Callan Theme
Edward Woodward - This Man Alone
Why, hello there. Let’s try to have more than three posts this year, shall we?
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I’ve been busy, as you may have guessed from my absence here. Since last we spoke, I’ve cleared all but the writing-the-dissertation hurdle of becoming Dr. 8, and have brought into this world, with the help of my lovely wife, a very handsome son.
I still find time to think about espionage fiction, though most of my energy has been spent in consuming, and little in deep contemplation or analysis. I’ve seen some dandy films this year for the first time–The Executioner, and The Deadly Affair–and I’ve watched some crackerjack television too. One of the shows I’ve started watching for the first time is Callan
As I tend to do, I picked up a guitar and twiddled around until I’d figured out most of the theme. But the track fades out rather quickly, and I wanted to figure out how to play the rest of the song as well. My searches for full versions of the Callan theme were unsuccessful at first, because it took a few queries to discover that the Callan theme is actually a piece of De Wolfe library music written by Jack Trombey called “Girl in the Dark.”
De Wolfe is a service that provides licensed music in every imaginable genre for use…well, by anyone who needs music and can pay the fee. Their music has been heard in countless television shows, films and advertisements. Jack Trombey was the pseudonym of composer Jan Stoeckart, who is best known for composing the Simon Park Orchestra hit “Eye Level,” the theme song to the British detective show Van Der Valk, and for tracks contributed to the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The history of the song’s composition can be found in the documents of a landmark court case, brought by a music license company called Mood Music against De Wolfe, which claimed that “Girl in the Dark” was actually a song called “Sogno Nostalgico” written by Armando Sciascia in 1963. In a document declining an appeal to dismiss certain evidence by De Wolfe, we learn that, “‘Girl in the Dark’ had been composed by one Jan Stoeckart (known as J. Trombey) in the first half of 1960, was thereafter submitted by him to a television company as a possible theme for a new television series in tape form, and that lyrics for the work were composed in the Dutch language.”
According to a Nov. 15, 1975, article in Billboard Magazine, the court battle had raged for seven years before De Wolfe settled, giving royalties and rights to Mood Music, but admitting no wrongdoing. So perhaps I should hedge my bets and credit Trombey/Sciascia on this one. In any case, the track below comes from a 10″ record collection of Trombey’s De Wolfe work. I couldn’t find a version of “Sogno Nostagico.”
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Callan himself, Edward Woodward, later recorded a version of the song with lyrics, called “This Man Alone,” on an album of the same title (which also featured covers of numerous songs reflecting loneliness, including a pretty good version of White Plains’ “Today I Killed A Man I Didn’t Know).
LYRICS:
He’s alone, a man apart
Bitter hurt deep in his heart
Does he have a hard of stone,
This man?
This man alone
No one knows what’s in his soul
No one knows where lies his goal
Has he something to atone,
This man?
This man alone
What secret does he harbor?
What guilt? Or is it fear?
What makes him seem so frightened?
To let a man, a woman, near?
Can he dream? Can he still yearn?
Can the flame of love still burn?
Can it melt a heart of stone,
Can he no longer be
A man alone?
