That time they tried a jazz score for TV western Shotgun Slade

Stanley Wilson's unusual Jazz Score from Shotgun Slade, issued by Mercury in 1960, is an overlooked gem worth checking.   

Here's the scoop...

When crime jazz enthusiasts discuss their favourite offbeat TV scores from the late 50s and early 60s golden era, the conversation rarely includes Stanley Wilson & Gerald Fried's work on the short-lived Shotgun Slade series. 

It's not difficult to see why the Shotgun Slade soundtrack fell between the cracks. You wouldn't expect the music accompanying a late 50s television western about a Stetsoned sleuth on horseback to have any connection at all to what you typically hear backing hard-boiled detective dramas set in the smoky nightclubs on the wrong side of the big city. 

The whole notion of someone square-pegging a crime jazz score into a western scenario might seem completely ridiculous unless you know that the creative team behind Shotgun Slade's music – Stanley Wilson and his composer/arranger pal Gerald Fried – had just come off a hugely successful run using swinging modern jazz cues for M Squad and they were up for a new challenge. 

Both Wilson and the Julliard-schooled Fried were already Hollywood music scene vets when they got the pitch for Shotgun Slade.  Wilson got his start at MGM, creating the musical accompaniment for Republic's Westerns and serials from 1945 right through the early 50s. In 1953, he joined Revue Studios (which later became Universal Studios) where he was in charge of all the studio's music production – hiring the composers, arrangers, conductors and orchestrators. Wilson proved he not only had an ear for rising talent, he had the wisdom to allow creative artists like Elmer Bernstein, Lalo Schifrin, John Williams, Quincy Jones, Esquivel, Oliver Nelson and Jerry Goldsmith to take risks in the pursuit of something new and exciting. 

Wilson first connected with Fried in the late 50s while working on the jazz-noir music for the popular NBC-TV crime drama M Squad, a star-making vehicle for Lee Marvin who played Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger heading up a special unit of the Chicago police force battling organized crime and corruption. Fried was no stranger to scoring for the dark side, having launched his career in film music working on Stanley Kubrick's early films Fear and Desire ('53), Killer's Kiss ('55), The Killing ('56) and Paths Of Glory ('57), Roger Corman's Machine-Gun Kelly and I, Mobster ('58) as well drive-in classics like The Cry Baby Killer, Return of Dracula, I Bury The Living, Curse of The Faceless Man, before hitting real paydirt on television in 1965 scoring 39 episodes of Gilligan's Island,  45 episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., 22 episodes of It's About Time, five episodes of Star Trek and six episodes of Mission: Impossible. 

When Wilson got the call for Frank Gruber's TV western Shotgun Slade, he was already into the second season as musical director of M Squad, having received a Grammy for his groundbreaking work on the first season. With all of those moonlighting jazz musicians on hand, it's not hard to see how Wilson and Fried hit on the idea of applying their crime-jazz concept to Shotgun Slade which is basically a private eye scenario in western duds. Hey, it was worth a shot. So using M Squad's sonic blueprint – with composer/arranger Fried dropping in some home-on-the-range embellishments – they went at it during the fall of '59 with very much the same core group of first-call West Coast session aces, namely pianist John Williams, bassist Red Mitchell, trumpeters Pete Candoli, Don Fagerquist with Joe Howard, Milt Bernhart, Pete Carpenter and Lloyd Ulyate on trombones along with Dick Nash and George Roberts on bass trombones. Alvin Stoller shared his drumming duties with Shelly Manne while Abe Most played clarinet with Gus Bivona who doubled on alto saxophone. Tony Rizzi added guitar with Al Hendrickson and Bill Pittman. 

However unlikely, Shotgun Slade's strange amalgam works remarkably well, thanks to Fried's clever arrangements and the superb performances by the all-star cast of musicians, many of whom could be seen trading fours at popular nightspots of the era like The Lighthouse and the Manne Hole. Perhaps if Mercury had the foresight to credit them on the back of the 1960 album, The Original Jazz Score from Shotgun Slade, they might've actually sold a few copies. 

Sharp-eyed jazz fans will recognize the commercial artist responsible for the striking Shotgun Slade album artwork is Emmett McBain who created snazzy sleeves for other notable Mercury, Argo and United Artists releases of the period by  Max Roach, Cannoball Adderley, Sarah Vaughan, Art Farmer, Ahmad Jamal and many others. The Chicago-based McBain admirably eschewed the conventional wagon wheels, driftwood, pistols and rope images typically associated with western-themed releases for a more contemporary use of clean typography with a simple striking graphic image which became his signature style during the late 50s and early 60s.  

Sadly, the swinging selection of modern jazz themes with a western twist was greeted with a shrug by the record buying public. It didn't have the familiar guitar twang of popular TV westerns like David Rose's Bonanza theme nor the catchy riffs of the popular private-eye scores like Mancini's unforgettable Peter Gunn theme. Moreover, younger viewers were increasingly more attuned to the sound of rock 'n' roll. Very soon surf and spy themes would be all the rage and copies of the Shotgun Slade soundtrack were relegated to bargain bins. The fact that reruns of Shotgun Slade were rarely ever seen on television following its initial two season run didn't help to grow the fan base despite the aggressive merchandise marketing campaign which involved toy shotguns for kids and a Shotgun Slade game from Milton Bradley. 

After decades of being out of print, the Shotgun Slade score was finally released digitally in Spain by Fresh Sounds' Jazz in the Movies subsidiary as a two-fer CD along with the Snuff Garrett-produced 1964 soundtrack for Burke's Law for some reason. Fans of golden-era crime jazz looking for something a bit different will find the well-written and deftly executed music of Shotgun Slade a surprising delight. Best of all, you can still turn up original vinyl copies in second-hand shops for under $10 because none of the tracks have turned up on crime jazz compilations over the years.      

Aside from the hard-swingin' musical backdrop, Shotgun Slade didn't have a lot going for it beyond the protagonist's novel double-barrel shootin' iron which fired a .32 caliber rifle round on top for accuracy and 12-gauge round below for stopping power. While it caught the interest of firearms enthusiasts, the series failed to connect with a larger television audience who by 1959, had already seen way too many westerns for the subtle distinction of this one being centred around a private detective rather than a sheriff to make much difference. And even by television western standards, the writing just wasn't up to scratch. 

The title role was played by Scott Brady – the Brooklyn-born younger brother of silver screen tough guy Lawrence Tierney – who first broke out in 1954 opposite Joan Crawford in Nicholas Ray's 1954 cult western Johnny Guitar before playing the lead role of William Bonney in William Castle's The Law vs. Billy The Kid. Brady seemed like a good choice for Shotgun Slade part. His numerous appearances in low-budget westerns throughout the 50s like Budd Boetticher's Bronco Buster, The Storm Rider, The Maverick Queen, Untamed Frontier and Montana Belle demonstrated he could handle both a gun and a horse. Furthermore, Brady's starring role in 1958's Ambush at Cimarron Pass must've convinced the producers that he was television leading man material despite the film doing poorly at the box office. 

The now largely forgotten flop was directed by B-movie vet Jodie Copelan (who made his rep as a film editor on Night Of The Blood Beast, Kronos, The Snow Creature) notably included a third-billed Clint Eastwood as a young civil war vet who hates northerners. Eastwood later described his early outing as "probably the lousiest western ever made" and later recalled seeing the completed film in a theatre for the first time left him so depressed that he seriously considered seeking another line of work. Instead he joined the cast of the much more popular Rawhide series before hooking up with Sergio Leone in 1964 for his star making turn in Fistful of Dollars. 

The role of Shotgun Slade in conjunction with his early dues-paying jobs left Brady somewhat typecast. After the series ended in 1961 after 78 episodes, he went on to appear in numerous western films (Arizona Bushwackers, Five Bloody Grames, Red Tomahawk, Fort Utah, Black Spurs, etc) and television shows like High Chapparal, The Virginian, Lancer, Dirty Sally and Gunsmoke with a brief detour into the world of biker flicks including Satan's Sadists, The Cycle Savages, Hell's Bloody Devils and The Loners In 1976, Brady famously turned down the role of Archie Bunker on All In The Family but went on to play Joe Foley in four episodes. 

More brief TV appearances followed in Police Story, Laverne & Shirley (playing Shirley's estranged sailor father Jack Feeney), Baretta, The Rockford Files, Taxi, Charlie's Angels, McClain's Law, Matt Houston and many other lesser known shows. Brady's final role was playing the befuddled head of the Kingston Falls police Sheriff Frank Reilly in 1984's Gremlins. The following year, Brady died of respiratory failure at the age of 60. He remains best remembered as the rifle-weilding Shotgun Slade. Check out the clips below.