Theme From Z-cars
Rosella Bowlan
"Theme from Z-Cars" was the theme tune to the long-running BBC television drama Z-Cars. Based on the traditional folk song "Johnny Todd",[1] which was in a collection of traditional songs by Frank Kidson dated 1891 called Traditional Tunes: A Collection of Ballad Airs. Kidson's notes for this song say: "Johnny Todd is a child's rhyme and game, heard and seen played by Liverpool children. The air is somewhat pleasing, and the words appear old, though some blanks caused by the reciter's memory have had to be filled up."[2] The song appears in the book Songs of Belfast edited by David Hammond, who heard it from a Mrs. Walker of Salisbury Avenue, Belfast, who claimed it dates from around 1900.[3]
The Z-Cars theme tune was arranged for commercial release by Fritz Spiegl and Bridget Fry, and performed by John Keating and his Orchestra. The single reached #8 in the Record Retailer chart in April 1962, and as high as #5 in other charts.[clarification needed][citation needed] The original television theme was arranged and conducted by Norrie Paramor with his orchestra.[citation needed]
It was soon adopted by fans of the First Division football club Everton, who are based in Liverpool near where the events supposedly took place. The theme tune is still played as the team come out onto the pitch at the beginning of all their home matches. They also use the theme tune on their official podcasts, used at the beginning to introduce the podcast. In 1964, Watford F.C. adopted the tune as it was then manager Bill McGarry's favourite television programme.[4] It has been played as the players come onto pitch since then. During the rise of the club through the leagues in the 1970s and 1980s, it became associated with the club's success under manager Graham Taylor.[citation needed] Sunderland A.F.C. also played the song as their players ran out to the field during their days playing at Roker Park.[citation needed] It has been played for the same purpose at the Borough Park home of Workington A.F.C.[5]
Keating wrote the scores for the blockbuster Hotel (1967) starring Rod Taylor and Karl Malden and Robbery (1967) with Stanley Baker and James Booth, as well as instructional books on the principles of songwriting
The musician and orchestra leader Johnny Keating regretted that he was chiefly known for a two-minute single, "Theme From Z-Cars", a Top 10 hit from 1962, but there was nothing to be ashamed about. It was a brilliant arrangement, opening with a military drum roll, moving on to woodwind and jazz piano and ending with a big band flourish, and it cleverly combined many facets of his own work.
Johnny Keating was born in Edinburgh in 1927, the son of a street bookmaker. The family had little money, and largely through his own initiative he taught himself piano accordion, piano and trombone and played in local bands. After military service, he played trombone with the Tommy Sampson Orchestra, mostly in Leith and Edinburgh, before joining Ted Heath and his Music in 1952. Although Heath was to dismiss him, he rehired him as an arranger.
In 1956 Heath went on a US tour and as Keating was not on stage, he remained in New York and heard Duke Ellington and Woody Herman; Herman invited him to write arrangements. When he came back to the UK, he told the New Musical Express that there were two schools of big band jazz, on the East Coast and the West Coast, adding that "we should start a third front in London and not slavishly copy the American model". True to his word, he made two albums, British Jazz (1956) and Swinging Scots (1957) and a few years later he established the Keating School of Music in Edinburgh.
In 1962 a Liverpool musician, Bridget Fry, and her husband, Fritz Spiegl, suggested that an old Liverpool folk tune, "Johnny Todd", would be suitable for Z-Cars, the police drama series set in the fictional Newtown, based on the tough Liverpool suburb of Kirby, that ran until 1978. Keating wrote his own arrangement and his record became an anthem for Everton FC. (A year later their rivals Liverpool chose "You'll Never Walk Alone".) Keating himself supported Hibernian and left instructions to be buried in his Hibs tie.
For a time Keating made his own records as Johnny Keating and the Z-Men but soon switched to Johnny Keating and his Orchestra and made a series of Decca albums designed to demonstrate the benefits of stereo; the intention of Johnny Keating And 27 Men (1966) was that the astute listener could pick out most of them.
He moved to Hollywood and wrote the score for the blockbuster Hotel (1967), starring Rod Taylor and Karl Malden. The theme song was performed by Nancy Wilson. He also scored the film Robbery (1967) with Stanley Baker and James Booth, about the Great Train Robbery.
