DANGER MAN (aka SECRET AGENT) was an early 1960's British TV series featuring Patrick McGoohan as the mysterious secret agent JOHN DRAKE.
Despite it being a hugely popular programme, it never achieved the cult status of later series "THE PRISONER". None-the-less, it holds a fascination for all devotees of Patrick McGoohan and TV cultists everywhere.
'Danger Man' was created by Ralph Smart in 1960 at the behest of Lew Grade, then a director with ATV, part of the British ITV group of companies.
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 When the series was made in Britain, it started as a half-hour show and had a jazzy big-band theme, the sort of thing which had been popular in the late 50's. It was played by the Red Price Combo and opened and closed all 39 episodes of the first series. Red Price was a well-known session player at the time, his main instrument was the saxophone, and he also achieved some minor fame as a regular on the early 60's BBC TV Saturday evening pop show, "Oh Boy".
As "Danger Man" started to become more popular and progressed to the one-hour format, the theme was updated by Edwin Astley, who also was the musical director, and featured a nerve-jangling harpsichord sound which had a peculiar but effective pause-and-go segment right at the beginning. This is probably the most recognised theme and it's called "High Wire". Lots of people have recorded it over the years, but the original "Edwin Astley Orchestra" recording can still be found in on-line record stores, usually in 'TV Themes' collections.
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ITC managed to sell the series to CBS for the U.S. market, who retitled it SECRET AGENT as they felt that it needed to be more "American" . They also wanted an American-sounding theme and a USA singer called Johnny Rivers got involved.
Rivers recalls, "We were touring Europe and met the producers of that show in England. They were gettin' ready to bring it to the States and asked if we would consider trying to come up with a theme. We thought it'd be great to have a theme on a TV series.
P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri came up with it. It wasn't a complete song. They just had one verse and the chorus."
"We wound up cutting it for the show and Imperial started getting calls saying, 'You ought to put that thing out as a single.' We had to go back and re-record it and they wrote some more verses."
The single of "SECRET AGENT MAN" got to number 3 in 1966. The song was included on the album " And I Know You Want To Dance", which released in 1966, getting to number 52 in the Billboard Golden Hits. It was also an album entry on "Golden Hits", also released in 1966 and reaching number 29.
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These stills are from the title sequence of the USA version of the show.
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