Mike Post Biography
Mike Post born Leland Michael Postil, is an American musician, composer, songwriter, arranger and producer best known for his TV theme songs for such series as Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, The A-Team, NYPD Blue, Renegade, The Rockford Files, L.A. Law, Quantum Leap, Magnum, P.I., and Hill Street Blues. He has long been considered the most successful composer in television history.
Mike Post Age
He was born on 29th September 1944 in Berkeley, California, United States.
Mike Post Family
Mike Post was born on September 29, 1944, in Los Angeles, California, United States, is a Composer, Music Department, Soundtrack.
Mike Post was born in San Fernando, California. He became a musician for acts as varied as Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Kenny Rogers, Sonny Bono, and Cher, playing guitar on the latter team’s 1965 hit “I Got You, Babe”.
Mike Post Classical Gas
Two years later, Post won his first Grammy award for producing and arranging the Mason Williams track “Classical Gas”. Post’s television career commenced when he was appointed the musical director of The Andy Williams Show (1969), at the youthful age of 24.
A later assignment, the cop show Toma (1973) introduced Post to producer Stephen J. Cannell, who hired him for the classic The Rockford Files (1974).
The memorable theme became Post’s first, but far from last, television instrumental to become a crossover radio hit, and earned him a Grammy.
Often in collaboration with Pete Carpenter, Post has scored well over two thousand hours of both dramatic and comedic TV, most famously on Hill Street Blues (1981), NYPD Blue (1993) and his first Emmy winner, Murder One (1995).
Mike Post Spouse|Divorce
He married Patty McGettigan, unfortunately, the marriage did not last. He later married a second wife, Darla Eyer, on 29th August 1966 and was blessed with two children Aaron and Jennifer.
Mike Post Music
Post’s first credited work in music was cutting demos using two singing sisters, Terry and Carol Fischer. With Sally Gordon, they went on to become The Mermaids.
Their first single, “Popsicle’s and Icicles” (written by David Gates), was a #3 hit song in January 1964.
Post also provided early guidance for the garage rock band the Outcasts while in basic training in San Antonio, Texas.
He was the songwriter and producer for both songs on the band’s first single, released in 1965, and also arranged a local concert where they served as the back-up band.
He won his first Grammy at age 23 for Best Instrumental Arrangement on Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas”, a #2 hit song in 1968.
He is also credited as the producer for Williams’ LP that included this song, The Mason Williams Phonograph Record.
Billed as the Mike Post Coalition, their track “Afternoon of the Rhino” became a sought-after Northern soul track. The single peaked at #47 in the UK Singles Chart in August 1975.
Post also worked with Kenny Rogers and produced the first three albums he recorded with his country/rock group the First Edition (between 1967 and 1969).
Post also produced Dolly Patton’s hit album 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs in 1981. Much later, in 1997, he produced Van Halen’s Van Halen III album.
Mike Post Theme Songs
One of his first jobs in television started when he was 24, as the musical director on The Andy Williams Show.
Another early job was writing the theme music for the short-lived detective series Toma in 1973, but his big breakthrough (together with co-composer Pete Carpenter) came in the following year with his theme song for The Rockford Files, another series by producer Stephen J. Cannell.
The theme also got cross-over Top 40 radio airplay and earned a second Grammy for Post.
“The Rockford Files” theme became a Top 10 hit in both the U.S. (#10) and Canada (#8). It ranks as the 85th biggest U.S. hit of 1975 and the 84th biggest Canadian hit of 1975.
Post subsequently won Grammy’s for Best Instrumental Composition for the themes of the television shows Hill Street Blues in 1981 and L.A.
Law in 1988 as well as another Grammy in 1981 for Best Instrumental Performance for the Hill Street Blues theme, which also reached number 10 in the U.S.
The Law & Order “dun, dun” sound
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Post won an Emmy for his Murder One theme music and had previously been nominated for NYPD Blue, among others.
He has won BMI Awards for the music for L.A. Law, Hunter, and the various Law & Order series. The theme for The Greatest American Hero (co-written with Stephen Geyer) is one of the few television themes to reach as high as #2 as a single record on the Billboard Hot 100. The “dun, dun” sound effect he created for the Law & Order franchise has entered popular culture.
At the peak of his career, Post was the go-to composer for all of the series created by Donald P. Bellisario, Steven Bochco, Stephen J. Cannell, and Dick Wolf.
Due to the considerable amount of music to be created, Post operated an office with multiple staff composers, among them Walter Murphy, Velton Ray Bunch, Frank Denson, Jerry Grant and Greg Edmonson, all composing side by side in cubicles.
Each would write music cues to complement specific scenes from each show in Post’s signature style
Other TV music works include The A-Team, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Blossom, The Commish, Doogie Howser, M.D., Greatest American Hero, Hardcastle and McCormick, Hooperman, Hunter, Magnum, P.I., NewsRadio, Profit, Quantum Leap, Renegade, Riptide, Silk Stalkings, Stingray, Tales of the Gold Monkey, Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, The White Shadow, Wiseguy, the BBC series Roughnecks, Law & Order, and Philly.
In 1994, Post scored the Diagnosis: Murder episode “How To Murder Your Lawyer,” designed as a backdoor pilot for a lawyer series.
In 2014, Post composed the score for the fake TV pilot Caged Heat in the Marvel One-Shot All Hail the King for Marvel Studios.
