Artwork provided by Jon McCormack.
This episode was written and produced by Mike Baireuther.
As a young composer, Edd Kalehoff was looking for his break. In the early 70s he struck gold, writing for the theme song and music cues for The Price Is Right. However, suspect business dealings would cast a dark shadow over this hallmark of daytime game shows for decades.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
We Three Kings by Drew Holcomb and The Neighbors
Just Watch Me Now (instrumental) by Lady Bri
Cherry (instrumental) by Chair Model
Grey16 by Tangerine
No Limits (instrumental) by Royal Deluxe
Me and My Friends by Juliet Roberts
Airliner Remix (Instrumental) by Secret American
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, and hosted by Dallas Taylor.
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View Transcript ▶︎
[music in]
You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I’m Dallas Taylor.
If you are from the US, that song means Plinko, spinning the big wheel, and showcase showdowns on The Price Is Right. This game show is a hallmark of American daytime television. If you’re outside of the US and haven’t seen the show, it’s the pure joy of retail therapy distilled into one hour of games. It’s centered around guessing the prices of stuff you probably don’t need, and in my opinion, it’s the most perfect game show ever.
[music out]
[Music clip: Price is Right Modern Intro]
The sound of this show is iconic. It’s like a slot machine on jackpot, fueling frenzied fans in the studio audience eagerly waiting for the chance to “Come on down!” and be contestants.
[SFX clip out]
But even devoted fans of the show might not know that The Price Is Right, used to sound completely different.
[Music clip: Original Price Is Right Intro]
This is from the original Price Is Right, which premiered in 1956 on NBC with host Bill Cullen. That’s right, there was a host BEFORE Bob Barker. Impossible! The original show was way more subdued, to put it lightly. Well-dressed contestants sat behind podiums on stage, and did their best to guess the prices of items.
[SFX clip: Price Reveal]
In the classic version of the show, this is the structure of the qualifying round to get into the actual game.
[SFX clip continued: Price Reveal]
So, that sounds about as fun as wandering the aisles of a department store, but the original Price Is Right lasted for nine years before being canceled.
Then, in the early 70’s, pioneering TV producer Mark Goodson decided to revive the show. Goodson, along with his business partner Bill Todman, created many of the most famous game shows in history, including Family Feud [sfx], Match Game [sfx], and To Tell The Truth [sfx].
At the same time, a young composer named Edd Kalehoff was just getting his start making TV show themes.
[music in]
Edd: I had recently come to New York and I met a guy that turned out to be not such a nice guy but he had a lot of themes going on television. Introduced me to Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, the game show kings of the time. And I started out doing a few of the smaller games ... Password and I've Got a Secret. Those shows that he has bringing back on television.
Edd: And then he was going to bring back The Price is Right, he was going to take it to Los Angeles.
[music out]
Needless to say, American culture and television changed dramatically from the premiere of the original Price Is Right in the late fifties to the it’s early seventies revival. For the show to stick with modern audiences, it needed a contemporary sound.
[music In]
Edd: Mark Goodson had already been hearing the Moog synthesizer, which I had gotten from Dr. Moog. He was intrigued with this new sound and one of the first people to really delve in… and there was actually nobody doing much with melody. Being a kind of a jazz guy and very varied in my styles, I was playing a lot of different kinds of music on the Moog, which does incredible things.
Edd: The great influences on me were the great movie composers. I loved writing accessible music. I loved writing stuff that was intelligent, what I would call intelligent.
[music out]
Edd: Mark Goodson was really a special guy. He was unique in a lot of ways. Certainly a genius of games. And there were no show runners. It was Mark. Mark enjoyed coming to my studio on 45th Street and 5th Avenue in New York. He got out of his tower up on Park Avenue and could come down and hang with the truth and soul network, as I called it.
Edd: He said, "Well, what do you have for me?" Ed: I like to say the name of the show in the melody. So I said, "The Price is Right. Yeah, yeah. The Price is Right." [Music clip: Price is right theme song] "The Price is Right. Yeah, yeah. The Price is Right."
Edd: And he said, "I like that." And of course, if he started to wiggle his foot you knew you had him.
Edd: And so, it was kind of a groovy sound. And that's how I presented the theme to Mark and he said, "Okay, kid. How much to go do it?" So I came up with a price and, "Okay. Go do it."
Edd: So I said to him, I said, "Mark, why don't you ever challenge me with my budget to go and do this music?" And he said, "Look, that's what it costs. If you say that's what it costs, that's what it costs."
Edd: He didn't hear another note until I showed up at CBS in the sound booth and played it when they were loading in the first week of shows.
[music in]
..but, we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s rewind to find out how Edd recorded this iconic theme.
