"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is the theme to the 1966 film of the same name, which was directed by Sergio Leone. Included on the film soundtrack as "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (main title)", the instrumental piece was composed by Ennio Morricone, with Bruno Nicolai conducting the orchestra. A cover version by Hugo Montenegro in 1968 was a pop hit in both the U.S. and the U.K. It has since become one of the most iconic scores in film history.

Ennio Morricone is an Italian composer who has created music for hundreds of films. In the 1960s, director Sergio Leone was impressed by a musical arrangement of Morricone's and asked his former schoolmate to compose music for one of his films, A Fistful of Dollars. This led to a collaboration between the two on future Leone films, some of which came to be referred to as "Spaghetti Westerns". After a steady percussion beat, the theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly begins with a two-note melody sounding like the howl of a coyote. Additional sounds follow, some of which symbolize characters and themes from the film. This instrumental composition plays at the beginning of the film. Largely due to the memorable quality of the main theme, the film's soundtrack peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and it stayed on this chart for over a year.

Hugo Montenegro was an American composer and orchestra leader who began scoring films in the 1960s. After hearing the music from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, he decided to create a cover version of the theme. Musician Tommy Morgan is quoted in Wesley Hyatt's The Billboard Book of #1 Adult Contemporary Hits as saying that Montenegro's version "...was done in one day. I think it was all day one Saturday at RCA." Similar to Morricone's original composition, Montenegro and a few session musicians sought to recreate this record using their own instrumentation. The opening two note segment was played on an ocarina by Art Smith; Morgan provided the sounds that followed on a harmonica. He was quoted as saying: "I knew it was live, so I had to do this hand thing, the 'wah-wah-wah' sound." Hyatt's book states that Montenegro himself "grunted something which came out like 'rep, rup, rep, rup, rep'" between the chorus segments. Other musicians heard on the record include Elliot Fisher (electric violin), Manny Klein (piccolo trumpet) and Muzzy Marcellino, whose whistling is heard during the recording.

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