I have asked this before, but in my never ending quest to find this piece of music, I am asking again:
The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre, hosted by EG Marshall, was a syndicated radio show that ran in the 70s and I think into the 1980s.
The opening theme music is by Nathan Van Cleave, a passage from the Twilight Zone episode "Two." Then EG Marshall talks, and there is a tease from the upcoming program.
Then, after the tease, each episode had this piece of music with a fluttering clarinet, with reverb, and a low octave piano ostinato beneath. In the link, you can hear it begin at around 2:17:
Tonerow suggested that it might be Marius Constant, and it might, but it is not from any of the Twilight Zone theme variations that were on the 4-CD box set. I could not find this segment on anything else from that box set either.
I don't know if this was written for the CBS library, or if it just ended up there.
Does anyone recognize this?
On a related topic, did anyone listen to the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre?
I have asked this before, but in my never ending quest to find this piece of music, I am asking again:
The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre, hosted by EG Marshall, was a syndicated radio show that ran in the 70s and I think into the 1980s.
The opening theme music is by Nathan Van Cleave, from the Twilight Episode "Two." Then EG Marshall talks, and there is a commercial.
Then, after the commercial, each episode had this piece of music with a fluttering clarinet, with reverb, and a low octave piano ostinato beneath. In the link, you can hear it begin at around 2:17:
Tonerow suggested that it might be Marius Constant, and it might, but it is not from any of the Twilight Zone theme variations that were on the 4-CD box set. I could not find this segment on anything else from that box set either.
I don't know if this was written for the CBS library, or if it just ended up there.
Does anyone recognize this?
On a related topic, did anyone listen to the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre?
Thanks in advance.
It sounds they were using tracks from the CBS PRODUCTION MUSIC LIBRARY and perhaps even something from the CAPITOL PRODUCTION LIBRARY as well.
I hear some goldsmith cues in it from TWILIGHT ZONE.
My T-Zone ear tells me that sounds an awful lot like something from Perchance to Dream, the one with Richard Conte.
You're listening at 2:17? If it is from "Perchance to Dream," it did not make it to the album.
I'm not enough of a TZ aficionado to know if there was music from particular shows that was not included in the respective suites on the albums/box set. I also don't know if the episodes with original scores ever had additional music from the CBS library tracked into them.
Snippets from Jerry Goldsmith's Twilight Zone "Invaders" music can be heard on so many, many of the over 1,000 episodes of "The CBS Radio Mystery Theater" along with many other Twilight Zone cues from the CBS music library. A few of the "Invaders" snippets amounted to signature cues at times.
"The CBS Radio Mystery Theater" was a last gasp attempt to revive network radio drama in the US (1974-82). It was often pre-empted by sports programming in US CBS local radio markets where it played.
It was a prestige labor of love led by Himan Brown, the creator of the intense "Inner Sanctum" radio series from the 1940's. But CBSRMT was tame in tone compared to "Inner Sanctum" or the horror radio show "Lights Out".
I listened to the show pretty regularly between 1974 and 1979. It ran on Sunday nights where I lived, and I think it came on at 10 or 11. I would go to sleep to the show. Some of them scared the hell out of me.
In the late 1990s, I found a bunch of them archived online. I always looked for the recordings that included the commercials.
Listening back to them as an adult, I thought that some were better than others, but in general, I found them to be rife with cultural and gender stereotypes. A lot of them came off as 1940s radio shows, and not in a cool, retro sort of way, but in a way that suggested that the writers didn't know it was the 1970s and had no idea what had gone down culturally since WWII. It was as if the medium of radio forced them to think like it was the 1940s. Kind of weird and subtly disturbing.
When I got the TZ box set, I immediately recognized the main theme the first time I played Nathan Van Cleave's "Two."
I still hope to one day find that clarinet and piano music.
I did listen to these shows at the time. That cue you are trying to identify sounds SO familiar!
I do have the complete CBS EZ Cue Music Library set on LP and on CDR, as well as the catalog describing each cue.
The LPs are maddening to screen, because they are "needle-drop" cues (the needle doesn't advance to the next cue, unless you doe it manually).
The CDRs are easier to "scan" cue-to-cue. I'll try to give the catalog a fast screening and see if I can locate the cue you're looking for.
If it's from the Capitol Music Library, I don't have much of that. I passed up the entire set for a dollar a record in a used record store in Boonton, NJ, back in the 1970s because I didn't know what they were. I'm still mentally kicking myself for that boo-boo.
I do have the complete CBS EZ Cue Music Library set on LP and on CDR, as well as the catalog describing each cue.
The LPs are maddening to screen, because they are "needle-drop" cues (the needle doesn't advance to the next cue, unless you doe it manually).
The CDRs are easier to "scan" cue-to-cue. I'll try to give the catalog a fast screening and see if I can locate the cue you're looking for.
Ron, that would be awesome! Maybe you can save time if there is something described in the catalog saying something like, "clarinet and piano, menacing, foreboding." Thank you!