Edd: At that time we were doing a lot of London business for other projects and I had great orchestras over there. So I went to London [SFX: jet airplane flyover] And took a synthesizer over there. Customs had a great time trying to figure out what it was. The Cold War was still on. They thought I was a spy.
But once Edd got setup in the studio in London, some real magic began to happen with the session musicians.
Edd: Once you have good guys, the best players in the world that mastered their instruments, you can't go wrong. It's like having the best orchestra in the world to play your stuff.
Edd: They get the music and they go, "What do you want? We know the notes. What do you want it to be?" And I tell them a story about, "Well, this is going to be, tell them what won, Johnny." These guys would play that way.
Edd: I got to give them credit.
[music out]
Edd: So I learned the art of if you have a good pocket ... meaning the good pocket of the rhythm ... the drummer made that happen.
[Music clip: Price is Right drum cover]
Edd: It was almost a swing thing, almost a dotted 8th feel but it wasn't. It was written in 16ths, which are even.
Edd: What a drummer. I said, "How'd we get him?" "Well, you were like you'd been here a couple times before. And so they said yeah. We want to see who this Yank is. Who this Edd Kalehoff guy is."
Edd: He made it swing. And these players over there they got behind it. And they said, "Hey, this isn't TV music. This is something else." They made it come to life.
[music out]
Edd’s contributions to the Price is Right went well beyond the theme song. He’s also responsible for music and sound effects throughout the show. That included the notorious horn that plays when someone loses, named “The Lose.”
[SFX: Losing Horn]
And, for correct answers, Edd went to a hardware store and tested a bunch of different doorbells before recording the perfect option.
[SFX: Winning Ding]
[music in]
Edd’s music was the perfect pairing to each episode of The Price Is Right. The show became a huge wholesome daytime TV hit, but the story behind the royalties for the theme song is anything but wholesome [sfx: sad horn]. More on that, after the break.
[music out]
MIDROLL
[music in]
In the early 1970’s, the re-booted Price Is Right with host Bob Barker was on its way to becoming a mainstay of daytime television. Edd Kalehoff was the young composer of the show’s theme song, he should have been in an amazing position to profit from the show’s success. Writing a long-running theme song is a career-maker, with residuals providing a constant stream of income for years. But if you check the credits for the show’s theme during that time period, you won’t see Edd’s name.
[music out]
You’ll see Sheila Cole.
Edd: A man, I won't mention his name because I don't want to take anything away from his ability to do business.
Edd: Sheila Cole was his wife. And after I had written the Price is Right theme and come back from London, he said, "I have to put her name down as the composer. It's just a technicality." And I was just new at the BMI, ASCAP world. And he said, “You know what? This time it won't make much difference."
BMI and ASCAP are the two main performing rights organizations that represent American music writers and publishers working in TV and film. They set pay rates, work hours, and help determine how residual income is calculated and divied up. Show producers provide a “cut sheet,” which lists all the music cues needed in a given episode, and BMI and ASCAP ensure these composers and publishers get paid for their work accordingly.
Edd: Well, I was originally ASCAP when I first came to New York because that's all I knew. That's what I saw in sheet music that I would play in the night clubs.
[music in]
Edd: ASCAP is American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. BMI is Broadcast Music Incorporated. That was founded in Nashville. The government made them do that ‘cause there was only one performing rights society and they in the 40's made them start BMI to anti-monopoly.
Edd: So they came to me and they said, "Look, man, we can make your world much better."
Edd: How it works is there's a theme. Look at it as two 100% pies. One is the publishing earnings. And one is the writing earnings. The composer and the publisher.
Edd: It's based on air time, and it was based on television income. A percentage of their advertising income. It's a small percentage. It would go from maybe 2% to 3.5% of their annual gross income, that would go to the performing rights.
Edd: Well, what happened was this gentleman, to make a relationship with Mark Goodson said, "Okay, I'll make you the publisher. You'll make the money from the publishing." That 100% pie. "But I'll collect the writers."
[music out]
Based on those rules, The Price Is Right doled out a percentage of their ad revenue each year. But since Edd’s name wasn’t listed as the composer, he didn’t receive any of the royalties.
Edd: And I have to say you can carry around the vehemence and the harsh feelings for a guy that would do that to a young kid. Why not split it?
Edd: The income from that one theme, the Price is Right theme that I wrote on the Hammond that Mark shook his foot too, then I went to London, took it to LA and that was done. If you had written something that has earned to date maybe $40 or $50 million to date, that would have made a difference in your life.
Forty to fifty MILLION dollars. That’s what it means to write the theme song to one of the longest running television shows ever. Just think, that small percentage of ad revenue, piling up, year after year, into a fortune… and Edd, missed out on all of it.
