North American television back in the late 1950's was the golden age for westerns. Most had very memorable theme songs. These are four of my favourites.

THE RIFLEMAN theme was an instrumental composed by Herschel Burke Gilbert and starred Chuck Conners as Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his young son, Mark, who also sang the pop song, Cindy's Birthday in 1962.

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL theme was composed and sung by Johnny Western, and starred Richard Boone as the lone gunfighter for hire, Paladin.
He lived in San Francisco and was hired out for various jobs. His card read,
Have Gun Will Travel ......... Wire Paladin, San Francisco. It was later, when I was a few years older that I realized Wire was not his first name!

MAVERICK was composed by David Buttelph with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster, and starred James Garner as Bret Maverick, Jack Kelly, as his brother Bart, and in the fourth season, Roger Moore was introduced as their English cousin, Beau Maverick.

RAWHIDE theme was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin and sung by Frankie Laine. Eric Fleming starred as Gil Favor, the trail boss, Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates, his second-in-command, and Sheb Wooley as Pete Nolan.
Eastwood later went on to great fame in the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, and Wooley wrote and sang to comedy pop song Purple People Eater in 1958.

I am not expecting a great number of viewers for this video, as I think that most of my viewers were not born when these classics were broadcast, and I suspect a lot of their parents weren't either!
Anyway, I hope those of you that do view it, will have memories of that golden era of great westerns on television.

#therifleman #havegunwilltravel #maverick #rawhide #barryprudhomme

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