Kojak

My friend Tom posted a link to the little-known Sammy Davis Jr. vocal version of the Hawaii Five-O theme, which bears a distinct coincidental similarity to the version performed by Bill Murray as the character "Nick the Lounge Singer" on Saturday Night Live.  I dig.  That's what I do.  So I find that the bulk of the LP it came from, 1976's "The Song and Dance Man", is made up of vocal versions of popular TV theme songs of the day.  Starting, of course, with "Baretta's Theme (Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow)", which is a bona fide all-time classic and which is better in its one minute edit.  (And is also better, incidentally, in Henry Mancini's version from the 1976 LP "Cop Show Themes", which opens with a FANTASTIC and eminently flippable unaccompanied bass solo by a session player by the name of Abraham Laboriel; the same album features Clare Fischer, known for his fantastic orchestral arrangements for Prince, as organ soloist on the NBC Mystery Movie theme).

Also present are "Love is All Around" with new lyrics about how "pretty" Mary Tyler Moore is - thanks Sammy you're really understanding the fundamental message of feminist empowerment represented by the show - the Husker Du version is of course the go-to here.  The Mary Hartman Mary Hartman theme, for which the preferred version is definitely the Daniele Baldelli favorite by Sound of the Inner City, a reliable disco floor filler in the '70s, "Chico and the Man", which, look, why bother?  It's Jose Feliciano's version.  Always.

(As a bonus track on a version I have, not on the original, there's Sammy's attempt at essaying (yes I know that's redundant) the Shaft theme.  This is another slight obsession of mine, terrible covers of the Shaft theme from the 1970s; not every bad version of the Shaft theme is worth hearing, but a lot of them are, and Sammy's version is definitely one of them; like the TV theme songs also presented there are a bunch of extra lyrics, which are delightfully silly; Sammy Davis singing "He's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad" repeatedly on the outro is less than fully convincing.)

And, making it around to the post title, the Kojak theme.  None of these I should hasten to add are the original lyrics, that I can tell.  A lot of TV theme songs do have lyrics that aren't sung, because that way a lyricist can get paid for them.  The Star Trek Theme is one of the more famous examples of this.  Pretty sure the Andy Griffith Theme ("The Fishin' Hole") is also an example of this.  Possibly Bonanza?  I know there's a version sung by Lorne Greene, which was referenced in an issue of Flaming Carrot, and which is not as good as the version by Prince Buster, which I completely adore and which is a key reason behind my starting this blog.  If I go up to people on the street, which I do, and say "Did you know that Prince Buster did a version of the Bonanza theme song and it's AMAZING?", the response I get is typically "Who is Prince Buster and what is Bonanza?"  This will not do.

I do have a few other Kojak related tracks sitting around.  Willie Bobo (who I think was behind "Fried Neckbones and some Home Fries" and "Evil Ways"?) did a much better disco-funk take on the theme in '77.  I mean he didn't accidentally invent house with it like Candido would do the next year with "Dancin' and Prancin'" and there's a flute solo, which I tend to not like, but it's still some quality stuff.  There's an amazing song inspired by Kojak, _not_ a cover of the Kojak theme, by Lee "Scratch" Perry.  I don't know how well-known it is; dub in particular is something I am only familiar with sideways.  It is superb though.

And there is the version by the Chilean band Los Sonny's from their "En TV" album.  Los Sonny's are a band I know about in the first place through Sedric, who told me about their 1968 album "Distorsionado" (the title track of which does not appear on the album), an album which is very obviously unfinished, complete with wordless guide vocals, but which was released commercially anyway.

Well, after that they broke up, but for some reason they got back together after the probably-CIA backed 1973 coup against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and the establishment of a US-friendly military junta under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.  (I have no reason to believe Los Sonny's had any involvement in these activities, I'm just giving some broader sociopolitical context.)  They got a new drummer and did some pretty awesome oddball funk versions of known and unknown cop shows of the era - we have some jaw harp all over the theme to "Ladrón sin destino", which was the Spanish title of "It Takes a Thief" (not the John Woo version, the '70s version) and not one but two different versions of the theme to Toma, an early (pre-Rockford Files) theme by the king of TV theme songs, Mike Post.  After it was cancelled, most of the cast and crew, including Post, went on to work on "The Rockford Files", while the basic story engine was retooled as a show called... Baretta.

OK, we're back where we started, which I usually take as a sign that it's time to stop.