Henry Mancini captured the Pink Panther's prowl. Lalo Schifrin provided the tense soundtrack for everyone's "Mission Impossible." Martin Denny instantly transported us to a "Quiet Village" in the jungle. And Richard Shores?
He bottled "Hate." You'll probably recognize his two minute instrumental as the soundtrack to violent chases through dark alleys on vintage TV cop shows, or background music to the scene of some psychotic babe having a nervous breakdown in a 60's film melodrama.
If Richard Shores' name seems familiar at all to you, it's probably because it flickered on your TV screen during the credits. While he didn't write TV theme songs, he wrote the incidental music for many TV episodes, including "The Man from UNCLE," which has had several albums of music released on CD.
Shore also worked on "Richard Diamond" and "Johnny Midnight," vintage late 50's TV shows starring David Janssen and Edmund O'Brien. As a staffer at Universal/Revue, he supplied music for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" "Dick Powell Theater" "Checkmate" and others. His oddball Mercury album was released as both "Music to Read Lady Chatterley's Lover By," and "Emotions," and featured separate tracks for: Love, Hate, Sorrow, Gay, Blues, Surprise, Frustration, Nostalgia, Fear and Hysteria.
When I found my copy of "Emotions" decades ago in the 39 cents bin, it had no cover, just the inner sleeve. Only recently have I found out why my copy only came in a sleeve. Some pervert had ditched the record but saved the cover! "Emotions" has a nude lady on it. In other words, she wears no jacket on the jacket. It's mild by today's standards, but it makes the album hard to find. There is a small circle of fiends who must own every nudie cutie album jacket ever made.
Shores stayed busy in the TV field long after the "mood music" era of the late 50's and early 60's mellowed out. He provided a lot of catchy music for many episodes of "The Wild Wild West" and "Hawaii 5-0" among others.
Welcome to the formerly distant Shores, and I hope you love "Hate."
HATE by Richard Shores No hateful pop-ups, porn ads or wait time.
1 comment:
Hey there, I pulled out my copy of Music to Read Lady Chatterley's Lover By (Richard Shores) to check its condition. It's the same album as Emotions. I used tracks from it many years ago for a Super-8 movie, which I'm planning to scan and clean up.
It sounds like my copy's in considerably better shape than yours. I'd be happy to send you FLACs of it if you're interested. Oddly, there's no way to communicate with people on here. You can drop me a line at venusprobe at gmail.
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