexico and the United States blended."
Morricone already had a piece of music in mind - a lullaby he wrote for Eugene O'Neill's Three Plays Of The Sea, a made-for-TV adaptation of three of the playwright's sea-based plays.
"I rearranged it in a more incisive way so as to extol the mounting solemnity of the trumpet leading the viewers into the duel. I played it for him at the piano, and I saw he was convinced," he explained. "'It's perfect, it's perfect. But you must make it sound similar to 'Deguello.'"
That one sounds pretty good too!
And lastly, who could forget the great ZZTop album of the same name. These proud Texas rockers lost Dusty from the trio this year, but they have reformed- they “Can’t Stop Rockin”:
You gotta introduce the kids to Marty Robbins!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyu3OIn5A00