58: Al Caiola, “The Magnificent Seven” (no.34, 1961)

The composer of John Sturges’s classic 1960 Western, Elmer Bernstein, charted only once in the UK (with the TV-derived “Staccato’s Theme”, no.4, 1959), so this recording by U.S. session musician Caiola is the only time our hit parade was troubled by one of the most stirring of all movie theme tunes. (Although I will forever have a place in my heart for the KLF’s early 90s drum-and-bass remix, recorded under the alias The One World Orchestra, which rather marvellously became a protest anthem for anti-Milosovic resistance fighters in Serbia.)