I was going to return to the “Conversation Songs” theme this week, but then today news arrived that actor James Caan has died. Caan was just a terrific actor, always solid and reliable and skilled. He was always believable: you believed he was a prominent member of the Corleone family, or that he was a bestselling writer who happened to fall into the clutches of a crazy fan, or just about anything else he did. You never saw James Caan in a movie and thought, “Oh, come on, what were they thinking casting James Caan as that?!”
His most famous work is certainly The Godfather, so here is a selection from that film’s score, by composer Nino Rota. Well done, James Caan! Your body of work will live on.