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Composer Oliver Edward Nelson was born June 4, 1932 and passed away October 28, 1975.
Oliver Nelson came from the jazz scene where he worked as a saxophonist-arranger-composer-band leader.
In the mid-1960’s, he joined the rank of Universal TV. The body of his TV work lied in two shows in which he defined the shapes of his dynamic musical style -- first, the funky bassline vibe with the 1967-1975 “Ironside” (at the request of composer Quincy Jones, he was hired); for the first season of "Ironside", Nelson composed four scores: "Message from Beyond" and "Dead's Man Tale" (the two seminal scores that started his arch-signature), "Tagged for Murder", "The Man Who Believed". And, then, the haunting electronic sounds and acid melancolic melodies with the 1971-1972 season 2 of “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery” (producer Jack Laird hired him to replace and emulate Gil Mellé’s season 1 synthetic pulses) -- that influenced and bred his masterpiece that was a firework of electronic - military - ethnic and funky beats: “The Six Million Dollar Man”, in which he added his stamp from its third TV movie entitled “Solid Gold Kidnapping” (1973) to the first three seasons between 1974 and 1976 (among those scores, listen carefully to the electronic ones as “Population Zero”, “Day of the Robot”, “The Rescue of Athena One”, “The Pioneers”, “Straight on 'til Morning“, and the heavy funk ones as “Eyewitness to Murder”, “Dr. Wells is Missing”, "The Last of the Fourth of Julys", “The Seven Million Dollar Man”) which also cost his life. The irony was that Nelson was again a replacement after two composers working on the first two TV movies (“The Six Million Dollar Man/Cyborg” by modernist Gil Mellé and “Wine, Women and War" by Pop-oriented Stu Phillips).
To understand the musical roots of “The Six Million Dollar Man”, we will select and compare some scores from “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery” whose basic motifs or sound colors were derived, extended and blossomed:
*“The Boy Who Predicted Earthquake”: the end spooky sad electronic sound influence “Population Zero” and “The Rescue of Athena One”.
*“The Hand of Borgus Weems”: the obsessive and depressing electronic motif influence “Population Zero”, “Day of the Robot” and “The Pioneers”.
*“Logoda’s Head”: the ethnic African sound is part of “Solid Gold Kidnapping”.
Before creating the final identity of “The Six Million Dollar Man”, Nelson composed two TV movies for Silverton Productions Inc. (aka Harve Bennett company): “The Alpha Caper” (1973) and “Money to Burn” (1973).
Nevertheless, Nelson strongly contributed to two series: “Matt Lincoln” (1970-1971)--based on the TV movie “Dial Hot Line”-- and also one at Paramount: “Longstreet” (1971-1972). Other shows had memorable scores by him as “The Name of the Game” three scores: "Nightmare”, “The White Birch" (1968) and "Cynthia is Alive and Living in Avalon" (1970)--a hip-oriented score combined with some of Nelson's motifs--, “Columbo” season 2 score: “The Greenhouse Jungle” (1972).
By listening to COLUMBO’s “The Greenhouse Jungle” (1972), I witness again his ability to use a dominant violin section and a flute to create a sensitive and powerful melody and always combined with an elegant catchy solo of piano and a strong rythm section with a touch of martial beats (bassline, funky congas and drum); he even adds an electronic piano here and there a la “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery”. This is the high peak of COLUMBO’s scores and one motif of this score is re-interpreted in “The Six Million Dollar Man”.
In January 2006, Film Score Monthly released one of his rare film score for the thriller “Zigzag” (1970), an original recording that I highly recommend and forestalls the leaning of “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery” scores.
You can listen to 5 original audio samples at:
http://www.screenarchives.com/fsm/detailCD.cfm?ID=354
For the majority of people, he is labeled as a jazzman whose best creation remains the 1961
“The Blues And The Abstract Truth and Sound Pieces”.
Film music critic Douglas Payne about Oliver Nelson:
http://www.dougpayne.com/nelson.htm
Ironside Archive site:
http://www.ironside.info/
BOOKS
"TV's Biggest Hits: The History of Television Themes from 'Dragnet' to 'Friends' "
by Jon Burlingame
(Schirmer Books, 1996, 342 pages, ISBN 0-02-870324-3)
“Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour”
by Scott Skelton and Jim Benson
(Syracuse University Press, 1999, 398 pages, ISBN 0-8156-0535-8)
http://www.nightgallery.net/
"The Bionic Book: The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman Reconstructed"
by Herbie J. Pilato
foreword by Richard Anderson
(Bear Manor Media, 2007, 480 pages, ISBN 1-59393-083-6)
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Is it me or have the various levels of interest on this board changed radically in the last few years?
Can you elaborate?
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