Starting on “The King of Comedy,” the 1982 cringe-comedy classic starring Robert De Niro that was recently replicated in “Joker,” Robertson helped curate and produce songs for numerous Scorsese films. After “The Last Waltz,” he deputized Robertson to be his music consultant and soundtrack supervisor. Scorsese has often used rock and pop songs in place of scoring throughout his prolific film career - it was the “soundtrack of his life,” he has said, the music that was pouring out of apartments and car windows in the background of his own story. “It’s never been about traditional movie music,” Robertson told Headliner in 2019 about that role. But he was much more at home in the studio and on the soundtrack, and he quickly became Scorsese’s wingman in all things music. Hollywood came calling, and Robertson was cast as a lead in the 1980 film “Carny,” which he also produced. It’s music that proudly worships and dances with these people - and alternately weeps for their oppression, at times sounding almost sick at their treatment by the story’s white predators. Robertson’s contribution is an astonishing and lively musical ecosystem that gives immediate authenticity to Scorsese’s equally vivid presentation of Osage life and culture in 1920s Oklahoma. It pounds along with the beat of drums and shakers, chords splashing on acoustic and electric guitars, accented with banjo twangs and the birdlike cries of various flutes. Robertson, whose mother was born on the Six Nations Reserve near Lake Erie in Canada, breathes and strums a windstorm of personal expression into the film’s staggering score, which Scorsese cranks noticeably loud in the mix.

I was literally hours away from interviewing Robbie Robertson for a celebratory feature about his most impressive film score, for the forthcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and his long and varied collaboration with its director, Martin Scorsese, who was also going to answer some of our questions. This article was not supposed to be an appreciation.

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