The Forgotten Earle Hagen (Part 1)
One of the most beloved figures among the composing/arranging community in Hollywood, Earle Hagen had a spectacular career. Of course his themes for The Andy Griffith Show, The Danny Thomas Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, and The Mod Squad are textbook examples of the best in music for television, but as with most legendary careers, quite a bit of his writing has been forgotten. Thanks to modern research, Hagen’s autobiography Memoirs of a Famous Composer-Nobody Ever Heard Of, and an oral history, some wonderful music is presented in three articles.
Hagen wrote an instrumental when he was staff arranger with Ray Noble’s orchestra for altoist Jack Dumont, inspired by Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges. The piece took a while to catch on, but by the late 1940s, it was getting some important recordings. It has now been recorded hundreds of times, and along with Night Train is a great favorite among strippers. Listen to the original recording.
Hagen was a member of the Army Air Force Band Radio Production Unit for 3 ½ years. The ensemble had sixty-five pieces with a lot of woodwinds, and he was able to experiment as a composer and orchestrator. One of his arrangements was modified and was played by Paul Whiteman, and was later played by Johnny Green at the Hollywood Bowl. This was heard by an old friend, none other than Axel Stordahl; they were both with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra back in the 1930s. Axel was now the musical director for Frank Sinatra. Hagen wrote several scores for the radio program Your Hit Parade, and for other projects. Some years ago, I got a great kick out of helping to prepare arrangements Hagen wrote for Frank for publication by Jazz Lines Publications.
Alfred Newman was impressed by Hagen’s writing, and signed him to be a staff orchestrator/arranger at 20thCentury-Fox in 1946. It is safe to say that Hagen worked on almost all of the musicals produced by the studio for several years. Newman also had a record contract with Majestic Records, and once he had a date for six sides; Hagen had written two of them. Newman played all of them down and didn’t like two of them. Hagen volunteered to write the other two overnight (“I needed the money.”). Here are two from that recording session:
If Hagen could fit them in, he continued to make record dates. He did quite a few for the new label Mercury Records. For Tony Martin,
For The Starlighters (most of the members had been in the vocal group Six Hits and a Miss; Vince Deegan was the vocal arranger):
We continue with Hagen being laid off from Fox in 1953, and his first forays into television.
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