Earle Hagen, the composer of The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke show theme songs, among countless others, died today at the age of 88. He was one of the greats and will be sorely missed. My condolences to his friends and family.

Lolac
:rip:

:rip:

It seems appropriate that a composer would live to be 88, the number
of keys on a piano.

Link (http://www.mtairynews.com/articles/2008/05/29/news/local_news/local01.txt)

Chances are many people aren't familiar with the name Earle Hagen, but virtually everyone has heard the song he created and is most known for: the theme to “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Not only did Hagen write “The Fishin' Hole,” he also supplied the whistling for the catchy tune that has come to be almost as well known as Andy, Barney and the show's other characters themselves.

“He was such a sweet man,” Betty Lynn of Mount Airy, one of the cast members on the long-running television series, said Wednesday of Hagen, who died Monday of natural causes at age 88 in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Lynn, who was familiar with Hagen's work due to her role as Thelma Lou on the program, pointed out that he was involved in many other TV and movie productions as well during his long career. But his association with “Mayberry” seems to occupy a special place in America's heart.

“With all the things he has done, the one that could easily be the most memorable to the public is the theme song to ‘The Andy Griffith Show,''' the veteran actress said.

Lynn also praised the background music that Hagen provided as the composer for the series, pointing out that he had a knack for supplying exactly the right sounds to match the characters' different moods. The great acting on “The Andy Griffith Show” is considered one of the elements that made the program so special, and Lynn credited Hagen's musical scores with greatly enhancing those performances.

She said that she always will remember “the fact that he was such a great talent and he was a gentleman as well - just as nice as he could be.” After learning of Hagen's death from a TV news report, “The Andy Griffith Show” cast member said she “felt really sad.”

Lynn had worked with Earle Hagen on another television series, “Where's Raymond,” also a comedy series, which ran during the 1953-54 season. It starred dancer Ray Bolger, best known for portraying the Scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz.”

“He was the musical director on that,” Lynn recalled of Hagen.

The Emmy-winning Hagen also composed the themes for such other TV programs as “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Mod Squad,'' “I Spy,'' “Rango,” “That Girl,” “Gomer Pyle, USMC,” “Eight is Enough” and “Mike Hammer.” Hagen's creation, “Harlem Nocturne,” served as the “Mike Hammer” theme.

Hagen, a trombone player, performed with the big bands of Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman early in his career.

Hagen visited in 2003

In addition to the impression he made on Lynn when she worked with him in the television business, Hagen also proved to be a big hit with local residents during a visit to Mount Airy several years ago. He was a special guest for the local “Mayberry Days” event in September 2003.

“He is one of my very, very, very favorite folks who have come here as part of the show,” said Tanya Jones, the executive director of the Surry Arts Council, which sponsors the city's annual tribute to “The Andy Griffith Show.” Over the years, “Mayberry Days” has brought in numerous co-stars and others who made the program possible, and Hagen's visit was special, Jones stressed.

“I consider it a real privilege that I was able to meet him and spend time with him,” the arts council director added, describing her experiences with Hagen as a “treat.”

Jones said that she and Hagen emailed each other frequently in the years after he came to Mount Airy, and she had been aware that his health recently was on the decline. “I'm just very, very sad about Earle's death.”

Another local resident who spent time with Hagen was Emmett Forrest, who has amassed a huge collection of Andy Griffith memorabilia that is now on display at the Andy Griffith Playhouse. “I have the sheet music to ‘The Fishin' Hole' song that he wrote for (the show),” said Forrest. He said that when Hagen came here in 2003, he had him autograph the sheet music, which is now among the items on display.

Forrest said few people realize that there also are words to the song, and he has seen visitors to the collection scribble them down for posterity. “They can all whistle it, but they can't sing it,” he said of “The Fishin' Hole.”

Jones said that budget limitations of “The Andy Griffith Show” in the early 1960s led to Hagen quickly improvising a theme for the program as opposed to seeking outside talent to write and perform the song. This included whistling the tune himself. When Sheldon Leonard heard it, he liked it and matched the song to the familiar opening footage of Andy and Opie heading to the lake with fishing poles in hand, and the rest was history.

Forrest said that despite Hagen's stature in the entertainment industry, he was a down-to-Earth individual who was fun to be around. “He was quite an impressive fellow. He was very easy to know. Like all real big people, he was nice,” Forrest recalled.

