Recalling Earl Hagen and Wayne Shrope

We reflect this week on the loss of two men who passionately loved music, one a Hollywood composer, one a local fellow who kept alive the spirit of the Old West in lyric and melody.

Earl Hagen wrote and whistled the iconic theme song to "The Andy Griffth Show." He passed away May 26 at 88 in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

We note Hagen's passage in part because Lodi has sometimes been compared to Mayberry but mainly because we just loved the show and the bedrock values it reflected.

Hagen was no one-song wonder. He wrote music prolifically for both TV and movies, including theme songs for "The Dick Van Dyke Show," and "I Spy," for which he won an Emmy.

It's estimated that Hagen composed music for more than 3,000 TV shows, pilots and made-for-TV movies. He sometimes worked 16-hour days, providing music for five weekly shows simultaneously.

But surely the chipper, down-home tune for the "Andy Griffth Show" was his most recognizable and adored work.

In his autobiography, "Memoirs of a Famous Composer — Nobody Ever Heard Of," Hagen recalled that it took little more than an hour to write the song.

He whistled it, and his 11-year-old son provided the finger-snapping. The song opens the show, with Andy and his son, Opie, walking along a lake with fishing poles. The scene was actually shot in Franklin Canyon Lake near Beverly Hills, not far from UCLA.

Mr. Hagen is gone, but for those with a Mayberry state of mind, that tune, and all the goodness it evokes, endures.

And we were saddened by the passing of Lodi's own singing cowboy Wayne "Austin" Shrope.

A teacher in Placer County and the Bay Area for most of his life, he retired to Lodi 14 years ago. This is where he was able to throw himself into his avocation — Western cowboy music. Shrope had a tenor voice as mellow as the smell of sage on a desert breeze and a flawless touch on his big acoustic guitar.

Wearing a Stetson hat, he sang the songs of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers at fund-raisers and street fairs around Lodi for many years. He even wrote a few songs and recorded three albums. Mostly he covered the traditional cowboy songs that he loved but his originals were nostalgic and as good as any of the professionally written tunes of the old Hollywood singing cowboys.

Shrope must have known the last roundup was coming when his silky voice was silenced by a respiratory problem a few years ago.

Back in 2001 we published, in a column, the words to one of his originals from his album "By the Old San Joaquin."

With his passing, it seems fitting to repeat them here:

It's a lonesome old range that I'm ridin'
Now that all the old-timers have gone.
It's a much better trail they are ridin'
It's the trail that will lead them to home.
To an empty old bunkhouse I'm headin'
At the end of a long, lonesome day.
It was once filled with pals and their laughter
But now only the echoes remain.

"Lonesome Range" by Wayne Austin.

Happy trails, old friend.

— Lodi News-Sentinel

Reader Feedback

dogbark wrote on Jun 11, 2008 9:40 PM:

" He did a ballad about Joaquin Murieta too, that had Anglos and Hispanics alike biting their lips in anger and angst over the injustices that drove that desperado mad. He sang, and you saw the images in your head.
Yes, via con Dios, Wayne. "

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Recalling Earl Hagen and Wayne Shrope

In different worlds, these men both loved making and sharing music

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