Mp3 Friday!-- forgot to put one up last week, so this time we'll have one that especially nice-- Thunderball (Johnny Cash) 3.3M
No, it's not Cash's take on Tom Jones' brassy tune, but an alternate theme for the 1965 James Bond epic. I don't know the particulars on whether it was a commissioned piece, or if it was entirely Cash's idea, but it was submitted to Eon Productions Ltd. for consideration as the theme for their biggest, boldest Bond yet.
The mind reels at the possibility, but the Cash version (which Johnny Cash wrote himself) is not a bad little number, but it's Ghost Riders of the Sky shuffle and Cash's very earnest baritone, of course, do not fit the Bond model, which in 1965 was the apotheosis of pop style. Cash's theme seems of an earlier time, where recounting a hero's deeds against evildoers in a ballad, up against the self-referential, mocking tone of the Bond films, feels as old-fashioned as a horse and buggy. This is not to say that the songs Cash wrote and sang were unsophisticated. Indeed, many of Cash's best work was darker and much more complicated, at least from a moral perspective, than anything from the Bond series. Bond, I feel, set a new paradigm for film heroes in the 1960s, one which set the decent fellow model on its ear. This new hero's amoral pursuit of pleasure, be it for sexual conquest or for the thrill of adventure, may, on the surface, make these heroes seem more complicated, but that may not always be the case. One can imagine Bond shooting a man just to watch him die, but never lamenting the circumstances, nor be tortured by the consequences like the characters in Cash's songs.