Earle Hagen

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Earle H. Hagen (born July 9, 1919) is a 20th century American composer. He created much music for movies and television and is well remembered for the theme to The Andy Griffith Show and "Harlem Nocturne", later used as the theme to Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. He also co-wrote the theme song to Tim Conway's short-lived Western comedy, Rango.

Hagen's most ambitious body of work, however, came from his work on I Spy. Sheldon Leonard, the producer and creator of I Spy, bucked the trend of using canned music for television shows and instead decided to create original soundtracks for every episode. Since every episode of I Spy] was set in a different location, Hagen made liberal use of world music in his soundtracks which were mostly written and performed within the West coast jazz genre. (It is worth noting, however, that Hagen did not claim the West coast jazz affiliation for himself, instead inventing the term "semi-jazz", which he defined as a union of global themes with American jazz. The term never caught on.)

Other television theme songs that Hagen composed were the themes for the Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mod Squad.^[1]