Rodd sings Cow Boy

From: Rodd Dana

The Actor with the 3-D Name

Interview by Michael Barnum

Video WatcHDog No. 143 Sept. 2008

You sang the theme song in the film MASSACRE AT GRAND CANYON [1965]. How did that job come about?

Carol Danell, the gal who wrote the lyrics for the song, was a good friend and a frequent dubbing partner. She knew I sang and asked if I would do it. I almost didn't, because I thought the song was pretty bad. Nevertheless, they all convinced me that audiences outside of the European market would never hear it, and they wouldn't really care about the English lyrics, so I said "okay."

The funny part happened two nights after I recorded the final take at Fono Roma. It was perfect and everybody loved it. At 2:00 in the morning, I got a frantic call from Gianna Ferrio, the musical director, saying that someone had laid the master-cut on some kind of heating radiator at the studio where they were doing the master copying, and the thing had melted. They said I had to come to International Recording Studios by 3 a.m. to redo it! So I dragged myself out of bed, hung over from a late-night party, met the car they sent for me, and after six cups of expresso, made the bad cut you have heard. I didn't mind since they had to pay me double. I was also too numb to really get too excited about the seeming injustice of it all. Carol and I always had a good laugh over the fact that the guy, Fabrizio, who roasted the master tape was the fonico who mixed most of the films we dubbed at Fono Roma. After that incident, we would always admonish Fabrizio, "Stia attento! Non lascia il nastro adoso' al termosifone!" ("Pay attention! Don't leave the tape on the radiator!") He must have apologized to me a thousand times, down through the years [laughs]...