Mister Ed by Jay Livingston

Album: TV Theme Songs (1961)

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Songfacts®:

Mister Ed was an American TV series about a talking horse. It first aired in January 1961 and ran for six seasons. On the show, the horse was owned by an architect named Wilbur Post, played by the Englishman Alan Young, who was born Angus Young - no, he didn't play guitar in this series!

Mister Ed would talk only to his owner, resulting in all kinds of shenanigans.

Getting Mister Ed to move his mouth so he would appear to talk was a great feat of training. A horse trainer was able to get him to do it on cue, and in the first shot of the intro, we see him introduce himself before the song kicks in. "Hello, I'm Mister Ed," he says.
The Mister Ed theme song was written by lyricist Jay Livingston (1915-2001) and composer Ray Evans (1915-2007), and sung by Livingston. They got the gig because the show was produced by Filmways, which liked what Livingston and Evans wrote for another one of their shows: Bonanza.
According to Jay Livingston, the song was originally sung by an Italian opera singer, recorded in Rome by Raoul Kraushaar, who scored Filmways's shows. When Al Simon, who produced Mister Ed, heard it, he was horrified and asked Livingston to sing a guide vocal while they looked for a proper singer. Livingston's version ended up being the one they used.

"I had a lot of trouble with it because there's no place to breathe," Livingston told Michael Feinstein. "My wife coached me, otherwise I would never have gotten through it."
Running a little over 30 seconds, this is fairly compact relative to other TV theme songs at the time. It sings very quickly and is almost a tongue twister:

A horse is a horse, of course, of course
And no one can talk to a horse, of course

Comments: 1

Howard Luloff from St. Louis Park, MnOne of the most memorable theme songs of all time. The original version of the Mister Ed theme was recorded in Italy by an opera singer. Unfortunately, it was so bad that Arthur Lubin, who produced and created the show was looking for a new theme song. However, Jay Livingston, who co-wrote the classic theme with his partner Ray Evans recorded his own version and it would stay on the air for the remainder of the show's run and reruns thereafter.

I always enjoyed hearing the song whenever I watched Mister Ed. It was a very catchy theme that told us "A horse is a horse of course of course."

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