They Called Him King comes from the 1971 western known as His Name Is King. Its music accompanies Django and Schultz as they leave after the sheriff incident and turns the German's name into a cinematic link.
A theme from another western finds a new King
Luis Bacalov composed the music for They Called Him King, the 1971 western directed by Giancarlo Romitelli. Django Unchained brings back its main theme after the episode in which Schultz kills the sheriff and explains his status as a wanted fugitive. The departure from town thus becomes a moment of musical affirmation: the duo can continue on their way after a situation that seemed destined to end with them surrounded by local authorities.
The name King creates an immediate association with Dr. King Schultz. That coincidence allows a song from another story to seem as if it were commenting on the presence of Christoph Waltz's character. However, it does not turn the 1971 western's protagonist's biography into the dentist's secret biography. The lyrics' references belong to an earlier work and should not be used as proof of relatives, vendettas, or episodes that Django Unchained does not confirm.
The difference matters because Tarantino works with music that arrives loaded with meaning. The selection can make use of a word, an attitude, or a memory of the genre without carrying over every fact from the original plot. The viewer recognizes an affinity, and the film uses it, but that affinity remains a relationship between works. It does not automatically become narrative information spoken by a character within the scene.
The theme adds a legendary dimension to Schultz at an early point in the journey. Up to then, we have seen him negotiate, observe, and act with a mix of courtesy and sudden violence. The music condenses that impression into an exit that seems to confirm his command of the situation. Django, still learning how to read his companion, shares with the audience the discovery of a man whose professional appearance does not fully explain his trade.
Law as an instrument of staging
The sheriff episode shows that Schultz does not rely solely on quick gunplay. He knows the paperwork and uses language to change the interpretation of what he has just done. What looks like the murder of the local highest authority is later presented as the execution of a wanted fugitive with a bounty. The scene builds his power through a combination of violence, information, and the ability to manage the conversation.
The music arrives once that demonstration has already had its effect. It is not necessary for Schultz to make the legal argument, but it turns the departure into a kind of stylized confirmation. The character has created a problem before the town's eyes and then redefined the terms of it. The theme allows the viewer to take in the episode as part of a professional identity that Django will need to understand during his apprenticeship.
It also matters that they leave together. Django is not an outside observer who disappears after witnessing the German's skill. His immediate future is tied to that way of acting. The sequence offers a first experience of how knowledge of the rules can open up space within a hostile environment. It does not guarantee equality between them, but it establishes an association that the film will develop through work, conversation, and shared decisions.
The musical tone keeps the episode from being confined to a purely bureaucratic register. Papers and bounties are essential, but the film remains a western that creates memorable figures. The song takes the result of a negotiation and turns it into motion. The town departure sends the characters toward the next stretch of the road, leaving behind a situation that had focused the attention of everyone present.
Bacalov between presentation and learning
The presence of Bacalov in the film brings together different functions. The opening theme Django had announced the protagonist's figure; They Called Him King here highlights a facet of Schultz. It is not necessary to imagine a rigid system in which each composer belongs exclusively to a single character. The selection is more flexible: different pieces can illuminate moments and relationships that change over the course of the story.
In this case, the borrowed theme connects the trade of bounty hunter with a cinematic tradition that the viewer can recognize even without having seen Romitelli's film. The voice, melody, and drive of the theme offer an emphatic introduction to a figure who rides and acts according to his own calculations. That energy fits Schultz, even though the film retains distinctive traits that do not depend on the musical reference.
For Django, the episode represents an expansion of the possible world. He has just emerged from a condition in which others decided his path and now watches a man capable of getting through a threat through a combination of resources. The music helps make that demonstration memorable, but the later learning will also reveal limits and contradictions. Schultz can handle certain rules without controlling the entire slave system or all of his own reactions.
They Called Him King therefore works both as an indirect introduction and as a transition. Its title speaks to the dentist's name, its origin recalls another western, and its placement celebrates a temporarily successful departure. None of those functions requires inventing an earlier backstory for Schultz. The strength of the borrowed piece lies in the relationship it creates before our eyes: two men leave town behind, and the music gives them, during that stretch of road, a larger scale than the incident just resolved.
More context in the Django Unchained guide.