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TV's Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends

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On the back cover of the book, the author asks if the reader can identify no less than forty theme songs of television shows from over the past five decades. Only five escaped my memory. Thus, my "musical quotient", a term coined by the author, is pretty high.

In a time when the "hummable" and recognizable theme song seems to be a thing of the past, with only a few on-air shows today possessing them, this book is an excellent reflection of the theme as well as the accompanying scores and the musicians that composed them. Names like Morton Stevens, Gil Melle', Billy Goldenberg, Bruce Boughton, as well as film composers that occasionally dabbled in television (Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Franz Waxman, and Alex North) abound in the fact-filled book.

Divided into ten chapters, including a foreword and afterward, the book also has a list of "suggested listenings" wherein the reader can obtain recordings of respective themes and scores.

As I said in the title, the book is a delight for those of us with fond memories of the music of the "boob tube".

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Hi, Yo, Silver!
The Birth of TV Music

2. Crime to a Beat
Cop and Detective Shows

3. Head 'Em Up! Move 'Em Out!
The Westerns

4. You Are Traveling Through Another Dimension
Fantasy and Sci-Fi

5. Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity
Drama

6. Just Sit Right Back and You'll Hear a Tale
The Sitcoms

7. Your Mission, Should You Decide to Accept It
Action-Adventure

8. You Are There
Documentaries and News Programming

9. Flintstones! Meet the Flintstones
Cartoons in Prime Time

10. My Name is Kunta Kinte
Made-for-TV Movies and Miniseries

Afterward

Sources

Suggested Listening

Index

If you like music and/or television you will enjoy this book. A tremendous amount of research went into "TV's Greatest Hits" and it pays off for the reader with information available nowhere else. Both the educated musician and the casual fan will enjoy this book. The entire history of television music is covered, not just the well known "hits".