Even if you don’t know their names, you will know their music
If you look back at the TV music of the 1970s and 1980s, several names come to mind including: Henry Mancini, Ronnie Hazlehurst, Lalo Schifrin, Alan Hawkshaw, Mark Snow and Keith Mansfield, but if you look predominately towards US TV, the kings of them all were Mike Post and Pete Carpenter.
Even if you don’t know their names, you will know their music, with the pair writing for numerous shows and producing thousands of hours of score. Writing for producers such as Donald P. Bellisario, Steven Bochco, Stephen J. Cannell and Dick Wolf, Post and Carpenter created memorable themes and scores for many of the hit shows of the time, either as a team or individually.
This is no mean feat and a list of show credits such as: The A-Team, The Rockford Files, NYPD Blue, L.A. Law, Quantum Leap, Magnum P.I., Hill Street Blues, Blossom, Hunter, CHiPs, Dougie Howser M.D. and Law & Order indicate how prolific and successful they were.
One of their early successes in 1974, The Rockford Files is clearly indicative of a style that Post and Carpenter would use on many shows, really stamping a persona on the period. From this point, until Carpenter’s death in 1987, you would hear their style throughout the channels.
This success didn’t come out of nowhere though, as both Post and Carpenter have intriguing CVs before they combined to take on and dominate the TV world.
Pete Carpenter, the older of the two by 30 years, had been playing and recording as a session musician for many years before starting to write for TV in the 1960s on shows such as The Andy Griffith Show and Bewitched. Mike Post in contrast spent the sixties as a songwriter and producer, working on various artists projects, including Mason Williams’ ‘Classical Gas’ and Kenny Rogers first three albums; ‘Classical Gas’ even earned him a Grammy for ‘Best Instrumental Arrangement’. Later, Post was to produce for Dolly Parton, Van Halen and Merle Haggard, alongside his TV work.
But what of their comtemporaries? Many, such as Mark Snow (Hart to Hart, Starsky and Hutch, TJ Hooker) produced great work, but none consistently had the success to match Post and Carpenter. Looking at other classics of the period, Kojak, Cagney and Lacey, and Starsky and Hutch, which were all brilliant themes, they were all by composers who came into the field for short periods and then went back to other work, whereas Post and Carpenter spent a sustained stretch in TV.
In the UK, there were some comparable themes such as ‘The Professionals’ by the great Laurie Johnson, but generally TV themes in the UK had a different sensibility. Like with most entertainment, US exports were highly visible though and the music of US network TV was common and familiar to me as I grew up.
Of all their work, to me the late 70s/early 80s including CHiPs and the A Team, are the sweet spot, but you can pretty much choose any theme from that 13-year period and find quality. Admittedly, there may be an element of nostalgia in that, but there is a magic that they captured that you don’t always find and they were able to reproduce it time and time again. It is harder nowadays for TV composers to hit these heights, as use of orchestras and session musicians has been limited by budgets, but this shouldn’t diminish all they were able to achieve, as if they were writing as a team today, I am sure they would still give anyone a run for their money.
So if you are new to some of their work, where to begin? I could easily spend several articles going through all of their work one by one, but really you are best served experiencing an exploration yourself and I envy you the chance to discover some fantastic music!
