06.23.10
TV Music Interlude
This DD tune was done a few years ago on a spur of the moment, the moment being the idea to write TV theme music for “The Amazing Harry Hoo,” an episode of Get Smart.
Bond movie songs, can’t do. Get Smart, yes!
This blog perfectly describes the Claw Craw, one of the most fondly remembered comedy villains:
The Claw … was an evil villain of Asian ancestry — a distant cousin to Bond’s “Dr. No.” The Claw was so called because one of his hands was missing, a la Captain Hook. In its place, as I recall, was a powerful shoehorn-shaped magnet. (There you go — two strikes already, both disability and ethnic stereotyping.) The Claw spoke English with a heavy accent, which was a good part of the joke. Picture Smart holding him off at gunpoint. Smart would turn to his sidekick, the lovely Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon), and say with a squinted brow, something like: “Well, 99, I see it’s our old nemesis, the Craw.”
Before 99 could respond, the villain would break in, growling: “No, not da Craw — da Craw!”
The episode is also described here.
The trick was to work the verbal joke into the instrumental. Dialogue from the show made it easy.
“The Amazing Harry Hoo” — the fictitious theme, not the episode — is here.