Tales of the City

[Winslow Yerxa <76450.3230@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rob Frantz asks about the harmonica player in the score to the
PBS series "tales of the City." Harmonica? I thought it was
Michael Tolliver's panpipes.

I called KQED, the San Francisco affiliate. I didn't expect them
to have the information, and they didn't, but they gave me the
address of the company that made the series:

Channel 4
60 Cahrlotte Street
London W1P 2 AX
England

I'm not sure that it's a harmonica at all. The sound is too
smooth and consistent. There is usually some articulative sound
made by breath changes, and the timbre usually changes with the
range, and the player's vibrato usually varies a little. It's all
too perfect - it may be a MIDI sample of an actual player being
reproduced at various pitches.

If it is an actual harmonica player, and the movie was made for a
British TV network by a British director, chances are the music
was done there. I know that Tommy Reilly, the classical virtuoso,
does some movie work, but it could just as well be someone else
who works regularly there.

On the other hand, much the actual shooting was done in LA (I
know so much about it because KQED has been hyping it to *death*,
even in the breaks between back-to-back episodes), so the music
could have been done there as well, in which case it might be
Tommy Morgan, who does a LOT of TV and movie work

(Check out Morgan's work on old Twilight Zone episodes, where he
accompanies fight scenes with a Polyphonia, or the classic one
where Andy Devine plays a know-it-all teller of fibs and
whoppers who plays awful harmonica licks between tall tales at
his rural general store. Space aliens get wind of him, and, taking him
for the world's greatest genius, try to kidnap him in their
flying saucer. At first he tries to get away, but when, resigned
to his fate, he sits down to play his harmonica, he finds that
the aliens get extremely upset, then pass out cold. He quickly
makes his escape, and goes home to tell his tale. For once he's
telling the truth and NObody believes him.)

Winslow