Thanks to the Internet, YouTube, Amazon and iTunes, my iPod’s "TV Theme" playlist is starting to hold a bunch of kidhood memories…

The Cisco Kid – Ending
The Outer Limits – Ending (First Season)
Burke’s Law
Twilight Zone – Ending (Herrmann)
Cimarron Strip
The Green Hornet
Route 66 – Ending
Mysterious Universe
I Spy
The Avengers – 1968
Lassie – Ending (1966)
Ranger Hal
Captain Kangaroo
Courageous Cat

And much more…

I was able to snag a copy of the Green Hornet theme with Al Hirt’s fantastic trumpet playing, and without the hokey voiceover, off of some fan’s web site.  Same for the really nice copy of the end music to Route 66.  I got the end music to Lassie off of YouTube, where I was pleased to see other fans were just as taken by its simple and beautiful sentimentality as I was long ago.  From YouTube I also got the end title music for The Cisco Kid.  It was music that promised a kid way more adventure then TV back then could deliver unfortunately.  It’s amazing looking back on it, how low budget TV was in those days, and yet how good some of the music was.  When I was a kid I’d try to record some of this stuff and always had to contend with the local TV station blaring something over the music as it played.  It was frustrating.  Now I’m finding tons of this music on YouTube.  Amazingly, I’m also finding clips from the local morning and afternoon kid’s shows I used to watch once upon a time.

I found clips from Ranger Hal and set about trying to locate the happy-go-lucky title music they used for that show.  I figured it was some easy listening song and I was right.  Some YouTube poster identified it for me as an old Mitch Miller song, Whistle Stop.  It wasn’t available on Amazon or iTunes but Googling around I found an mp3 of it on another fan site and I’ve been grooving to it for the past couple of days, letting it take me back to a time when life stretched out in front of me wide open and so very very large.

The clip Mysterious Universe, was used as background music to The Space Explorers, which I used to watch raptly on Ranger Hal’s show.  Long after Ranger Hal went off the air, and The Space Explorers faded into distant memory, I would hear that music whenever I looked up at the stars.  I found out a couple years ago that it’s actually from a library of canned music and not available for sale anywhere.  How I got my copy I am not at liberty to say, and I made a promise not to pass it around, but I will be forever in that person’s debt.

I would pay serious money for a copy of the background music they used in the Courageous Cat cartoon series.  It was composed by Johnny Holiday and it’s serious 1950s detective show jazz…the kind of thing you’d more likely expect to hear on a show like Peter Gunn or 77 Sunset Strip then a kid’s cartoon.  Holiday and his orchestra were Smoking when they recorded that music!  Why he didn’t do more stuff like that I’ll never know.