If it's from the Capitol Music Library, I don't have much of that. I passed up the entire set for a dollar a record in a used record store in Boonton, NJ, back in the 1970s because I didn't know what they were. I'm still mentally kicking myself for that boo-boo.
My T-Zone ear tells me that sounds an awful lot like something from Perchance to Dream, the one with Richard Conte.
You're listening at 2:17? If it is from "Perchance to Dream," it did not make it to the album.
I'm not enough of a TZ aficionado to know if there was music from particular shows that was not included in the respective suites on the albums/box set. I also don't know if the episodes with original scores ever had additional music from the CBS library tracked into them.
Yeah, 2:17. I think it picks up that episode's 'aesthetic' for want of a better term but if the cue, per se, isn't there it ain't there. Ugh, and to think I played the clarinet in m'schooldays!
Lots of library music tracked into episodes. I'm thinking of the music, for instance, underscoring James Whitmore's monolgue in On Thursday We Leave For Home when he reminisced about Earth. Lifelong sound in m'mind's ear ever since its original airing. And some actual ep music (multiple eps) didn't make it into releases of the kind you cite.
Snippets from Jerry Goldsmith's Twilight Zone "Invaders" music can be heard on so many, many of the over 1,000 episodes of "The CBS Radio Mystery Theater" along with many other Twilight Zone cues from the CBS music library. A few of the "Invaders" snippets amounted to signature cues at times.
Yes. IIRC, the show also used Herrmann's "Where is Everybody," the aforementioned Van Cleave "Two" (in addition to the opening theme) and one of the Steiner or Rosenman scores on disc 4, forget which offhand.
Then, after the commercial, each episode had this piece of music with a fluttering clarinet, with reverb, and a low octave piano ostinato beneath. In the link, you can hear it begin at around 2:17:
That cue is used over and over and over in this series, at just exactly this point in the show every time. A fact which gets you no closer to your answer, sadly.
On a related topic, did anyone listen to the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre?
Thanks in advance.
I did as a kid, when I could (it was on awfully late). I specifically remember listening to the one with Kim Hunter ("You're just a patrolman!").
As an adult I got some and found them full of seventies cliches, and not in an amusing way, rather like you*. I'm someday going to listen to "Appointment in Uganda," which is said to be the most embarrassing (although "A Very Old Man" gives it a run for its money).
The writing was very much of its time, so I'm keen to make a set of their adaptations of classic fiction. I did find a listing of them, but never set to gathering them from the ungawdly set of 1,500 or so that are out there.
*Although the "news and commercials" versions are worth their weight in gold, hearing Joan Crawford being a huckster for the USO, and Ed McMahon for Budweiser.
*Although the "news and commercials" versions are worth their weight in gold, hearing Joan Crawford being a huckster for the USO, and Ed McMahon for Budweiser.
They are a part of the experience. It is like looking through an old magazine - you completely skip over the main "content" and obsess over the ads. At least I do.
The cue in question reminds me of Les Baxter, but since its CBS music, it does have that manic Marius Constant quality. He wrote alot of creepy music for TWZ, not just the theme.
Onya! Great question! This has been bugging me for years!!!!! Unfortunately I don't have the answer. But one of these days I'm going to re-record that little "zinger" of music. Now if only we can agree on the instrumentation. It does sound like clarinet and piano with maybe some muted trumpets near the end. I like to get the best possible audio of all my favorites and this little tiny piece of music is fantastic! In the later years of Mystery Theater they don't use it. The episodes with the creator of CBS Mystery Theater Himan Brown doing the narration instead of E.G.
Good luck ! Hope we identify this little gem someday.
Onya! Great question! This has been bugging me for years!!!!! Unfortunately I don't have the answer. But one of these days I'm going to re-record that little "zinger" of music. Now if only we can agree on the instrumentation. It does sound like clarinet and piano with maybe some muted trumpets near the end. I like to get the best possible audio of all my favorites and this little tiny piece of music is fantastic! In the later years of Mystery Theater they don't use it. The episodes with the creator of CBS Mystery Theater Himan Brown doing the narration instead of E.G.
Good luck ! Hope we identify this little gem someday.
It's funny how, with 7 billion or whatever people on the planet, how hard it is sometimes to find someone who shares a particular obsession! It should be easy to recreate; the clarinet is playing basically a dominant/mixolydian over the piano playing alternating between the root and fifth. I can't tell from these lo-fi homemade tapes, filtered through AM radio, if there may be bass or percussion in there. Brass does indeed enter, and they seem to pot down the fader at that point to make room for EG.
This must surely be a library track, because I think over the years someone would have identified it.
Have you heard it elsewhere on any CBS TV shows? Was it ever used in a TZ episode to your knowledge?
The episodes with the creator of CBS Mystery Theater Himan Brown doing the narration instead of E.G.
It should be easy to recreate; the clarinet is playing basically a dominant/mixolydian over the piano playing alternating between the root and fifth. I can't tell from these lo-fi homemade tapes, filtered through AM radio, if there may be bass or percussion in there. Brass does indeed enter, and they seem to pot down the fader at that point to make room for EG.