The Black Bird (1975) - Soundtrack

The liner notes state that the recording sessions for The Black Bird took place on September 15, 17, 19 and 23 and December 2, 1975, respectively. The IMDB has the first broadcast date of The Devil's Platform, the seventh episode of the short-lived series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, being November 15, 1974.

When I first saw The Black Bird, which may or may not have been on the CBS Late Night Movie, I thought Gil Mellé had composed the film's score. Because I recognized the film's opening title, note-for-note, from yet another Kolchak: The Night Stalker episode, The Spanish Moss Murders, which I had made an audio tape recording of.

Because of that recording that opening theme will forever be linked to The Spanish Moss Murders, but, as noted above, its first appearance seems to have been in The Devil's Platform. Off the top of my head I also remember it being used in the infamous headless biker episode titled Chopper.

Being a credit reader, because I wanted to know who was creating or working on whatever it was I watching, I began noticing that the 'music by' credit on Kolchak: The Night Stalker was Gil Mellé on some episodes and Jerry Fielding on others.

There has been no official release of either Mellé's or Fielding's music for the series, but when Intrada released The Black Bird, I knew I had to have it. Because it might be the only way I could have even the smallest snippet of music from one of my all-time favorite television shows.

The liner notes do not mention Kolchak: The Night Stalker, even though The Black Bird's main title is the subject of a brief critical examination. 

"The composer's jazzy, string-based riff on the Main Title is very much in sync with his work of the vintage." Nick Redman wrote of the score. "The mid-1970s saw him gradually abandon some of his earlier tropes and mannerisms in favor of a style that would increasingly feature electronics. Like many composers of the time, he felt that synthesizers would begin to play a much greater part in film music and he began to accommodate them accordingly. Discreetly at first, and here mostly in the opening and closing titles, he experimented gingerly. A busy motif, in counterpoint to the orchestral forces, makes its presence felt."

For me, the presence felt in that busy motif is Carl Kolchak, forever driving his yellow Ford Mustang around the streets of Chicago, searching for a story...