“He flew his own plane to Hollywood each day to work,'' Forrest said. “He was really big-time.”

While Hagen was visiting Mount Airy in 2003, “I was real fortunate,” Forrest said. “I got to play 18 holes of golf with him.”

Jones recalled that Hagen stayed at the Hampton Inn on U.S. 601 and only asked for one thing during his time there: down pillows, which were promptly obtained from a local department store. “And he never stopped talking about it,” she said.

Hagen's role immense

Jones believes that the input of Hagen is one of the key reasons why “The Andy Griffith Show” was such a huge success. “Part of Andy Griffith's genius was that he surrounded himself with incredible talent,” she said. “Certainly Earle Hagen is an example of that.”

An announcer for a local radio station broadcast a special tribute to Earle Hagen earlier this week after learning of his death, which included much of the music he popularized.

Mary Dowell of Snappy Lunch, a Main Street business immortalized by its mention on the program, said of Hagen, “I think he was a big part of the show.

“That song is so familiar with everybody,” added Dowell, who called Hagen's death “a big loss for Mayberry fans.”

“It's a sad day for Mayberry,” she said.

It seems appropriate that a composer would live to be 88, the number
of keys on a piano.

Alexander Courage passed away recently and was also 88.

rest in peace

Earle H. Hagen, the Emmy Award-winning television composer who wrote the memorable theme music for “The Andy Griffith Show,” "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "I Spy" and other classic TV programs, has died. He was 88.
Hagen, who composed the jazz standard "Harlem Nocturne" and was a former big-band trombonist for Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Ray Noble, died Monday night at his home in Rancho Mirage, said his wife, Laura. He had been ill for several months.
After spending seven years at 20th Century Fox as an arranger and orchestrator, Hagen moved into television in 1953 after the studio cut back on its music department.
Over the next 33 years, he composed music for about 3,000 TV series episodes, pilots and TV movies -- as well as composing the themes for popular shows, including "That Girl," "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.," "The Mod Squad" and "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer."
Hagen also wrote a jazz arrangement of the traditional Irish tune "Londonderry Air," which served as the theme for Danny Thomas' popular situation comedy, "Make Room for Daddy." The Thomas show, which debuted in 1953, launched Hagen's longtime professional relationship with director-producer Sheldon Leonard.
"There is no question in my mind that Earle Hagen is one of the most important composers in the history of television, if not the most important," said Jon Burlingame, author of the 1996 book "TV's Biggest Hits," a chronicle of American television scoring.
When Hagen started his television career, Burlingame said, "There was very little original music being composed for television. He was one of the very few people who took the leap and saw the potential of music for television in terms of what could be accomplished dramatically and comedically."
The themes that Hagen wrote, Burlingame said, "are among the most iconic in television history. Just think about the sort of country, folksy feel of 'The Andy Griffith Show' theme, and think about the big-band theme of 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.' Who doesn't know those things?
"Even themes for shows like 'That Girl' and 'I Spy' and 'The Mod Squad,' which perhaps don't re-run today as much as they should but at the time were huge television hits, were memorable. Hagen had an ability to capture the tone of any show he worked on."
The happy-go-lucky theme for "The Andy Griffith Show" may be Hagen's most recognizable tune. It's certainly the most beloved.
In his autobiography, "Memoirs of a Famous Composer -- Nobody Ever Heard Of," Hagen wrote that while sitting at home "wracking my brain for an idea for a theme for the Griffith show, it finally occurred to me that it should be something simple, something you could whistle. With that in mind, it took me about an hour to write the Andy Griffith theme."
That night, he and several musicians recorded a demo of the theme for the opening of the show, with Hagen doing the whistling and his 11-year-old son Deane doing the finger-snapping. The next morning, Hagen took a copy of the demo to executive producer Leonard's home.
As Hagen recalled: "He listened and said, 'Great! I'll do [the show's opening] at Franklin Canyon Lake with Andy and Ronny [Howard] walking along the bank with a couple of fishing poles over their shoulders."
During his TV heyday, Hagen wrote music for as many as five weekly shows simultaneously, putting in "16-hour workdays, seven days a week, for 40 weeks a year," he told the online magazine Film Score Monthly in 2001.
