television Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

TV Theme Songs: Mike Post

Dun Dun

Watching the Emmy Awards recently, well after they aired, I noticed that they introduced the presenters with a variety of television theme songs. This got me thinking about how much I loved TV theme songs, at least from the 20th century, when I could easily identify them.

In fact, I have seven CDs called Television’s Greatest Hits. Each disc has 65 TV themes, starting with kids’ shows and then sitcoms, dramas, and the like.

My favorite TV theme songwriter is Mike Post, who turned 80 in September 2024. I instantly recognized several he wrote or co-wrote when I played the themes. A few hit the pop charts. The shows I watched are in italics.

The Rockford Files (pop #10, AC #16 in 1975); a version of the TV intro

Theme from The Greatest American Hero (Believe It Or Not) – Joey Scarbury (#2 pop, #3 AC in 1981); intro

The Hill Street Blues (#10 pop, #4 AC in 1981); intro – I listened to a few of these, and there are slight variations by season

Magnum, P.I. (#25 pop, AC #40 in 1982); intro

Theme From L.A. Law (AC number 13, 1988); intro

More intros

“At the peak of his career, Post was the go-to composer for all of the series created by Donald P. Bellisario, Steven Bochco, Stephen J. Cannell, and Dick Wolf.” You can tell because you see some of the same actors appearing in different shows. Some of the music is slightly repetitive, but overall, it’s still enjoyable. Even the themes of shows I never watched, I nevertheless recognize.

The A-Team

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Blossom (My Opinionation by the great Dr. John)

The Commish

Doogie Howser, M.D.

Hardcastle and McCormick

Hooperman – John Ritter in the first show I ever heard described as a dramedy

Hunter

NewsRadio

NYPD Blue

Quantum Leap

Renegade

Riptide

Silk Stalkings

Tales Of The Gold Monkey

Tenspeed and Brownshoe – Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum

Wiseguy

The White Shadow

Probably the most famous

Law and Order

Law and Order: SVU

Mike Post explains the creation of the Dun Dun sound effect

2024

From Billboard, 7 June:

“A desire to ‘try something hard’ is what led legendary television composer Mike Post to make the first all-originals albums of his 60-year career.

“Message From the Mountains & Echoes of the Delta, which came out in April, was just that for the composer. Post was part of the Wrecking Crew as a teenager, won the first of his five Grammy Awards at age 24.”

More about Mike Post, including his roots in the Wreckling Crew, plus the Music History Project interview.

Quincy Jones (1933-2024)

Back On The Block

Last week, my church had a First Friday concert featuring a jazz instrumental quartet. One of the last songs they performed was Killer Joe, and I knew I had a version of that song with a vocalist. But I couldn’t initially recall on what album.

Then it occurred to me that it was on Q’s Jook Joint, the 1995 album by Quincy Jones; that track featured Töne Löc, Queen Latifah, and Nancy Wilson (the jazz artist, not the Heart member). One of the people with whom I was talking also had the album.

Soon afterward, I heard that he passed away. As the Los Angeles Times put it, he “expanded the American songbook as a musician, composer, and producer and shaped some of the biggest stars and most memorable songs in the second half of the 20th century.”

“The music producer has been a cornerstone of the music industry since his early beginnings as an 18 year old in Seattle, performing as a trumpeter and arranger for various jazz bands around the area.”

Quincy was always a major force in my life, even before I knew who he was. His previous album, Back On The Block, from 1989, featured various artists I mentioned here.

He wrangled all the artists in the all-star recording of We Are The World, the 1985 charity record for famine relief in Africa. The same year, he scored and co-produced the movie The Color Purple.

The Gloved One

Q produced the massively successful Michael Jackson albums Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad. Audio interviews with Jones are included in the 2001 special editions of the albums. Q called Eddie Van Halen to ask to play on Thriller’s Beat It, but the guitarist hung up, assuming someone was pranking him. Q’s then-wife, Peggy Lipton, knew Vincent Price and helped get him for the title track.

Possibly my favorite Q-produced song: Strawberry Letter 23.

Q created the music for Sanford and Son, Ironside, The Cosby Show, and several other programs. He scored Roots and over three dozen movies.

Until much later, I did not know this. “Jones produced all four million-selling singles for Lesley Gore during the early and mid-sixties, including “It’s My Party” (UK No. 8; US No. 1), its sequel “Judy’s Turn To Cry” (US No. 5), “She’s A Fool” (also a US No. 5) in 1963, and “You Don’t Know Me” (US No. 2 for four weeks in 1964). He continued to produce for Gore until 1966, including the Greenwich/Barry hits “Look Of Love” (US No. 27 in 1965) and “Maybe I Know” (UK No. 20; US No. 14 in 1964).”

He worked with Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie, Sammy Davis Jr., Barbra Streisand, Helen Merrill, Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Andy Williams, and Sonny Bono, among many others.

His accolades are extensive, filling 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography, “Q.” You can read the pieces from THR, Variety, and the New York Times.

“Quincy Jones’ last Grammy win took place at the 65th awards held in 2023; through Harry Styles’ win with Harry’s House as the Album of the Year, it took Jones’ all-time Grammy records to 28 wins from 80 nominations.”

