Al Hirt plays cop show themes
We now break from fake cop show themes by contemporary artists to bring you some real cop show music by a past master. Trumpeter Al Hirt was a titan of the New Orleans music scene (literally, he was nicknamed "The Round Mound of Sound"). When The Green Hornet made the leap from radio to TV in 1966, Hirt was chosen to play the theme song, a swingin' & rockin' new arrangement by Billy May of the old theme song, Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee." And while he was at it, he recorded a whole album's worth of cop show music, The Horn Meets The Hornet. Here's the "Green Hornet Theme:"
It was heard more recently in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1. I played the trumpet once upon a time, but I could never get the hang of double- and triple-tonguing. This song requires a veritable tongue fandango to play, and Al Hirt makes it seem effortless. The third track on the album, "Night Rumble," is not a proper cop show theme, but it would easily fit into a cop show: in a scene where the cops go to a nightclub to gather information, this would be the music that is playing while women flail around on the dance floor. Or it could be the music playing at the gang hideout:
I always wanted to get that electric piano sound, but I could never make my Fender Rhodes sound like that. I found out just last year that it's a Wurlitzer I want. I use that intro piano lick to check out keyboards and VST instruments.
Among the other treats on The Horn Meets the Hornet is Al's take on the Batman theme:
