Fred Espenak, astrophysicist. He was known as “Mr. Eclipse”.
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In the early 1990s, Mr. Espenak began writing NASA’s eclipse bulletins with the Canadian meteorologist Jay Anderson. He also started a website for the space agency devoted to eclipse data. His goal: simplify and democratize complicated data so nonscientists sky gazers could geek out on the data, too.
All the while, he kept chasing eclipses — traveling to Kenya, Indonesia, Mexico, Aruba, Turkey, Zambia, Antarctica, Spain, Libya and beyond.
Lalo Schifrin. He was 93, and dang, what a career.
(Edited to add 6/28: NYT obit, which just went up today.)
The workaholic Schifrin received Oscar nominations for his scores for Cool Hand Luke (1967), The Fox (1968), Voyage of the Damned (1976), The Amityville Horror (1979) and The Sting II (1983) and for the song “People Alone” from The Competition (1980).
He scored Dirty Harry (1971) and the sequels Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983) and The Dead Pool (1988), all starring Clint Eastwood — the filmmaker presented him with his Oscar — and served as the composer on all three of the Rush Hour films.
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His résumé also included work on Coogan’s Bluff (1968) — that kicked off his long association with Eastwood and director Don Siegel — Kelly’s Heroes (1970), Charley Varrick (1973), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Telefon (1977), The Nude Bomb (1980), Black Moon Rising (1986), Money Talks (1997), Something to Believe In (1998), Tango (1998), Bringing Down the House (2003) and The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2004).
An inspired Bruce Lee worked out to the show’s score in his gym in Hong Kong before signing Schifrin as the composer and orchestrator on Enter the Dragon (1973). As a bonus, Lee gave the musician his first martial arts lessons, for free.
Schifrin concocted a jazz waltz in 3/4 time for the theme to the Mike Connors series Mannix — also produced by Geller — and played the Moog synthesizer on the opening music for another 1960s’ CBS drama, Medical Center.
Schifrin also was responsible for the themes for T.H.E. Cat, Petrocelli, Starsky & Hutch, Bronk and Most Wanted. And his “Tar Sequence” music from Cool Hand Luke was adopted by ABC affiliates for their Eyewitness News broadcasts.
IMDB.
Rick Hurst, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Return of the Killer Shrews”, “Supertrain”, and “Murder, She Wrote”.
Carolyn McCarthy, former Congresswoman from Long Island and prominent gun control advocate.
I bet you thought I wasn’t going to post this, didn’t you? Yes, I’ve used it before (though not in this version) but for my money, I think this is the greatest TV theme of all time. (Though I admit it does have some stiff competition.)
I have to say that for those of us that were raised on some of these great old TV shows, when you hear the theme music, is just brings back so many memories. You are quite spot on when you say that there is stiff competition for the many intro theme music of the old TV dramas.
It is nice to hear these old themes once more. It brings back memories of my youth.
I agree, pigpen, and I miss the days when TV shows had themes.
Interestingly, I feel like I’m pretty amusical (and I’m sure Mike the Musicologist would agree) but I also feel like I can tell a Lalo Schifrin theme when I hear it, even if I haven’t heard it before. I may be deluding myself, and it would be interesting to do a blind test…
My wife took me on a 2 hour cruise on a tourist boat out on Lake Michigan yesterday for my 65th birthday. They had a band that was playing, which included a sax player.
You might remember that I played in a band around 30 years ago for a few years. Our name was Tradewinds, and while I don’t like to toot my own horn ( I know, ugh!), I was much better than the guy that was playing with them. Not that he was not good, just that I was better.
That was the best birthday I have had in awhile, to know that I was actually pretty good. Now I will stop praising myself.
We did have a storm roll in about an hour behind us, and we got to see a pretty neat lightning show as the clouds rolled across the lake from Wisconsin. Our small city of Muskegon is really blessed with some of the prettiest shorelines around.
Hope you recognize Z Man, although we didn’t know his name until he suddenly left us.
“Hope you recognize Z Man”
Det. McNulty:
Do you have a link I can use?