Baby-boomer alert: Decades later, cheesy TV theme songs remain nostalgic earworms
When I heard that actor Ken Berry had died this month, I felt sadness for the passing of an actor whose work I had enjoyed over the years.
But that didn’t match the words and music that immediately began playing in my head: “The end of the Civil War was near/When quite accidentally/A hero who sneezed, abruptly seized/Retreat, and reversed it to victory.”
For baby boomers, or any fan of '60s sitcoms, those lyrics are instantly recognizable from the opening theme of “F Troop,” a silly ABC comedy that featured Berry as the inept commander of an incompetent frontier military unit. The show is mostly forgettable – except for its self-explanatory theme song. (It's badly dated today. As with the series itself, the “F Troop” theme contains the kind of insulting reference to Native Americans that was standard then but unacceptable today, unless it’s the name of an NFL team.)
The memory of that goofy theme made me smile and think of the whole genre of ‘60s sitcoms predicated on ideas so nutty — high concept, in today's jargon — that they essentially required directions in the form of theme songs that explained the show's premise. (Theme songs are mostly memories these days, the victims of shows squeezed for time to sell more commercials).
More: Ken Berry, star of 'F Troop,' 'Mama's Family' and 'Mayberry R.F.D.,' has died at 85
“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale/a tale of a fateful trip/that started from this tropic port/aboard this tiny ship …” — you know the rest — and you’ll know everything about “Gilligan’s Island” by the end of the opening credits.
The theme from "The Beverly Hillbillies" lays out the fish-out-of-cement-pond story of a plainspoken mountain man striking oil — i.e., "bubblin' crude, black gold, Texas tea" — and moving his clan to snobby “Beverly/Hills, that is/swimming pools, movie stars.”
And at a time when divorce was becoming more commonplace, “The Brady Bunch” theme – another musical explainer from “Gilligan’s” creator Sherwood Schwartz – features lyrics that set forth the concept of a blended family, fairly new to many viewers at the time: “’Til the one day when the lady met this fellow/And they knew that it was much more than a hunch/That this group must somehow form a family/That’s the way we all became the Brady bunch.”
The kooky sitcom trend was popular at a time when broadcast networks were the only game in town, attracting big, broad audiences of every age, including kids who are now adults with theme songs taking up too much shelf space in their brains.
Other shows that laid out an entire fantastical storyline in a theme song include: “Mr. Ed,” about a talking horse; “The Patty Duke Show,” which introduced viewers to "identical cousins"; and “Green Acres,” the wonderfully off-kilter tale of a country-loving husband (“Fresh air”) and cosmopolitan wife (“Times Square”) that might be worth reconsidering with today’s urban/rural divide (keep Arnold Ziffel, the pig who was treated like a human boy, but ditch the husband claiming his right to force the wife to move to a farm. Again, a ‘60s blindspot.).
Some one-season wonders, as in “I wonder how that got on,” are remembered, if at all, solely because of their opening songs. How many people have never seen “My Mother, the Car,” an automotive embrace of reincarnation, but can remember that Jerry Van Dyke's mom had turned into a caustic 1928 Porter? Schwartz also produced the time-travel comedy, "It's About Time," which had the distinction of two theme songs, one explaining astronauts who traveled back to the Stone Age, and a midseason reversal that had the astronauts and cavemen returning to the present in an effort to beef up lagging ratings. (Didn't work.)
Other ‘60s shows featured similar, if less explicit themes, including “The Addams Family;” “Petticoat Junction;” and a couple of primetime cartoons, “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons.” “The Monkees” turned a theme that introduced the rock band at the center of the show into an actual chart hit.
By the ‘70s, the crazy concepts started fading away, along with the need for detailed theme-song explanations. Some great shows, such as “Maude” and “The Jeffersons,” explained themselves to a degree with opening numbers, as did some less great entries, such as “The Love Boat.”
While the "Cheers” theme didn’t lay out the story of friendship at a neighborhood bar, millions can identify the phrase “where everybody knows your name,” which is synonymous with the '80s sitcom. And, “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” had the meta-theme of all time to match the show’s matter-of-fact genius: “This is the theme to Garry’s show/The opening theme to Garry’s show/This is the music that you hear/As you watch the credits.”
In the ‘90s, budding superstar Will Smith, in collaboration with DJ Jazzy Jeff, rapped an explanation of how he became “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” creating one of the catchiest and most popular themes of all time.
If broadcast networks no longer have time for theme songs, pay-cable networks and streaming services have no such restrictions. HBO's "Silicon Valley" offers a funny, detailed visual explanation of its tech-heavy address, while Netflix's "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" features a creative opening theme that plays off tabloid-style reporting about the kidnapping and release of the title character.
And, there’s at least one current show, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” that pays homage to TV’s crazy past.
In its Season 1 theme, the series, which finishes its CW run in early 2019, laid out the story of how lawyer Rebecca Bunch gave up her high-paying New York legal job “to move to West Covina, California/Brand-new pals and new career/It happens to be where Josh lives/But that’s not why I’m here!” And, “Crazy” has brilliantly rewritten its theme over four seasons to reflect its changing story.
So, thanks, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” for keeping a fun, sometimes witty and always pleasingly goofy tradition alive. And thanks, Ken Berry, for memories of a time in TV that we might as well embrace, because, as the “F Troop” earworm attests, it's going to be with us forever.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Baby-boomer alert: Decades later, cheesy TV theme songs remain nostalgic earworms