"In the 12 weeks off between seasons, if anyone mentioned music to me, I would kill," he said.
Hagen considered "I Spy," the hourlong 1965-68 espionage series starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby and shot in exotic locales around the world, as his "first real challenge."
"The changing panoramas of countries and plot lines were extremely daunting," he told Film Score Monthly. Nevertheless, he said, "It was a fun show for music and adventure." Executive producer Leonard "gave me full rein, and we never looked back. I tried to write a self-contained score for each episode. It was like scoring an hour movie a week."
Before the series began filming, he and Leonard and their wives went on an around-the-world tour looking for locations, during which Hagen tape-recorded the indigenous music.
Most Eastern cultures, he said, "have their own scales. . . . Once you are familiar with what makes a particular country tick, it's not so hard to write in that style. I always chose to Westernize the music for the audience."
For his work on "I Spy," Hagen received three Emmy Award nominations for outstanding achievement in musical composition, and he won the award in 1968.
"He was immensely talented and the dearest, sweetest, kindest man that you can possibly imagine," Culp, who later became good friends with Hagen, told The Times on Tuesday.
"He said 'I Spy' was always his favorite show," Culp said. "Unlike all the others, 'I Spy' had a new, clean score for every episode. That was unheard of; it was too expensive, but Sheldon put it in the budget. Earle cared more about this show and took more joy and pleasure in writing it than anything else he did."
Hagen was born July 9, 1919, in Chicago, and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was about 6. He began playing a baritone horn in his junior high school band and turned to the trombone at Hollywood High.
After graduating at age 15, he began playing professionally on the road. Over the next several years, he had stints with the California Collegians and the Ben Pollack, Isham Jones, Goodman and Dorsey bands.
He was playing trombone and writing arrangements for the Ray Noble Orchestra in 1939 when he wrote "Harlem Nocturne."
The sultry tune was frequently recorded, including by the Charlie Barnet, Glenn Miller and Stan Kenton bands. It also was used as the theme for "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer," starring Stacy Keach as the fedora-wearing, retro private eye.
During World War II, Hagen served in the Army Air Forces: He played trombone and wrote arrangements for the radio production unit's 65-piece orchestra, which operated out of a broadcasting studio in Santa Ana.
After the war, he joined 20th Century Fox as an arranger and orchestrator and worked on movies such as "Monkey Business," "Call Me Madam," "The Farmer Takes a Wife" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."
In the late 1940s, Hagen also did arrangements for a number of singers on various recording labels, including Frank Sinatra, Tony Martin, Dick Haymes and Frances Langford.
From 1953 to 1960, Hagen was partnered with former Fox arranger and orchestrator Herbert W. Spencer in writing music for television and recording albums under the Spencer-Hagen Orchestra name.
Even after he began working in television, Hagen returned to 20th Century Fox as an orchestrator for more than a dozen movies, including "Daddy Long Legs" and "Carousel."
In 1961, he and Lionel Newman shared an Oscar nomination for best scoring of a musical picture for "Let's Make Love."
Hagen, who retired from television in 1986, taught the BMI workshop for film and TV composers for many years. He also wrote the 1971 book "Scoring for Films" and the 1990 book "Advanced Techniques for Films," which are considered definitive textbooks on the subject.
Hagen's wife of 59 years, former big-band singer Elouise "Lou" Sidwell, died in 2002.
In addition to his wife Laura, a singer whom he married in 2005, Hagen is survived by two sons, Deane and James; three stepchildren, Rebecca Roberts, Richard Roberts and Rachael Roberts; and four grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Sunday at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, 69855 East Ramon Road, Cathedral City.

dennis.mclellan

@latimes.com

The actor, Neville Brand, wrote the seldom heard words to the theme song, but they went with Earle whistling the tune. I hope he got royalties everytime they played that song, like Merv got for his Final Jeopardy music.:lol: :lol: :lol:

The actor, Neville Brand, wrote the seldom heard words to the theme song, but they went with Earle whistling the tune. I hope he got royalties everytime they played that song, like Merv got for his Final Jeopardy music.:lol: :lol: :lol:

Neville Brand didn't write the words, That was done by actor Everett Sloane who appeared on the show as Jubal Foster.

I don't know where I got Neville Brand from.:confused: :confused: :confused: