[W David Lichty]

Thor, you’ll know this definitively. Alcoa Premiere; that’s 100% Williams, right?

See, I’ve used an AI service for one thing they can good at: deep data mining (requiring verification). Like Williams, for my guy Goldsmith, there is a lot of undiscovered country, especially in the early TV years, so I thought the AI might find a site or source I haven’t, and give me some new titles to verify, or at least look for. One such was Alcoa Premiere S1.E17 “Of This Time, of This Place” where Jerry is listed on the UIMDB (U for unreliable, addition mine) as the composer of the theme for the pilot. That sentence alone contains suspicion-arising elements, so I have little confidence in this one, but I think you have access to this show, or at least some of it. You didn’t run into a Goldsmith credit, either on this late episode or the series pilot, did you? I feel like you’d’ve mentioned that exception to the full Williamsness, if so.

[Malte Müller]

I am obviously not Thor but he has at least covered Aloca in the 2nd part of his Williams Television Music Walkthrough specifially:

Celluloid Tunes # 75: The Complete John Williams Television Music Walkthrough, Part 2 (25th International Edition)

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Thor, you’ll know this definitively. Alcoa Premiere; that’s 100% Williams, right?

Yes, except for the variety show episode “George Gobel Presents”. I channeled everything I knew about this series at the time into that episode that Malte linked to. Off-hand, I can’t really remember what I said about “Of This Time, Of This Place”, in particular, but I do remember there was no Jerry Goldsmith credit for this, or anything else in the series (of the episodes I found). The music is very much John Williams, and in fact points towards his work on THE PAPER CHASE, if memory serves.

But of course I could be wrong. Early US television music is a quagmire, information-wise.

[W David Lichty]

I channeled everything I knew about this series at the time into that episode that Malte linked to.

Yes, I listened to those a while ago, and I knew you’d covered it, but I couldn’t recall where.

Off-hand, I can’t really remember what I said about “Of This Time, Of This Place”, in particular, but I do remember there was no Jerry Goldsmith credit for this, or anything else in the series (of the episodes I found).

That tracks. It was such a weird credit, an isolated mention, in only this one, late in the run, episode’s entry, of Goldsmith’s having scored a theme for the pilot?

But of course I could be wrong. Early US television music is a quagmire, information-wise.

You aren’t kidding.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Sorry, I have to correct myself: “George Gobel Presents” also has original Williams music. We believed it didn’t for many years, but then I forgot that I found and included the episode in the revised edition of the podcast series, and could confirm that it had.

Be that as it may, there’s nothing to suggest Goldsmith worked on any of the episodes (or, in fact, any other composer). But there are still a lot I was unable to find, so who knows?

[Thor Joachim Haga]

….and since this thread was created by David, I do recommend checking out the various scores Williams wrote for this series. Lots of “seeds” there that would grow into the Williams we know and love. Go to the timestamp 15:15 at the link Malte provided above.

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