Earle Hagen (born July 9 1919) is a 20th century American composer. He created much music for movies and television and is well remembered for the theme to The Andy Griffith Show and "Harlem Nocturne", later used as the theme to Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.

His most ambitious body of work, however, came from his work on "I Spy". Sheldon Leonard, the producer and creator of "I Spy", bucked the trend of using canned music for television shows and instead decided to create original soundtracks for every episode. Since every episode of "I Spy" was set in a different location, Hagen made liberal use of world music in his soundtracks which were mostly written and performed within the West coast jazz genre. (It is worth noting, however, that Hagen did not claim the West coast jazz affiliation for himself, instead inventing the term semi-jazz, which he defined as a union of global themes with American jazz. The term never caught on.)

External links

• IMDB.com entry for Earle H. Hagen
• The Best of All Worlds Fan Site with career reflections & highlights.

American composers | 1919 births | Living people | Television composers | The Andy Griffith Show