An encore performance from May 2014, before most of you were reading.
Boris Claudio “Lalo” Schifrin is a pianist, composer, arranger and conductor. He’s written the score for close to 200 movies (most notably the Dirty Harry films) and the theme music for a dozen TV shows, including The Man From U. N. C. L. E., Starsky & Hutch, The Big Valley, and T. H. E. Cat. He has received four Grammy Awards (out of twenty-one nominations), one Cable ACE Award, six Academy Award nominations, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Mary says that a great TV show needs a great theme, and Lalo has written a few. Today, I want to feature two of my favorite TV themes, both written by Lalo, both great tunes in their own right. The first is the “Theme from Mission: Impossible,” which ran from 1966 to 1973 and starred Peter Graves, Martin Landau, Greg Morris, and Barbara Bain.
The second tune is the “Theme from Mannix,” which ran from 1967 to 1975 and starred Mike Connors and the beautiful Gail Fisher.
Lalo’s website is here.
Lalo Schifrin, your Two for Tuesday, September 17, 2019.
The Sound of One Hand Typing 
I love both Mission Impossible and Mannix…poor Mannix. He always gets beat up..anyway love the songs you showcased and highlighting the musician
LikeLike
That’s the beauty of Mannix: seeing Peggy (his secretary) patch him up. Glad you liked these.
LikeLike
Great choices, John! Music themes from old TV shows bring back some great memories.
LikeLike
Absolutely. Title music seems to be a dying art, and yet it’s what people remember most.
LikeLike
It always amazes me how quickly just hearing the old tunes from shows takes me right back to the room I watched them in. Great choices to feature!!
LikeLike
Thanks! Music does that: it transports you back to the time and place when you heard it. In both these cases, Saturday night (or whatever night each played).
LikeLiked by 1 person
I always sing Mission Impossible theme when I’m heading off to accomplish a task. 😂😂😂
LikeLike
Doesn’t everyone? 😛
LikeLiked by 1 person
Haha! I hope so! If not they should!
LikeLiked by 1 person
For our generation, Lalo has written part of the soundtrack of our lives.
Arlee Bird
Tossing It Out
LikeLike
He has, and there are many other composers coming that wrote the other part.
LikeLike
The Mission Impossible is, of course, iconic and rightly so… Love the Mannix theme also. Makes me want to see it again. One of the few old shows I haven’t seen lately or within the past few years.
LikeLike
Both have popped up on MeTV. For some bizarre reason, they play Mannix at 2 AM Eastern; it really deserves a better timeslot. They lost the rights to Mission: Impossible a while ago, but wait long enough and it generally comes back. Mannix was one of those shows I didn’t care for when it was in first run, but I liked when CBS started rerunning them at 10:30 on Thursday nights back in the mid ’70’s.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I do remember Mannix but it’s been so long… I will look for it. The Robert Blake one… Baretta…I remember also but havent seen that one either in a long while.
LikeLike
Every time I turn around, there seems to be another vintage TV channel opening up. Besides MeTV, there’s Cozi TV, FeTV, Antenna TV, Decades (who does “the Decades binge” every weekend, where they play as many episodes of a show as they can, cycling around and starting again if they need to), This TV, etc.etc. If you get one or more of those, keep an eye on them and you might see Baretta show up eventually. A lot of the streaming services like Pluto,Xumo, Roku etc. will feature some of the older shows as well, so check those out. TV not being what it was 20 or more years ago, we’ve taken to watching vintage TV whenever we can.
LikeLike
Love it.
LikeLike
Thanks, Kip!
LikeLike