Edd: I went to Mark Goodson and said, "Mark Goodson, I can't work for you anymore. You let that happen." He says, "I'll tell you what. I'll put your name down on the credits. On the television." I said, "Well, that would mean a lot for me." "And I'll give you all of the other music credits," which is income. Let's face it.
Edd: That first deal with the Price is Right, let me tell you. I still get it kicked every time that theme plays. That would have made a big difference in my life.
Edd: It would have been nice to recover that. I didn't. BMI and the mentors there said, "Look, man, just look. You're talented, have a great career, you’ll do great.
So, with Edd’s modern, high-energy sound, the revived Price Is Right soared in the ratings. The show, and Edd’s music, defined a generation of game shows, and became a timeless piece of Americana. While the Price Is Right became one of the most successful shows in history, Edd was building his career.
[music in]
Edd: First I was with the king of games, Mark Goodson.
Edd: I play guitar and I played a theme... it was NBA on ABC. And I played the guitar solo [Music clip: Straw Dogs w/ Guitar Solo]. It was good. It made it. It was different.
Edd: And that got ABC opened. That was Jeff Mason, who was then a producer and then he became the president of ABC sports.
[music out]
Edd even put a new spin on a classic Football theme.
Edd: We were doing Monday Night Football, you know that one? [SFX clip: Plays theme on the piano], you know, that thing. I was known for making things hipper, different twist.
Edd became one of the most prolific and prominent TV theme show composers in the industry. In addition to his work on Monday Night Football, his credits include themes Nickelodeon’s Double Dare, PBS News Hour, and ABC’s World News Tonight.
After the relaunch of The Price Is Right in the early 70’s, the format and sound of the show remained mostly unchanged for decades. Then, in the mid-2000s, Edd found himself once again working on the theme that helped start it all.
Edd: When Drew Carey took over when Bob Barker retired, Drew said, "Man, this is in mono. It's a mono recording." And he said, "Can you do it in stereo?" I said, "Well, I... I think I can." We'd already been dealing with surround sound by that time.
Edd had to make the sound of the Price Is Right appeal to a new audience, all while leveraging the nostalgia audiences have for this beloved franchise. Here’s what that mono recording sounded like:
[Music clip: The Price is Right theme, mono recording]
Edd: That was written at a time when I was young and on fire, and already had started making a living. Difficult but making a living. And it was okay. And I brought with me all of the wants and desires, and that theme goes through three key changes in the first 10 seconds.
And here’s what the new, stereo version sounds like:
[Music clip: The Price is Right theme, stereo recording]
Edd: And I said, "Listen. It's got to be real instruments. It's got to be a real Moog... If you don't do that, it's not going to be the same thing."
Edd: Some new musicians. All in New York. A lot of the guys that play Saturday Night Live are on the session. Some great players. And we all studied my old mono recording and what's on the air now is a remake of the original mono recording.
Edd: It's still running and it's a lot of fun to hear it.
[music out]
[music in]
After more than four decades in the industry, Edd hasn’t stopped writing themes or playing music.
Edd: That's what I was born to do. I never did anything else. I love sailboats, I love working with my hands, I love the art world.
Edd: And yet, writing music is something ... it's like I hear something, "Sheesh, that's a great idea that guy just used up." If I'm not out there writing some good stuff, these guys are going to write the themes and I'm going to wish I wrote them.
Edd: Even as late as last night, I heard something, a manipulation of sound. It had a whoosh in it, it had a low frequency, warm chordal harmonic movement. And it went into a melody and it was just that three seconds of sound like, "That was a special moment of something that really spoke to me."
Edd: I said, "I wish I thought of that." I said, "I can't stop."
[music out]
Before we go, here’s the entire :96 second modern-version of The Price is Right Theme song. Written by Ed Kalehoff, but still to this day credited to Sheila Cole (who also still collects the royalties.) Anyway... Enjoy.
[Music clip: The Price is Right Theme song modern version]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound. A sound design team that makes commercials, documentaries, and trailers sound incredible. To hear some of this sonic goodness, visit Defacto Sound on Instagram.
This episode was written and produced by Mike Baireuther. And me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was edited and sound designed by Soren Begin. It was mixed by Jai Berger. Thanks to our guest, Edd Kalehoff. To hear more of Edd’s work, visit eddkalehoff dot com.
Thanks also to RTDRUMS2121 from Youtube for their drum cover of The Price is Right theme. You can find a link to that on our website, 20k.org.
The music in this episode is from our friends at Music Bed. Go listen at musicbed dot com.
Finally, are there any other classic TV sound stories that you know of? Well, I’d like to hear all about it. You can chat with me, and the rest of the 20k team through our website, facebook, twitter, or by writing hi at 20k dot org.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
