The Craft of Music Composed for Television
Original Airdates: Oct. 27-30, 2023
TVC 625.5: Ed welcomes back Jon Burlingame, longtime music journalist and our nation’s leading writer on the subject of music for films and television. Jon’s latest book, Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television and Scoring, not only includes more than 450 interviews with composers, orchestrators, producers, editors, and musicians who are or who were active in the field of music for television, but tells the back story of every great TV theme music or TV theme song while also examining the many neglected and frequently underrated orchestral and jazz compositions for television that date back to the late 1940s. Topics this segment include why the craft of music composed for television is another form of storytelling; some of the notable names in music who also left their mark in television (including band leaders Count Basie and Duke Ellington and jazz artists Dave Grusin and Dave Brubeck); and the back story of how Earle Hagen composed the famous theme to The Andy Griffith Show. Music for Prime Time is available in bookstores everywhere through Oxford University Press and Amazon.com.
Jon Burlingame on Jerry Goldsmith and Patrick Williams
Original Airdates: Oct. 27-30, 2023
TVC 625.6: Jon Burlingame, author of Music for Prime Time, talks to Ed about the television work of renowned composers Jerry Goldsmith (Barnaby Jones, Police Story, The Loner) and Patrick Williams (The Streets of San Francisco, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Lou Grant, The Magician). Topics this segment include why Goldsmith was reluctant to score the pilot for Barnaby Jones (and how his theme for Barnaby, ironically, ended up being one of his best known TV compositions) and why no one was better than Williams at composing a jazz score for television. Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television Themes and Scoring is available in bookstores everywhere through Oxford University Press and Amazon.com.
The Golden Age of Music for Television
Original Airdates: Nov. 3-6, 2023
TVC 626.5: Part 2 of a conversation that began last week with Jon Burlingame, nationally renowned music journalist and the author of Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television and Scoring that not tells the back story of every great TV theme music or TV theme song, but gives readers a portraits of the many great composers who made those themes so memorable, including John Williams, Benny Carter, Duane Tatro, Irving Szathmary, and Oliver Nelson. Topics this segment include why some of the most memorable and creative music for television was made in the period between the late 1960s and early 1970s. Music for Prime Time is available in bookstores everywhere through Oxford University Press and Amazon.com.
The Three Eras of TV Themes
Original Airdates: Nov. 3-6, 2023
TVC 626.6: Jon Burlingame, author of Music for Prime Time, talks to Ed about the three eras of music for television; the work of John Parker on such shows as Cannon and Dallas; and how the role of music supervisors on a television series has become particularly important today, when many shows use pre-existing songs to convey the theme and mood of a series. Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television Themes and Scoring is available in bookstores everywhere through Oxford University Press and Amazon.com.
Jon Burlingame is also the producer, along with Doug Schwartz, of The Quinn Martin Collection, a three-volume CD collection released by La La Land Records. Volume 1, released in 2019, features music composed by Jerry Goldsmith, John Parker, Dave Grusin, and Lalo Schifrin for Barnaby Jones, Cannon, Dan August, and Most Wanted, respectively; Volume 2, released in 2019, features music composed for The Invaders by Dominic Frontiere, Richard Markowitz, Sidney Cutner, Duane Tatro, and others; Volume 3, released in 2020, features music composed by Patrick Williams for several episodes of The Streets of San Francisco (including the pilot movie), plus Williams’ score for “The Seduction Squad,” an episode of A Man Called Sloane.
A fourth volume of The Quinn Martin Collection is scheduled for release in 2024. If you love the music of Quinn Martin’s shows, all of these volumes are highly worth adding to your collection.
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