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Is anyone familiar with the work of composer John Parker? He did a lot of work for CBS series like "Gunsmoke", "The Wild, Wild West" and "Trapper John, M.D." (a terrific title theme).
What I remember him best for, though, is the score for the movie "Darker than Amber", a failed attempt to launch a franchise based on the popular Travis McGee book series of the time. I recall seeing this film at a sneak preview. Prior to the screening of the main feature, a trailer for "Darker than Amber" was shown, which was received enthusiastically. Thus, when the sneak viewing of "Darker than Amber" came up, the audience went wild, nearly drowning out John Parker's great theme music. To this date the only DVD available is an import (with Danish subtitles!). And of course the music has never seen a release.
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Posted: |
Dec 22, 2012 - 12:06 AM
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By: |
Rollin Hand
(Member)
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Is anyone familiar with the work of composer John Parker? He did a lot of work for CBS series like "Gunsmoke", "The Wild, Wild West" and "Trapper John, M.D." (a terrific title theme).
Apart from the single score ("The Night of the Spanish Curse") for "The Wild Wild West", he composed two fine scores for "The Streets of San Francisco".
Season 1
THE SET-UP
writer DOUGLAS ROBERTS
director GEORGE McCOWAN
composer JOHN PARKER
with guest stars STUART WHITMAN, JASON EVERS, CLAUDINE LONGET
special guest star JACK ALBERTSON
co-starring JOHN KERR as GERALD O’BRIEN, GEORGE D. WALLACE as FRED BARBER (GLENN WILDER)
Season 4
SCHOOL OF FEAR
writer BRAD RADNITZ
story GORDON BASICHIS, MARCIA HAMMOND BASICHIS
director WILLIAM HALE
composer JOHN PARKER
with guest stars MAURICE EVANS, JOHN LEHNE, GEOFFREY LEWIS (RUTH McDEVITT)
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Don`t forget the great scores Parker wrote for DALLAS. His jazzy big band scores were very different from the scores by the other DALLAS composers (Richard Lewis Warren, Bruce Broughton, Lance Rubin and Jerrold Immel). Since the music credits on DALLAS always appeared at the end it always was a fun guessing game who the composer of the episode was that was shown. And I immediately knew if it was Parker or Lewis Warren because their style was instantly recognizable.
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Seasons Greetings everyone!
The music from Cannon has long been one of my holy grails.
Great theme - brilliantly orchestrated to fit the character!
Is anyone thinking of raiding the Quinn Martin vaults?
Regards
CC
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There's an MP3 "album" of John Parker's DALLAS music on Amazon, though it sounds a bit hissy. But I do remember some of it from seeing the show years ago.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dallas-Original-Televison-Show-Soundtrack/dp/B005A26UV6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1356177012&sr=8-2
Other than the theme, I'm not really familiar with the Dallas music - but is that really music from the show, then?
The arrangement of the theme sounds awful to me - a bit like those crappy German versions of (supposedly) the Airwolf soundtrack, which aren't really anything like the Airwolf music in reality.
And I've never heard of the label 'Jerden' (come to think of it, the 'Soundworks International' copyright doesn't inspire me with confidence either....) 
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Simon, is your e-mail still the same, I mean from your profile?
I'm going to send you some infos about Parker.
Yes, still the same.
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That's my understading, too. I had arranged an interview with him and everything ws going fine, but he just suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. He stopped replying, his website shut down, his e-mail went bad, his alternate e-mail went bad.
About a year ago I got a new e-mail from a singer he had worked with in recent years. I never heard back.
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There are 2 John Parker themes on TELEVISION'S GREATEST HITS VOL.6
46. Trapper John MD
47. CHiPs
There are some Parker compositions on the Intrada THEN CAME BRONSON double Cd set.
On CD 2, the Parker material and the episodes represented are:
2. A Famine Where Abundance Lies
3. Old Tigers Never Die - They Just Run Away
6. A Long Trip to Yesterday
11, 12 Mating Dance for Tender Grass
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He's also had two versions of his theme for Cannon out, on Rhino's Crime Stoppers CD complete with Hank Simms voiceover ("Tonight's episode - 'Death Of A Stone Seahorse'!") and one of the Television's Greatest Hits albums. 
