[quote name=\'Robair\' date=\'Jan 28 2005, 11:01 AM\']Dave might have. Also, during the second season of "Face the Music", Tommy and his band "ax-synced" the closing theme as well. Tommy musta been in a good union at that point.
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Themes to any TV program may have been recorded for post-production purposes (you may remember those poor recorded versions of "The Gong Show" music used under the prizes in the syndicated reruns), but here's the details on the specific tunes from the Ralph Edwards-Sandy Frank musical games.
"Face The Music" used recorded music for commercial intros during the second season. For all but the first few weeks of that second season, the closing theme was a recording. Recorded music had to be used for post-produced parting gifts and other announcements. Usually when they came back in to reintroduce Ron Ely, the music suddenly changed to a live version. If you look carefully during the closing theme (particularly trombone players Gil Falco and Lew McCreary), you'll see the musicans' air-playing doesn't quite match the track. Bassist Lyle Ritz was sometimes the most blatant violator of this, holding his bass way up in the air, or doing other goofy things. My guess is by then the band was probably jamming on something more interesting than that F-G-Bb-D, G-F-D-Bb of the theme.
For Sandy Frank's "Name That Tune", very early pilot episodes sometimes used a taped theme, sometimes live. (The horn section varied wildly at this time, starting out with just the two trombones, and then eventually adding the sax player and the trumpet player.) I think it proved a little cumbersome, because I remember one early episode that showed drummer Evan Diner clearly fumbling with his music to try to get the "win" music up at the end of the Golden Medley.
Once production on the actual series began, recorded music was used for everything except the opening theme and the tunes the contestants had to guess. There was one odd episode from about midway in the run in which all of the music was played live; the Mackenzie must have been broken that day. But I think the recorded music was done not just for post, but had the side benefit of saving the players (especially the brass players) for the tunes. Gil Falco, particularly, had a tendency to muff high notes at the end of a long taping day... not even the lead trombonist from "The Tonight Show" band could play for that long without lip fatigue.
Bottom line is this: tapes must exist somewhere of both the NTT and FTM themes, unless Tommy Oliver erased over them to record a Dead concert.
As for the Ralph Edwards version, the Bob Alberti themes were definitely recorded, and there were two versions, one with muted trumpets which John Harlan generally read copy over, one with open trumpets. There's even a vocal version that was used only once on-air during the Tom Kennedy nighttime run. Tommy Oliver's theme that Kathie Lee Johnson sang was the same tape used at the end of every show and was always played without applause. Stan Worth's music was always played live with some very nice piano lead by Bill Mays on some cuts.
