# Please identify this 'Cowboy' music

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-cowboy-music/349848>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [March 25, 2006, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-cowboy-music/349848 "2006-03-25T12:41:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-cowboy-music/349848/1 "2006-03-25T12:41:52Z")

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It’s a beautiful orchestral piece heard in the background of cowboy movies and Marlboro commercials over the years. The melody is played on high strings, with a percussive horn pattern underneath.

The most recent place I heard it was at the end of the Simpsons episode, ‘The Lastest Gun in the West’: it plays while Buck McCoy rides up to his house in the sunset, picks up his mail and takes out the garbage.

I wish I could write the first notes out in courier font (I’m sure somebody would recognize it), but I couldn’t get the spaces to stay in when it posted.

TIA.

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**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-cowboy-music/349848/2 "2006-03-25T12:43:50Z")

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That’s the “Marlboro Theme”, heard in cigarette commercials when they still existed.

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**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-cowboy-music/349848/3 "2006-03-25T13:05:33Z")

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> [@ElvisL1ves](#):
>
> That’s the “Marlboro Theme”, heard in cigarette commercials when they still existed.

The music in the Marlboro commercials was originally the theme from the movie, “The Magnificent Seven” (1960). A clip of the theme can be heard [here](http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/marlboroman/).