Thursday 5 January 2012

Songs you didn't know you didn't know 3

Another selection gleaned from Twitter, bloggers, emails and my own strange memory banks. There have been some great suggestions including many famous TV themes. However, this is not so much about nostalgia as it is about identifying those pieces we all know but don't necessarily know what they're called or who wrote them.

Guy Chapman reminded me that Herb Alpert - featured in the previous post - was the 'A' in A&M Records, which he founded with Jerry Moss. Suddenly the trumpet on the company logo makes perfect sense. Guy also reminded me of the music used for the Humphrey the Tortoise segments on Vision On. It was by Pierre Arvay and was called The Happy Ocarina. Happy? Really?



The theme music to Vision On was Accroche-Toi, Caroline by Claude Vasori (AKA Caravelli).



Another song used in the show was Goofy by Cliff Johns:



Tom Biggs asked me to give Eric Coates a mention. And so I should. Coates was one of the big names in British Light Orchestral Music and wrote such hits as The London Suite, The Dambusters March and By the Sleepy Lagoon - the theme to long-running radio show Desert Island Discs. This one is Calling All Workers! the theme used for the BBC Radio Show Music while you work.



And here's Robert Farnon's Jumping Bean, used as the theme for the TV series Top of the Form. It may also have inspired the theme to Hancock's Half Hour, which was written by Farnon's great friend Wally Stott, who was also musical director on The Goon Show. Stott later underwent a sex-change and became Angela Morley, who had an equally successful career. She wrote, for example, nearly all of the music for the 1978 film Watership Down.



Lastly, who remembers Noseybonk? He was the creepy guy in the white mask and dildo nose who turned up now and again in the TV show Jigsaw. This was his theme. It's called A Hippo called Hubert and was written by Joe Griffiths. Griffiths also wrote the music to kid's TV favourites Chorlton and the Wheelies and Jamie and the Magic Torch.



Keep 'em coming!

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