Henry Gale
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Jul 10, 1999
- Messages
- 4,628
- Real Name
- Henry Gale
By BRUCE WEBER
Published: May 28, 2008
Earle H. Hagen, a onetime big-band trombonist who wrote some of the most famous theme songs in television history, died Monday in Rancho Mirage, Calif., near Palm Springs. He was 88 and lived in Rancho Mirage.
He died of natural causes, said his wife, Laura.
Mr. Hagen, a prolific inventor of memorably melodic riffs in a variety of musical idioms, scored dozens of television shows from 1953 to 1986, including “Make Room for Daddy,” “The Mod Squad,” “Eight Is Enough” and “The Dukes of Hazzard,” and he may be the most idly hummed composer of all time, at least among the baby-boom generation of television viewers who grew up in the 1960s.
He wrote the folksy, countrified whistle that opened “The Andy Griffith Show,” accompanying Sheriff Andy Taylor (Mr. Griffith) and his young son, Opie (Ron Howard), down a dirt road toward a fishing hole; he did the whistling himself.
Published: May 28, 2008
Earle H. Hagen, a onetime big-band trombonist who wrote some of the most famous theme songs in television history, died Monday in Rancho Mirage, Calif., near Palm Springs. He was 88 and lived in Rancho Mirage.
He died of natural causes, said his wife, Laura.
Mr. Hagen, a prolific inventor of memorably melodic riffs in a variety of musical idioms, scored dozens of television shows from 1953 to 1986, including “Make Room for Daddy,” “The Mod Squad,” “Eight Is Enough” and “The Dukes of Hazzard,” and he may be the most idly hummed composer of all time, at least among the baby-boom generation of television viewers who grew up in the 1960s.
He wrote the folksy, countrified whistle that opened “The Andy Griffith Show,” accompanying Sheriff Andy Taylor (Mr. Griffith) and his young son, Opie (Ron Howard), down a dirt road toward a fishing hole; he did the whistling himself.
