John Parker, distinctive DALLAS composer, turns 100 today!

[Snarky Oracle!]

From what I can determine, infamous DALLAS scorist John Parker turns 100 years old today.

He was actually quite talented, as some of his early work indicates (he wrote numerous fine Native American-influenced scores for the last half-dozen years of GUNSMOKE, where he worked alongside Leonard Katzman -- supposedly his best friend, and fellow composers Jerrold Immel and Bruce Broughton). And Parker's early scores for DALLAS were awfully good-ish.

As time went on, of course, his DALLAS work became increasingly controversial.

 

[Garry]

Let's celebrate!

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Let's celebrate!

It says your video is "private"!

What are you hiding??

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

here’s Parker a year before Dallas debuted:

He wrote the theme song and scored a lot of the first season. They “discoified” the music for the subsequent seasons, but season 1 sounded a lot like the KIDNAPPED episode of Dallas. Ponch and Jon would have taken Willie Gust down before Bobby got halfway to Waco.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

In 1972, Parker brought us not-exactly-the-greatest TV theme for CANNON, but it does sound like something that fits a show about a morbidly obese detective who gets into a lot of improbable spats...

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

In 1972, Parker brought us not-exactly-the-greatest TV theme for CANNON, but it does sound like something that fits a show about a morbidly obese detective who gets into a lot of improbable spats...

good drummer, though! Also nice to see Wallace Windham during his cop days, well before he started that stupid ear tugging or twitching thing from the Murder, Ellie Wrote years.

(speaking of improbable spats, which I misread as ‘splats’, I could picture a patented Parker screaming horn blurt ending if they’d been bold enough to follow Nicholas Pierce’s fatal journey all the way to the sidewalk at the end of season.. 11, was it?)

screaming dramatic horns:

hm, it’s Parker at the end of 11! Trademark tympani but “more writing, less screaming”, I’d say:

 

[bmasters9]

And he was also on the music of Trapper John, M.D., that CBS medical hit of the late-70s to mid-80s that had Pernell Roberts in the title role, et al.