In 1972 Keating worked with Moog synthesisers and recorded as the Johnny Keating Space Experience. He released a futuristic version of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Jesus Christ Superstar". He also worked with Sammy Davis, Bing Crosby and Tony Bennett. On a CD reissue, Bennett wrote that their 1966 collaboration, "The Very Thought Of You", was his finest recording.
No-one has ever challenged that assertion, and general consensus was that it was some time during the 1963/64 season, backed up by an article printed in the Daily Mail after the Charity Shield of August 17, 1963.
Because Heritage Society researcher Billy Smith, a man who spends more time scouring newspaper archives than he would care to admit for his comprehensive Blue Correspondent website, unearthed an article from the Liverpool Echo which puts back the playing of Z-Cars at Goodison by 12 months.
Ironically, after it had been played for the first seven or eight home matches, it was left out on the very day the late Mr. Leonard Williams of Twentyman fame was a guest of the club, only three or four days before he died.
My mother always told us that because of the huge success of Z Cars and the fact that my dad was the only genuine Scouser in the cast, he was invited to the match and it was because of that, that Everton decided to play the Z Cars theme as a tribute to him after his death.
That is the version which was used as a theme tune for the TV programme which debuted in January 1962 - Z Cars, an edgy police drama set in a fictional Newtown (but which resembled the town where much of the action was filmed, Kirkby).
But there are others. People who spend too much time on YouTube watching 1970s football (guilty as charged) will have spotted a bizarre version played at Goodison ahead of an FA Cup tie against Walsall in 1972 - watch it below:
I can still see the looks of bewilderment and bafflement from supporters around the ground. The new regime realised the experiment had failed, so replaced it at the next match . . . with a version of Bad Moon Rising, penned by Swedish supporters.
Johnny Keating, who composed the high-fluting theme tune (from an original folk song) for the BBC Merseyside cop series, has died in London, aged 87. Edinburgh born, he lived in London and Los Angeles but was always drawn back to Scotland.
And of course the great Fritz Spiegl also arranged the much-missed Radio 4 UK Theme. In slaughtering what it smugly thought of as a sacred cow of Middle England, the BBC was actually silencing an expression of love for his adopted country by an exiled Viennese Jewish musician turned proud Scouser.
And in an act unprecedented by a foreign carmaker, it offered press and pundits a glimpse of future models as long as four years in advance. The company hopes to wow naysayers with promise of a turnaround.
The three most promising new products are a new small sport utility vehicle to be introduced next year, a new sports car, and a new type of truck that will likely be produced in some form early next century.
"As automakers all move toward more carlike and more luxurious SUVs, we see a big hole opening up right in the middle of the [sport utility vehicle] market," says Jerry Hirschberg, president of Nissan's West Coast design studio, which designed the new truck.
But while the still unnamed SUV will be smaller than today's mid-size models, it has much more space than the "mini" Toyota RAV4 or Suzuki versions. And unlike, the car-based RAV4 and CR-V, the new Nissan is designed to go off-road, with a sturdy, part-time four-wheel-drive system.
Research at Mr. Hirschberg's Nissan Design International (NDI) in La Jolla, Calif., found that while people buy sport utility vehicles to bridge the gap between cars and trucks, they are loath to load the cargo area with traditional truck cargo - yard mulch, topsoil, gravel, and trash for the dump.
For those rare events when project-minded homeowners buy a load of lumber, a door on the back of the passenger compartment swings up, connecting it to the truck bed. The back seats fold down, leaving a flat, eight-foot space that starts behind the front seats.
The SUT is still just a concept, not yet approved for production, and a full-size bright yellow model on display for journalists was made of clay. Design and manufacturing details would take years to work out, by 2002 or 2003 at the earliest.
In the meantime, Nissan plans a four-door version of its small Frontier pickup, with an abbreviated back seat, regular forward-opening rear doors, and a standard six-foot cargo bed. The back seat will accommodate kids, even in a rear-facing baby seat, but it's not for adults. The four-door Frontier should hit the showrooms next summer for about $2,000 more than its King Cab pickup.
The "Z" as it came to be known lasted 26 years and sold millions. By the early '90s, some observers considered the 300ZX the best sports car ever built. But it had a price tag to match: more than $40,000. Sales were slow, and Nissan canceled the model.
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