Theme Music
Does anyone know where to find the instrumental version of theme used in the 1st and early part of the 2nd season?
shareThe memorable theme song was penned by prolific composers David Buttolph (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics). Buttolph's theme first appeared as incidental music in the Warner Bros. film of The Lone Ranger (1956). You can probably find it on YouTube. For more info, go here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_(TV_series)#Theme_song
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke
Son of a gun, that really is the soon-to-be Maverick theme (just the music, of course)! None of the "tall dark stranger" part, though. and only once through the "Riverboat, ring your bell" part. It starts at about 17:40 on the YouTube copy that I watched (link below, though there are others). I didn't notice any of the Maverick music being used after that (though I didn't notice it right away the first time, being sort of engrossed in the movie, so it's possible that it got completely by me later on).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSAGzBuf6Pc
Buttolph has a very prominent credit for his music, a screen all to himself, immediately following the usual sort of opening credits.
The movie premiered in early February, 1956, over a year and a half before Maverick's first episode aired on September 22, 1957. My brother was (and still is) a major Lone Ranger fan, so of course our whole family saw this movie when it was in the theaters -- well, probably when it reached the drive-ins, maybe late that summer (which may have been when Clayton Moore did a personal appearance there). I hadn't seen it since then, but it's aged reasonably well.