Mike Post Invention From Blue Line
In 1994, Post released a CD, called Inventions from the Blue Line. The CD contained several of his well-known themes, featuring NYPD Blue and also including Law & Order, Silk Stalkings and Renegade.
In the liner notes, he discussed his late father, Sam Postil, and the admiration for law enforcement officers that Sam instilled in Mike. He also referred to police in the traditional nickname of “blues”, as in The Thin Blue Line (referring to the police in general and police camaraderie).
One of the tracks is called “The Blue Line”, which Post calls “the comradery theme”.
Mike Post Albums
- 1969: Fused (as The Mike Post Coalition); Warner Bros.-Seven Arts (LP)
- 1975: Railhead Overture; MGM (LP)
- 1982: Television Theme Songs; Elektra (LP)
- 1988: Music from L.A. Law and Otherwise; Polydor (LP)
- 1994: Inventions from the Blue Line; American Gramaphone (CD)
Mike Post Singles
- “The Rockford Files”
- “Manhattan Spiritual”
- “Theme from The Greatest American Hero
- “The Theme from Hill Street Blues”
- “Theme from Magnum P.I.”
- “Theme From L.A. Law”
Mike Post Awards
- Grammy Awards
Year Album/Track Award - 1988 T L.A. Law Best Instrumental Composition (other than Jazz)
- 1981 T Theme From ‘Hill Street Blues’ Best Instrumental Composition (other than Jazz)
- 1981 T Theme From ‘Hill Street Blues’ Best Pop Instrumental Performance
- 1975 T Rockford Files Best Instrumental Arrangement
- 1968 T Classical Gas Best Instrumental Arrangement
Mike Post Net worth
Mike has a net worth of $600,000.
Mike Post Hill Street Blues
“Hill Street Blues” is 1981 instrumental by Mike Post. It is the theme from the TV series Hill Street Blues starring Daniel J. Travanti. The song features Larry Carlton on guitar.
The song spent over five months on the charts and reached number 10 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. It became an Adult Contemporary hit in the U.S. and Canada. It became Post’s second Top 10 hit, matching the performance of his first hit in 1976, “Theme from the Rockford Files.” The song also charted in the UK
“Hill Street Blues” was covered by jazz pianist Rodney Franklin on his 1981 LP, Endless Flight.
Mike Post Law And Order
When composer Mike Post was assigned to create music for Law & Order (and its endless spin-offs), he had one job: to put the viewer in the mood. That he did.
Perhaps Post wanted to take audiences down a disconcerting—yet seductive—path; one that echoes the journey of Olivia Benson and her comrades in each episode. Maybe he wanted to embody the distress and depravity nestled deep within New York’s world of crime. Rumor has it, if you listen carefully enough, you can even pick up on the sound of a gavel in the ‘dun.’ In a 1993 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Post said that he intended for the ‘dun dun’ to sound like a “jail cell locking.” And it does manage to sound like a dark and ominous steel door closing behind you.
Twenty years after its debut, Post’s ‘dun dun’ still bewitches people. But why? How a second-and-a-half sound effect could essentially become a household name (… or noise) is mind-boggling. It even claims stardom and notoriety in popular culture, with Pete Townshend writing the song “Mike Post Theme” on The Who’s eleventh studio album Endless Wire.
Mike Post got his start writing music for the early garage rock band The Outcasts and won his first Grammy at the age of 23 for his for Best Instrumental Arrangement on Mason Williams’ 1968 hit “Classical Gas.” After producing the work of Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s 1981 album 9 to 5, Post focussed on Hollywood where he wrote TV themes for a number of programs including The A-Team, NYPD Blue, The Rockford Files, L.A. Law, Magnum, P.I., and of course Law & Order.
But it wasn’t even the Law and Order theme that created the hype. It was a simple second-and-a-half sound effect. Entertainment Weekly referred to it as “the ominous Chung CHUNG sound accompanying the scene changes”, one “that chills the blood,” even going to far as to suggest that it “does its dark work effectively.”
The intended effect of the ‘dun dun’ is up for debate. Perhaps it tries to chill the audiences; to wake them up to the diabolical mess that is New York City’s crime scene. Or maybe Post just liked the noise of 500 Japanese men stomping their feet on a wooden floor… which I promise is not some urban legend, but a legitimate part of what makes up the ‘dun dun’ noise. Likely a “monstrous Kabuki event,” according to the New York Daily News.
There’s something to be said about the powers of the ‘dun dun’ (and Post’s theme song more broadly). It has a strange, and almost eerie, influence on both babies and dogs.
“The second the song starts, [my baby] unlatches and I have to stand her up so she can dance to it. Hands in the air and all smiles. I’m not kidding,” Christine said in a forum on BabyCenter aptly titled, “My baby loves the Law & Order theme song.”
Mike Post The Rockford Files
“The Rockford Files” is 1975 instrumental by Mike Post and co-composer Pete Carpenter. The song is the theme from the TV series The Rockford Files starring James Garner. It appears at the opening and end of each episode with different arrangements. Throughout the show’s tenure, the theme song went through numerous evolutions, with later versions containing a distinct electric guitar-based bridge section played by session guitarist Dan Ferguson.
The song spent four months on the charts and in August 1975 became a Top 10 hit in the U.S. (#10, for two weeks) and in Canada (#8). It was also a Top 20 Adult Contemporary hit in both nations.
“The Rockford Files” won a 1975 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement.
The B-side track (or “flip-side”) entitled “Dixie Lullabye” was also composed by Post and Carpenter.
