(While its a little impersonal in that I never knew nor will claim to know the composer, its an event that really bothers me to this day and I'm hoping that venting my spleen about it will bring me some catharsis. I know I didn't do wrong but ... well, you'll get the idea.)
Like many people, I was introduced to classical music through the magic of John Williams and the movies he made through the 1980s. And for a long time, thats all I really paid attention to since my nose was stuck in pop and grunge. I heard Horner and Bernstein and Goldsmith but it didn't click back then like they do now. Star Wars was it for me (Indiana Jones to a much "lesser" degree) and I didn't go much further. There was plenty of pop music to fill the gap but I'll be damned if I remember much of it.
That changed on September 5, 1992. Little did I know I'd be writing about that day almost twenty years later. But Batman The Animated Series premiered and nothing for me was ever the same again. Admittedly, I was something of a Marvel Comics baby at the time so I was more interested in the Marvel/Saban X-Men cartoon but that only ran at 11 in the morning on Saturdays while Batman was five days a week at 4:30. Guess which one I watched more of?
I had *no* clue a weekly animated series could have music like BTAS did. Most shows had library music (they'd record maybe a dozen cues and recycle them through the show's run) or just bang out something on MIDI. BTAS was different though - even some episodes I didn't particularly care for had some great music in them and I'm embarrassed to say I air-conducted to it more than once through middle school and into high school.
I watched the show when it got bumped over and revamped on the WB network, then rolled over into the Batman Superman Adventures. It got to the point where I knew most of the guest stars on it just by hearing their voices (this has now become a long-standing hobby of mine), could pick out which artists did what storyboard layouts just by the rhythm or look and could hum a number of the background scores. Lolita Ritmanis and Kristopher Carter did fine work themselves but Shirley Walker's music always stood out a little further; harmonies seemed a little thicker with her.
Fast-forward to 2005. I'm not entirely sure why I decided to email Mrs Walker for an interview - probably just sitting around watching some reruns of the Superman Animated Series - but I shot off a quick email to her representative if she'd be interested in an interview. After a while, you just get to taking chances more often than giving half a damn about the responses you'd get.
A couple days later - I not only get a reply, but a reply from Walker herself...
Putting this into perspective, I wouldn't say she was a childhood hero - but I can't think of a better or apt description either. It was just as good as getting an email from John Williams or basically anyone ever, then or now. It blew my mind. The woman who co-composed Apocalypse Now, The Black Stallion and orchestrated for the likes of Elfman, Zimmer, Poledouris, Goldenthal... and I was ecstatic. I should count myself as lucky that I was at home because I may have otherwise been caught jumping around the room like an imbecile.
I worked quickly, enthusiastically, diligently to get the interview in proper order. In hindsight, all of what I wrote was a little long in the tooth but thats okay. Not everyone has the chance to exchange words with someone who molded their basic understanding of music and I did. I got the chance so enthusiasm was expected.
After checking my wording and questions, I shot her the interview and waited patiently. Time went by, weeks passed... and though she was busy she did reply with this:
Not a problem. I started getting busy with some life stuff of my own and figured a little extra time would only help everyone. I didn't get back in touch with her until April. My email was polite, brief, just a hello and a question if she had some free time yet.
Her reply was crushing. She apologized profusely, saying she'd "dropped the ball on a number of things". That her husband of 39 years had just passed on due to cancer. That she wanted a couple of months to herself, so she could give a more enthusiastic response to my questions and that she still had my old emails saved. She apologized again, thanked me for being interested in her music and gave her regards. It was about half a paragraph, carefully worded and the longest exchange I ever had with her.
Needless to say I didn't know how to respond to it. She wasn't a friend nor was she someone I knew at all. I just knew her music and knew that it would be beyond good taste to offer sympathy - that would just be awkward. I deleted the original email out of some weird form of respect, but recently found a cut and pasted version to the person I was writing the interview for which is where the above quote is sourced from.
Sadly, that was also the last time I ever had contact with Mrs Walker. She died a couple months later on November 30, 2006 after complications from a stroke. In a weird bit of happenstance, I got an email about her passing from a film score newsletter I've never had contact with or even heard of before or since. It just appeared in my inbox the same day I found out and I have no idea how they/it/whatever got my email address. I don't put much stock in the supernatural or luck but I'd like to think theres something to that.
I wish I had the chance to tell her how I grew up on her music being stuck in my head instead of just trying to squeeze her for an interview. Not that what I had to say was important but I wish I had the chance to say something more important than what I did. I'm thankful that I got to talk to her albeit briefly and that even that much showed I was at least interested in her music, even if four years later, I don't think I'd be able to easily explain my love for it. I could write a very long, very bad essay about it all. And maybe this journal entry is exactly that.
But the story isn't all sadness, doubt and looking-at-your-feet-while-kicking-the-ground.
I've had the good fortune of since talking to other fans of her work and found out a lot of really enjoyable stories. About how open Shirley Walker was with fans and other composers, about how she was a major supporter of composer and musician's rights. About how she once invited a fan over just to talk and play piano and discuss Batman (this hearkens back to the old story of a fan cold-calling Basil Poledouris in the 80s and the composer inviting them over to dinner with his family). Or how I've since talked to several other composers from the DC Animated Universe series and found them to be some really lovely people - Lolita Ritmanis certainly carries Walkers's kindness and lust for life in her. And this time, I made sure to go out of my way to praise them the way I never got to with Shirley Walker. That doesn't "make up for it" - but it is something, I suppose.
The Cue Sheet, the Film Music Society's quarterly newsletter, put out a publication just for Shirley after she died (Vol 22, No 3, July 2007) thats full of remembrances and details and back story that I hadn't been privy to before. It ends with a picture of a plaque they put up on the Eastwood Scoring Stage, near similar acknowledgements for Richard Stone and Michael Kamen. For a person who was so long acknowledged as a forerunner for women in film, was the first woman to score a major Hollywood picture (what does that even *mean*?) and was long considered by other composers to be a secret weapon of sorts, she was so invisible that the Oscars skipped her in the memoriam the following year. But the plaque stands anyway, a memoir to a less-than-invisible woman.
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