Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television Themes and Scoring

481 Pages·2023·72.55 MB·English

by  Jon Burlingame

MUSIC FOR PRIME TIME

Music for
PRIME
Time
A History of American
Television Themes
and Scoring
JON
BURLINGAME
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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© 2023 Jon Burlingame 2022

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022941549
ISBN 978– 0– 19– 061830– 8

DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780190618308.001.0001
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 “Hi- yo, Silver!”: The Birth of TV Music 5
2 “Book ’em, Danno”: Cop and Detective Shows 33
3 “Head ’em up! Move ’em out!”: The Westerns 84
4 “You are traveling through another dimension”: Fantasy and
Science Fiction 115
5 “Man, woman, birth, death, infinity”: Drama 159
6 “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale”: Comedy 197
7 “Your mission, should you decide to accept
it”: Action- Adventure 253
8 “You are there”: Documentaries, News, and Information
Programming 282
9 “ Flintstones! Meet the Flintstones!”: Cartoons in Prime Time 311
10 “My name is Kunta Kinte”: Made- for- TV Movies and Miniseries 325
11 “Mrs. Peel, we’re needed”: British Shows Aired in America 374
12 “This is the way”: Music for Cable and Streaming Services 399
Afterword 426
Photo Credits 429
Bibliography and Sources 431
Index 447
Acknowledgments
First, my thanks to all of the composers, producers, music editors, and
music supervisors who agreed to be interviewed; their memories, and
their work, are the backbone of this history (all are cited in the “Sources”
section). Special thanks to Richard Carlin, the Schirmer Books editor who
agreed to publish this the first time around; and to Norm Hirschy, the
Oxford editor who thought there might be merit in a revised, expanded
edition with a better title.
Then, my sincere gratitude to the dozens of friends and colleagues who
helped, both with the 1996 edition and this new one: Bruce Babcock, Lori
Barth, Joel Beckerman, Stacey Behlmer, Richard Bellis, David Bianculli,
Robin Bilinkoff, Larry Blank, Jeff Bond, Bill Boston, Stephen Bowie,
Lance Bowling, Gareth Bramley, Neil S. Bulk, Ron Burbella, Dan Carlin,
Tom Cavanaugh, Andie Childs, Ned Comstock, Stephen Cox, Michael
Crepezzi, Mark Dawidziak, Sandy DeCrescent, Frank DeWald, Ian
Dickerson, Jim DiGiovanni, Jim DiPasquale, Dennis Dreith, Timothy
Edwards, Jeff Eldridge, Laura Engel, John Fitzpatrick, M.V. Gerhard,
Maria Giacchino, Lee Goldberg, Dan Goldwasser, Mike Gorfaine,
Heather Guibert, Gina Handy, Steve Hanson, Jennifer Harmon, Michael
Hill, Mark Eden Horowitz, Ashley Irwin, Preston Neal Jones, Camara
Kambon, Lukas Kendall, and Bruce Kimmel.
Also, Julie Kirgo, Maria Kleinman, Mike Knobloch, Nancy Knutsen,
Richard Kraft, Randall Larson, Shawn LeMone, Geoff Leonard, Stephane
Lerouge, Michael Levine, Mike Matessino, Michael McGehee, Mark
McKenzie, Robert Messinger, Steve Mitchell, Yavar Moradi, Dave Norris,
Abby North, Bobbi Page, Forrest Patten, Phyllis Paul, Tommy Pearson,
Andrew Pixley, Renata Pompelli, Jeannie Pool, Jamie Richardson, Judie
Rosenman, Doreen Ringer Ross, Patrick Russ, David Schecter, Theresa
Eastman Schifrin, David Schwartz, Doug Schwartz, Sam Schwartz,
Daniel Schweiger, Warren Sherk, Brent Shields, Joe Sikoryak, Scott
Skelton, Steven Smith, Mark Smythe, Chris Soldo, Paul Sommerfeld,
Craig Spaulding, Sally Stevens, Sheila Sumitra, John Takis, Susanna
Moross Tarjan, Ford A. Thaxton, Mike Todd, Robert Townson, Matt
Verboys, Pete Walker, Nikki Walsh, John W. Waxman, Laurel Whitcomb,
Steve Winogradsky, Jaz Wiseman, Reba Wissner, and Les Zador.
AcknowledgMenTS And the late Tony Thomas, David Kraft, David Mitchell, Henry
viii Adams, Arthur Greenwald, Dave Fuller, Lois Carruth, Ronni Chasen,
Beth Krakower, and Nick Redman, all of whom encouraged me in count-
less ways over the decades, as well as friends at ASCAP, BMI, SESAC,
Local 47 of the American Federation of Musicians, the Recording
Musicians Association, Society of Composers & Lyricists, and the helpful
personnel at my favorite libraries— those at the University of Southern
California, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the Margaret
Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences—
must also be on this list.
Finally, thanks to the many publicists who helped facilitate interviews
(too many now, over 35 years, to name, but thank you!), and my editors
at Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and the Los Angeles Times who have
allowed me to pursue this line of work for so long: Steve Gaydos, Steve
Chagollan, Ray Bennett, Rich Nordwind, and Anne Hurley. I am es-
pecially grateful to two trusted friends who regularly awoke to pan-
icked emails from me about obscure themes and scores I simply had to
find: Craig Henderson and Nik Ranieri. And most of all, to the extraor-
dinary woman who has shared my life (and tolerated my obsessions) for
nearly 25 years, without whom this work, and so much more in my life,
would not have been possible: Marilee Bradford.
Introduction
T
elevision music, someone once said, is “the soundtrack of our
lives.” For the postwar “baby boom” generation and beyond, that is un-
questionably true. We grew up in front of the set. The music that accom-
panied those images became—f or better or worse—i ndelibly stamped on
our minds. Kids of the 1950s don’t think of the William Tell overture as
the start of a Rossini opera: to them it’s the Lone Ranger theme. Children
of the 1960s can sing “a horse is a horse, of course, of course”; “just sit
right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip”; and “they’re
creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky”—a ll instantly recog-
nizable as the title songs for Mister Ed, Gilligan’s Island, and The Addams
Family, respectively.
Instrumental music, too, became as familiar as the pop tunes we
were hearing on the radio. Any boomer can hum the opening notes of
the Dragnet, Twilight Zone, and Hawaii Five- 0 themes. Kids who grew
up still later are equally conversant with the music of The Brady Bunch,
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Dynasty, and Hill Street Blues. Later gen-
erations know the themes for Friends, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under,
and Game of Thrones as well as they know any song by U2, Madonna, or
Taylor Swift.
Music for Prime Time. Jon Burlingame, Oxford University Press. © 2023 Jon Burlingame.
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780190618308.003.0001