It's nice when someone can turn a spotlight, like Reba Wissner has done, on a segment of musical history with an examination of the television series The Twilight Zone. It was an extraordinary period in television film scoring. The show itself was cutting edge, as was the music that supported it. It was a developmental period for one of the film scoring giants of Hollywood— Jerry Goldsmith. I had first worked for Jerry in 1959. My first encounter with Jerry and The Twilight Zone series was for the first season episode titled “Dust.” It was a beautiful use of harmonica in film scoring, as well as an early use of the bass harmonica. The score is outstanding.

I worked on a number of episodes with other composers during the series run, including Fred Steiner, composer for several episodes of the series, including the excellent “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim,” starring Cliff Robertson. I had the pleasure and honor of writing music for three episodes of the series, as well as having some cues picked for the underscore from music library compositions that I had written for CBS over a five-year period for the “tracking” process then used in Hollywood. These are the episodes that list the word “Stock” for the composer's credit.

The last score that I wrote was chosen for me by then head of music for CBS Television, Lud Gluskin. The episode was performed on harmonica by multi-tracking the music with all tracks played by me. This was in answer to what had been happening in New York, which was started in the 1950's be guitarist Tony Motolla, who overdubbed multiple tracks of himself playing the music for the television series Danger. He continued the process into the 1960s.

What made The Twilight Zone scores different or unique from other shows of the time? The show itself. Other shows of that era, for example Gunsmoke (1955-1976), Wagon Train (1957-1965) and Father Knows Best (1954-1963) all had orchestras that stayed pretty much the same week to week throughout the life of the series. There were of course some changes during the year.