I quattro dell' Ave Maria

Digitmovies continues his explorative journey into the wide land of the Spaghetti Western soundtracks, re-issuing the de-luxe double CD edition of “I 4 dell’Ave Maria” (aka “Ace high”) by great composer Carlo Rustichelli(Carpi,1916 – Rome,2004). This western movie was directed in 1968 by Giuseppe Colizzi and starring the Dynamite duo Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, directed before by Giuseppe Colizzi in 1967, in the movie “Dio perdona, io no” (aka “God forgives, I don’t”) and later in 1969 in “La collina degli stivali” (“Boot hill”), (whose OST is still available on Digitmovies CDDM020) a movie trilogy that has reached the status of “cult” among the Spaghetti Western fans around the world since its original theatrical releases. After being released on various international VHS editions, “I 4 dell’Ave Maria” has been recently digitally transferred on DVD format both in Usa and Italy and this made possible an ever-growing popularity among the younger cinephiles.The discographic history of “I 4 dell’Ave Maria” has begun back in year 1968 when the newborn label of Cinevox Record issued a 33 rpm vinyl album (MDF 33/9) featuring 16 selections from the original score recorded in monoaural sound and also featuring voices and noises from the actual recording session (some Cinevox albums produced in those days received the same treatment capturing all the magic mood of a recording studio).Twenty-four years later since its theatrical presentation and the OST Lp release; in year 1992, Cinevox Record re- issued for the first time on CD (in the low-price Ciak series, CD CIA 5094) an expanded score presentation featuring, besides the 1968 tracks, many previously unreleased takes discovered in early 1992. The biggest problem was represented by the fact that the original album’s entire “Side B” master tape was totally gone lost and tragically, according to a production way very often in vogue in the sixties and in the seventies in Italy, the tracks were “Cutted off” and not “copied” from the session master tape to create the album master, so those tracks used for the album did not survive at all on the complete movie master. Suddenly later the italian Cd re-issue, another CD re-issue appeared in Germany on the Alhambra label (CD 8944 ) featuring highlights of the italian CD material heavily edited. Now with the today technology we could restore the “Side B” tracks taken from a vinyl source, better improving their sound, and find with our big surprise more inedit music located on other ¼” session master tapes recently discovered in the Cinevox vaults and not enclosed in the 1992 compact disc. So we have now a total lenght of 94 minutes divided on a two discs set: disc 1 features the original 1968 Album material (30’37”), while disc 2 contains more than an hour of supplementary material like: the Film score featuring dramatic orchestral music passages not featured in the original 1968 LP like two orchestral suites (tr. 10 & 11) that contain music takes never issued before also on the 1992 italian CD re-issue; Source music & alternate takes (armonica solo, Casino and band music like a different take than the album version of “Una banda” (tr.16), a longer version of the “Mexico lindo” Mariachi presented both in mono (tr.22) and in stereo (tr.24) thanks to a separate overlay of voices and hand claps (tr.17), an alternate version with harmonica & percussions of “Ricordi notturni” in mono (tr.20) and in stereo (tr.23). We conclude our CD adding also a very interesting “Archive” bonus track: an extended suite from “I 4 dell’Ave Maria” 1968 Recording session with the original studio voices including M° Rustichelli’s and M° Nicolai’s (part of this suite has been edited using material previously presented on the 1968 LP). So as tribute to legendary musicians Carlo Rustichelli and Bruno Nicolai and to director Giuseppe Colizzi, everything originally recorded for the movie has been rescued here and although we did our best to make better the sound of this CD recording, certain audio imperfections can persist cause the age of the original sources.