Mystery Score Clips

More clues (mine will be much more helpful than justin boggan's )

This movie was directed by a British man (still with us), who had directed this movie's American leading actor (deceased) before in a U.K. production, and would direct this actor yet again in another Universal movie made in the same year as this one!

Anyway, this mystery item is from 1968 and is Pretty Jazzy.

[think also of the name under which John Scott's music is published!]

Mystery Score Clip 32


This composer worked on a number of famous TV series, but also did very few films. You may not necessarily know his music, but he did one of the most famous TV themes ever and no doubt all of you have heard it.

Another score with jazzy elements, but other qualities to offer. I'd say this is about half the score in the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6gOc4YMcNk

These days, I'd say "Batman" (simply because the the dozen or so animated interpretations over the last few years, and films). with newer generations, I can't imagine many have heard TOC theme, let alone even know it existed. Though it appears to me, that even Hefti is disappearing from the newer score community.

RE: #32

Portions of this music remind me of a Barry Gray or a Roy Budd, but neither fit the clues.

Others that I am thinking of, such as Richard Markowitz or Stu Phillips, don't fit the clues either.

Unless another member can pick up where I'm leaving off, then I guess we'll have to wait for justin's big reveal.

Reveal:

"Darker Than Amber"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065610/

A car speeds around with two guys and a blond woman in the back tied up and her legs tied to a heavy 100+ pound hand weight. They stop at a bridge and drop her off in. She sinks to the bottom and the car speeds away. But there are two fishermen in a small dingy right just under the bridge and one of them dives in after her, saving her life.

The man is unable to let it go and starts hunting for the men who did this to her. Once they discover she survived, she's targeted again.

It's not the best movie in the world, but it's okay. If you got nothjing to do, it'll tie up some time.

The composer is John Parker, whom you might know for his famous television theme to "CHiPs" (though to be fair, Silvestri's arrangement of his theme is the most famous).

Parker worked on a number of popular and famous TV series, inluding being one of the lucky ones to score to "M*A*S*H" for what little episodes had original scoring before they dumped that and tracked music.

Chip Taylor is co-credited on the theme. There's bad song, which completely takes away from the film, in the end credits. I wrote to Chip Taylor (a stage name) to find out if it was just lyrics he wrote, or actualy did work on the main theme; no reply.

There has been no CD or LP release of the score.


New contest in a few minutes, with some hard groove.

Mystery music #32 could be by one of any number of folks, but my first guess leans towards Oliver Nelson.

Nelson died prematurely in 1975, and his jazz-based style could have been responsible for the "groove" in justin B's clip.
Nelson was also attached to several television series with followings (COLUMBO, SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, etc.) and FSM released Oliver's ZIGZAG film score.

Thing is - consulting Nelson's credits - I'm at a loss to figure out which (if any) of Nelson's scores could be the source of clip 32...

Reveal.


The film is from 1972, and it's a blaxploitation called "Top of the Heap".

The composer is J.J. Johnson.

The film centers around a black cop who's having marriage trouble and identity problems with being a black copy vs. the black general public, whom is also going through others problems. And during all this, he has fairly lengthy delusions of being an astronaut at NASA on a very important mission.

The movie is poor and sends all the wrong messages to, quite frankly, black people: cheating on your wife is okay, hating America is normal, abuse of power is no problem; and forceful segregation, where instead of being American and trying to be whatever you want to be, the character is more worried about his skin color and appearence to other black people. The guy even has a faint disdain for his white cop partner.

I think I can fairly say it's not often, in fact this is the only time, I can watch a film wherein the main character falls out of a tree naked in a forest in a delusional dream, chases an attractive naked black woman through the forest, then both stop at a table where he screams, raises a fist, and bashes open what looks like a black watermelon, eats it frantically, then stops, looks up, and shouts "JUM-BA-LIIIYYYAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!", while wild percussive score plays.

There has been no official or unofficial release.

FSM released a score he did to another blaxploitation film, "Cleopatra Jones".

Looking up info, apparently he shot himself dead -- suicide -- February 3, 2001. He was 77.

Hmmm ... my mind is not associating any composer with the music heard during clip #34.

Due to this video's brevity, though, I guessing the source would be a half-hour television episode.

I hear what sounds like an electronic bass guitar, so I might place the year of this piece at or around 1964...

Couple more clues (not many I can give):

The show has one of the most iconic, popular themes ever written. The composer was not the initial choice, but the other had obligations which prevented him from taking on scoring duties.

I thought "fine feathered fink" might give it right away, but I guess I need a far more obvious clue, so here's the Bat-clue:

Complete this line: na na NA NA na na NA NA ___________!

Reveal:

na na NA NA na na NA NA "Batman"!


Holy mystery score clip, Batman!
That's right, old chum.

Joker, Catwoman, the Riddler, and that pompous waddling master of foul play, the Penguin.


When the show got pushed back, Neal Hefti was unable to score episodes, having completed the theme for an early network demonstration reel. Nelson Riddle got the job (he also scored the movie; still in print at LLLR).

Eventaully, around the end of season two Warren Baker scored two or four episodes. Then in season three Billy May took over as composer, scoring all but one episode ("The Unkindest Tut of All", which Nelson did). The clip is exclusively Riddle efforts, with some selection from various episodes, including the pilot and the episode where Batman chases Catwoman across a roff top, leading to one of the series most famous dialogue exchanges.

Sadly, these were the longest dialogue-free excerpts (one took a little editing for small snippets of dialogue, though). There was never a score CD release (rights issues that hold up a DVD release of the series, also tie up the music, sadly to this day), ut there was a soundtrack that featured re-recordings of score (though some I strongly suspect are original recordings) with dialogue sprinkled here & there, and one that includes a somber piano piece not in the episode (might be uncredited classical music). It's Riddle's work.

Things were going fine until season three. The limited budget and the lose of Nelson Riddle were extremely noticable. Not that there was anything wrong per se about Bill May's work, but it was completely wrong for the series, and except for one episode (that I recall, a Joker episode) he did not use any of the iconic themes Riddle established, except for the strumming Batman riding music (and even then he added this terrible electric guitar sound to it that ruined it).

I'm one of those people who feel music doesn't need to be in the background; it can help carry, and even become melded with a scene and carry the scene, if it calls for such, by tiself with no SFX, loud, strong, and with a powerful theme, but here with May, I found myself thinking: SHUT THE HELL UP, DAMNIT. The music would not stop. It was overbaring, and not in a good way. Even those breif Warren Baker efforts were vastly superior (he had, by the way, a very small amount of credits).

If it's unreleased and from the late 1990s, I'm guessing it's music by Graeme Revell?

It sounds an awful lot like John Powell (though I know it isn't him). Was it a one-season show or did it have a good run?

Composer only did one season of the show. The next Mystery clip will be a 1980's score.