The season 6 (WB 7) DVD Set contains an extra about the music of Dallas. There were interviews with Jerold Immel and many others.
There is a quote of David Jacobs:
The composers saved our a**. He described scenes which did not really work without the right score/background music. There are so many great scores which you can probably really appreciate if you watch it more than once. I wish there was a CD/Playlist somewhere with the series' scores. (Anyone knows sth. I don't.) As far as I can see one has to live with the clips themselves.
I guess one of my favorites is the shooting of Bobby (0:50). But the most impressive one is in the same video the score then Clayton announces his engagement to Miss Ellie (3:00). The scene is great. The family standing in the drive only - and you know there is trouble ahead. The glances JR/Bobby are perfect, but the score makes it what it is. Love it.
Here is another great compilation:
Do you have any favorite scores?
anything not by John Parker! (with the rare exception here and there, like the snare drum and acoustic guitar during the showdown with Tom Owens in Dove Hunt - perfect! ..the rest of that episode has some real 'winners', though, like the '60s Batman' fight music during the saloon brawl - Biff! Bam! Zowie!)
Whenever an episode starts with “duh-du-du-duh-duhh DUHH-duh-duhhh”, aka ‘The Good Son’ or whatever it’s called on the John Parker music of Dallas CD, I’m tempted to just hit ‘next’. Did the guy realize he was writing for a drama and not a sitcom or 70s cop show or lightweight take on Little House on the Prairie?!? Even the moment where Miss Ellie gets the phone call about Jock's death... one of the absolute high points of drama and pathos in the entire show's run was *not* the place for electric guitar and jazzy brass mixed in with strings... ugh!
I'll admit Sue Ellen's sultry sax theme 'the Adultress' knocked it out of the park for me as camp, though! And the LA studio rhythm sections can't help themselves from sounding good in some of the more upbeat moments in the early years, like in the 'devious Alan Beam courts young Lucy' episode.
And when he arrived back on the scene after Bobby reanimated himself... as a cantankerous old professor I admired in college liked to say, "wall to wall vomit!" I think that was nearly as much of a driver of the show's decline as the usual reasons we all agree on.
I think Parker being largely sidelined for Broughton, et. al. , for a number of seasons prior to the dream resolution was a major factor in that period holding together so well as a drama. As pointed out by others above, Broughton was consistently great and had some moments that were just beautiful. Richard Lewis Warren did, too, and I'm blanking on the name of at least one other major contributor. Jerrold Immel of course had some great moments, but you get the feeling he'd written about two episodes' worth of music that he just recycled over and over through the years.
At risk of forum-shunning, I’ll even say I prefer the stock music from the first 73 or so episodes of the who shot JR season to Parker. At least that was kind of arty and hypnotic the first few times you’d hear each little section. I can see why they chose it - it set a real mood of foreboding and emptiness with the ambulance arriving to pick JR up from the Ewing building and Miss Ellie dining alone at Southfork by candlelight. But maybe not the last 438,232 times (which is nearly half the number of times I've edited this post!)
I know they used the stock score for legal reasons stemming from a union strike at the time, but why on earth were they allowed to only use *just one *stock score? I'd love to hear the behind the scenes story on that one. Also, is the episode of (I think) Gunsmoke available anywhere online - the one that score was written for? I didn't realize that show could have such a modern soundtrack! I think
@Snarky Oracle or
@James from London might have some of the details somewhere.
(edit # six trillion dutifully submitted for your reading agony! sorry for the mildly off-top tangent, but as a musician myself it's a topic I find fascinating
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