Sunday Stealing, 200.03: Oscar

lights out

This week’s Sunday Stealing is part of the 200 questions that Bev used the past two weeks. Here are 15 more from the same source, so I dubbed it 200.03. Next week, it will likely be 200.04.

1. What popular TV show do you refuse to watch?

There are so many current TV shows that I can’t even keep track of. So there’s no sense of “refusing to watch.” I suspect there would be if I were keeping up with more of them. In the past, I started watching a program called 24. The first 13 episodes of the first season had a taut dramatic arc, and then it limped along for the rest of the season. I watched the first episode of season 2, in which the lead character, Jack Bauer, murders somebody so he can literally steal their face and infiltrate the other side. I said I’ve had enough of this, and I didn’t watch it anymore.

2. What pets did you have while growing up?

We mostly had cats. There was a time when my sisters and I had three cats: Tiger, Taffy, and Tony. Tiger was mine, and he got hit and killed by a car; I was devastated. Earlier, we had a cat named Peter, who was so smart that when he wanted to come in, he would get up on the stoop and rattle the doorknob. We also had a dog named Lucky Stubbs, an Alaskan Husky, and he nipped at me. I was not a big fan of this dog, but my father liked him, and we kept the dog until Lucky also nipped both of our pastor’s daughters. Then Lucky Stubbs was off to some farm in rural Broome County.

Rabbit’s foot

3. What is the luckiest thing that has happened to you?

As I noted here, I was lucky that when I moved to the Capital District of New York State, my old pal Pam, who I knew from my New Paltz college days, also moved north. Her boyfriend at the time, Paul, was running a program with the Schenectady Arts Council, and I was able to get a job there, one of my two favorite jobs of all time.

4. What are some small things that make your day better?

Playing Wordle – I have a 636-game winning streak, playing Quordle, posting my blog to Facebook, and saying good morning to my stuffed monkey, Oscar.

5. What’s your favorite piece of clothing you own/owned?

When my sister Leslie went to Mexico in 1972, she brought me back two shirts, a Guatemalan work shirt, and a dress shirt, and I love them. I think I wore one of them the first time I got married, that year, actually.

6. What’s the most annoying habit other people have?

Arguing with people online for long periods as though they were going to change their opinion. I came across one recently about whether God was in favor of or against abortion, which led to a conversation about how God in the Old Testament encouraged the slaughter of certain enemies. I said this is a fruitless discussion.

Black and white

7. What game or movie universe would you most like to live in?

I was taken by the movie Pleasantville (1998), in which everything was simple and black and white until it wasn’t.

8. What’s the most impressive thing you know how to do?

Figuring out square roots with pen and paper and keeping score with bowling. All sorts of totally useless skills that technology does for you instead

9. What was the best book or series you’ve read?

Every time I get a question like this, I always think about the last time, and I try to answer it differently. Today, I’m going with Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben. I have a collection in this very room.

10. What state or country do you never want to go back to?

I’ve been to 32 states and four other countries, and I don’t think there’s a real answer. It was hot and muggy when my daughter and I were in Indiana in 2019. I wouldn’t write off the state over that one experience, but it did suck.

11. Where do you usually go when you have time off?

Into my imagination

Secret

12. What amazing thing did you do that no one was around to see?

“Amazing” would not be the term I’d use. When I was a kid and cars were left unlocked, I would open the doors and turn off the lights. On a rainy or overcast day, I might do this a dozen times on my way home from high school. Now, I remove obstructions – tree branches, tipped-over empty garbage cans – from the sidewalk.

13. What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?

I’ve never been all that prescriptive, so I’m not one to suggest that one ought to do anything. I suppose I could say something mundane like do something that gets you out of your comfort zone, but what the heck does that even mean?

14. What’s something you’ve been meaning to try but just haven’t gotten around to it?

Writing a book

15. What is something most people consider a luxury but you don’t think you could live without?

Takeout. I don’t much enjoy cooking; I do make the morning oatmeal or occasionally eggs or pancakes. It’s unreasonable that my wife should come home from work and then have to cook afterward, though she’s good at cooking meals for two or even three nights. There’s a Tuesday farmers market she frequents for about half the year. Around the corner from our house, there’s an Indian restaurant, a pizza place where we often get lamb or chicken on rice, a burger place where we can also get pizza, etc. When I was single, I used to buy frozen meals and heat them, but my wife is not a big fan.

James Earl Jones (1931-2024)

2 Tony awards

The first time I specifically remember seeing James Earl Jones in a movie was in The Great White Hope (1970), where he played a Jack Johnson-like boxer. I went to the cinema with my high school girlfriend and her father. Both Jones and Jane Alexander had won Tonys for their Broadway performances. The performances were very good, though I thought the film was too stagy.

More likely, I watched him on television series in the 1960s, such as the great East Side/West Side (1962) or the courtroom drama The Defenders, in which he played two different characters. I have the Along Came a Spider episode in season 1 on DVD! I’ll have to check that out.

It’s possible I saw him on the soap operas Guiding Light and/or As The World Turns, which my maternal grandmother and great-aunt watched religiously.

I was recently making a list of my favorite movies. Field Of Dreams is definitely on it, and James Earl Jones’ near-monologue is a primary reason.

The VOICE

But it’s the voice, in everything from Star Wars (1977 et al.)to The Lion King (1994) to the CNN tag – all represented in this brief Simpsons clip – that he was best known for. Listen also to his narration of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. Per Mark Evanier, he even did an episode of Garfield.

It’s strange for someone who stuttered so severely as a child, born on January 17, 1931, in Arkabutla, MS, that he stopped speaking for a time because of his abusive grandmother’s treatment. “Mr. Jones profited from a deep analysis of meaning in his lines. ‘Because of my muteness,’ he said in ‘Voices and Silences,’ a 1993 memoir written with Penelope Niven, ‘I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint.'”

I also saw him in the movies, including The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976), Coming to America (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Sneakers (1992), The Sandlot (1993), and more recently, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

Indeed, I watched him in anything that aired on TV, including Homicide: Life on the Street, Picket Fences, Law & Order, and NYPD Blue, and his portrayal of Alex Haley on Roots: The Next Generation.

The Brooks and Marsh book on TV described his role as a police captain on Paris (1979), a short-lived program, as lacking “believability… Jones, a highly respected actor, strutted through this role speaking in booming, stentorian tones as if it were Richard III.” But I watched it; it was James Earl Jones! On this show, he met his second wife, Cecilia Hart, who predeceased him.

“His Acting Resonated Onstage and On-screen”

Alas, I never saw him on stage. “A commanding presence on the Broadway stage, Jones earned four competitive Tony Award nominations for Best Actor in a Play, winning twice for his performances as Jack Jefferson in The Great White Hope in 1969 and Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences in 1987. He received a Special Tony Award at the 2017 ceremony…

“In September 2022, the Shubert Organization rechristened its 110-year-old Cort Theatre as The James Earl Jones Theatre… ‘For me standing in this very building 64 years ago at the start of my Broadway career, it would have been inconceivable that my name would be on the building today,’ Jones said in a statement… “Let my journey from then to now be an inspiration for all aspiring actors.'”

Jones was a 2002 Kennedy Center Honoree and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from SAG-AFTRA in 2009 and the National Board of Review in 1995. Here’s a 1996 interview, a life in pictures, a critic’s appreciation of an “ideal elevator companion,” and the New York Times obituary.

Given the fact that he was 93 and had lived what most would consider a “good life,” I was surprised at how utterly sad I was at his passing.

Young Sheldon penultimate episode

The Big Bang Theory prequel

I find it weird that I’m musing about the television program Young Sheldon. It’s partly because it was not a show I watched. My wife saw a few episodes and liked them, and I’m sure they were fine, though a seven-year-old know-it-all wasn’t my thing.

I also didn’t watch The Big Bang Theory regularly. Several people I know IRL were SHOCKED by that fact. “But you worked in a comic book store!” A couple of them, actually, for collectively about a decade. And I collected funny books.

I have, I’m told, some geek/nerd credentials as a librarian! And I was on JEOPARDY! Surely, it was a show MADE for me. I saw a few episodes; most were entertaining. But there would be cringe-worthy elements involving socially awkward roommates Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) and their friends and colleagues.

I did watch the last two episodes of TBBT. I’d view the finale even for shows I had once watched but abandoned, such as Seinfeld. It was a satisfactory ending.

I recorded back-to-back episodes of TBBT prequel Young Sheldon, mistakenly believing they were the last two. One was about two of the 14-year-old’s teachers (Wallace Shawn and Ed Begley, Jr.) trying not to acknowledge that their student (Iain Armitage) was smarter than they were.

The antepenultimate episode involved young Sheldon’s dad George (Lance Barber), a high school football coach, getting a chance to work at the college level. As the rest of the family prepared for a photo shoot, two of George’s colleagues came to the Coopers’ door to inform them that George had died of a heart attack. If I had been seeped in TBBT lore, I might have known that George died when Sheldon was 14.

Funeral

The following week was the last two episodes. Funeral was one of the most profoundly accurate portrayals of grief I’d ever seen, certainly on a network sitcom. Unlike TBBT, which was filmed before a live studio audience, Young Sheldon is a single-camera show.

This allowed the YS creators to repeat a ten-second snippet of dialogue between George and his wife Mary (Zoe Perry), the last time the family would see George alive. Young Sheldon imagined that he said, or could have, or should have said when his dad went out the door. This was astonishingly relatable.

It was compelling enough that I would recommend it to my buddies with Death Cafe. (There are snippets of the episode currently on YouTube, but I don’t expect them to survive. Paramount Plus does have the whole show.)

The Chuck Lorre vanity card at the show’s end reads: “Part of the heartache of this story is that it reminds me of how I took my dad for granted. How I was so wrapped up in myself, I didn’t see what was right in front of me.” Sounds a lot like young Sheldon, and maybe the older Sheldon as well.

I was amused by the discussion of how YS did or did not adhere to the timeline of TBBT. It reminded me of conversations I’d listen to in comic book stores about whether a given funny book story was consistent with the continuity of an issue from a decade earlier.