Earle H. Hagen

Perhaps one of the most prolific composers of tv soundtrack music in the 1950s with the 1980s, Earle Hagen found the field after successes in big-band jazz and function in the film industry being a musician and arranger. Hagen was created greater than a 10 years before contemporary notions of film music had also manifested themselves, in 1919. He was musically willing as a guy and had adopted the trombone in junior senior high school in LA. He came old amid the ascendancy from the big rings, and used famous brands Isham Jones, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Ray Noble, and Ben Pollack. By 1939 he previously also developed passions in structure and arranging, which year he had written “Harlem Nocturne,” an instrumental piece influenced by his like of Duke Ellington’s function, which became his 1st success like a composer. Hagen offered within the U.S. Military Air Force music group, and after time for civilian existence he got employment as an arranger at 20th Century-Fox. Hagen worked well under music movie director Alfred Newman at Fox, and offered an arranger and orchestrator on ratings by composers such as for example David Buttolph. He was at Fox for seven years, but by the first ’50s, he could note that the possibilities to create music for movies were getting ever fewer, while fresh fields were checking in other press, especially tv. Together with composer Herbert Spencer, he began composing music for tv in 1953, and got his first achievement that year using the theme from MAKE SPACE for Daddy (later on referred to as The Danny Thomas Display). Hagen discovered a particularly receptive patron in Sheldon Leonard, the professional/movie director/manufacturer who created the series, who enjoyed Hagen’s theme, a big-band agreement of the original melody “Danny Boy” that became popular as a unique early Television theme. Since it occurred, Leonard and his firm became among the busiest tv production units on the market, and Hagen surely got to apply his abilities as a article writer and arranger on some of the most effective shows within their output, like the Andy Griffith Present, Gomer Pyle, USMC, That Gal, The Mod Squad, and much more. His perhaps most obviously work, however, might have been the a large number of hours of primary credit scoring that Hagen supplied — as well as the name theme — for some from the series’ 82 shows, which got him all over the world using the series’ film team. Hagen noticed a great deal more remuneration than most soundtrack composers, due to Leonard’s foresight — the second option pegged Hagen like a skill well worth nurturing, and setup a publishing business together with Hagen in early stages. His last big achievement like a composer was The Dukes of Hazzard, although he noticed belated usage of his “Harlem Nocturne,” that was picked up because the theme music for the 1980s Mike Hammer tv series. He also had written books regarding the artwork of film rating and, in his ’80s, also authored an autobiography. Using the passage of David Raksin, Jerry Goldsmith, and Elmer Bernstein, by the springtime of 2005, Hagen may be the dean of American soundtrack composers.