Fifty Years Later, Johnny Cash’s Rejected Theme Song For James Bond’s “Thunderball” Is Still Pretty Great

According to a YouTube upload from 2008, where the song was shared (see below), the song was pulled at the last minute and replaced by Tom Jones, whose take was iconic in its own right and was even parodied by “Weird Al” Yankovic in the Leslie Nielsen comedy Spy Hard.

The Wikipedia entry for the film says little else about it; apparently the film had some trouble finding an opening song and in addition to Cash’s also considered Dionne Warwick’s “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.”

With the movie turning 50 this year, though, Dangerous Minds have stumbled across the Cash recording. You can check it out below.

This year will see SPECTRE come to theaters as well as a line of officially-licensed James Bond comic books from Dynamite Entertainment.