It’s hardly light or fun today in the Mid-Atlantic, rather rainy and chilly. Added to that, the holidays are right upon us. Who else wants to dive back under the bedcovers, pull them over the head, and hide out until January? In honor of that sentiment, let’s have some fun with TV themes, some of which are pretty damned good music.
The idea for this blog on music themes has been kicking around in my head for some time now. Which ones are the best? Why do they stay with you? My favorite themes and/or title songs, in no particular order, are the following:
“Peter Gunn” by Henry Mancini
“Hawaii Five-0” by Morton Stevens
“Mission: Impossible” by Lalo Schifrin
“Suicide Is Painless” (aka M*A*S*H) by Johnny Mandel
BABYLON 5 themes by Christopher Franke; all are good, but I like Season 5’s the best, “Voices of Authority”
“Ironside”, performed by Quincy Jones
“The Rockford Files”, “HIll Street Blues”, and “Magnum P.I.” (actually, almost anything by Mike Post and Larry Carlton, but more about them later)
“Ellery Queen” by Elmer Bernstein
“Secret Agent Man”, performed by Johnny Rivers
“Mike Hammer/Harlem Nocturne” by Earle Hagen (who also wrote the “Andy Griffin Show” theme--yikes)
“Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow” (aka Baretta), performed by Sammy Davis Jr.
I noticed that 11 out of 13 tunes went to cop, PI, or spy shows. 10 out of 13 are heavily influenced by jazz or are outright jazz. The shows run the gamut from the late 50s--PETER GUNN in 1958--to the end of the 1980s. (Did you know PETER GUNN starred Craig Stevens? I know, who?) HAWAII FIVE-O began in 1968 and ended in 1980; MAGNUM PI picked up then; the show even mentioned McGarrett in the first episode. It was the last of above mentioned themes to stop being heard on a weekly basis; it ended in 1988.
Several of these shows were long-runners and broke or set records: M*A*S*H ran for 12 seasons, changed its cast significantly and got better for those changes, and had the greatest number of views for its final episode in 1983. HAWAII FIVE-O (the original, not the new crap) ran for 12 seasons, and was the longest running cop show in TV history.
GUNSMOKE wins for longest running TV show in the US, and it ran on radio long before that. Did you know that William Cannon played Matt Dillon on radio? Despite its being on for twenty years, the GUNSMOKE theme was forgettable. It would take whole bars of the music before I’d recognize the piece. On the other hand, if I can’t recognize “Bonanza” after three notes, I’m in trouble. I don’t particularly care for the music, but it’s immediately recognizable.
(In the UK, the longest running episodic SF show is DR. WHO. It also had a pretty good theme song.)
So much for the trivia.
“Peter Gunn” is a TV theme that has so outlived its original source material that every jazz musician, regardless of instrument, has made a cover. I’ve heard everybody from Mancini and his orchestra to Trombone Shorty to the Art of Noise to Clarence Clemons do this. I think it was supposed to evoke Los Angeles with a sophisticated, smart ass, noir verve.
Jazz seems to be the music of choice for sophistication, corruption, and noir--even if in the movies, it wasn’t true. It certainly works in “Harlem Nocturne”. New York, Mike Hammer, a snap brim, a .45 automatic and Velda. Like “Peter Gunn”, “Harlem Nocturne” goes beyond well beyond its origins and invades the jazz canon.
“Peter Gunn” was also composed by Henry Mancini. I’ll give anything Hank wrote a listen. He wrote the theme for NBC’s Mystery Movie. It’s not his best, but I still like it. Likewise with Mike Post and Larry Carlton.
The compositions of Mike Post and Larry Carlton (or just Mike Post with “Greatest American Hero”) tend to conjure up images of the shows. The music became a short hand for the show. With “Hill Street Blues”, I see Bobby and Renko taking their walking tour of the third world or hear Joyce Davenport call Captain Frank Furillo Pizza Man. With “Magnum PI”, I see that red Ferrari, Magnum in his Detroit Tigers baseball cap, and Higgins in high dudgeon and Bermuda shorts. When I hear “The Rockford Files”, I immediately see Jim Rockford, his beat up car and trailer, and his irrepressible dad.
Ideally, a good theme song has to sum up the entire bedrock idea of the show. Other themes are better at evoke images or feelings.
BABYLON 5 was really an SF novel for TV. Each season’s story arc was a step in the development of the novel. Problem, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement--the music reflected the narrative theme of that season. While there is similarity to each season main title, the differences suggest the changes, the tensions, the regrets to be suffered by the characters. In Season 2’s theme, we hear the coming of conflict while in Season 3’s theme, we hear the war and the slaughter and the severing of dreams. By Season 5, the “voices of authority” in the galaxy have changed, irrevocably, and the replacements are uncertain, hesitant, reluctant even as they are hopeful.
The “Hawaii Five-O” theme is musical shorthand for a visual image--or as Brad says, “Cue the wave”. That wave is Hawaiian only, and not at all Hawaiian beaches. It was stock footage, so it could’ve been the Pipeline. Drum roll, please. It’s The Wave. And it’s a wave of music, too.
“Suicide Is Painless” (M*A*S*H) always makes me see the Army tents, feel the boredom punctuated by terror and controlled chaos, and think about the futility of medics not being able to change the first rule of war--young men die.
(The third verse in “Suicide is Painless” is important for my understanding of Richard, Earl of Armitage: “The sword of time will pierce our skins/It doesn’t hurt when it begins/But as it works its way on in/The pain grows stronger, watch it grin.” A life of pursuing justice because it’s the right thing to do costs him--a slow, but crushing exaction.)
The best TV themes stay with us because they’re great music. They remind of things we loved or made us laugh or put images in our heads. They stay with us because they have meaning and they convey that meaning to us. They become the soundtrack of our lives. Who knew? My soundtrack runs to the good guys running down the bad guys with in black and white with style and panache.
Then again, I really like these songs. And ultimately, that's all that needs be said.
UPDATE: A friend complains I've got this wrong. I've out really good stuff like the theme from "The Wire". Perhaps I have. What I think is more telling: he's still watching TV, and I'm not. BABYLON 5 is the most recent series listed on here. That's really the last time I wanted TV, except for ESPN, and themes to those sports shows are short and forgettable.