Pete Carpenter

Composer Pete Carpenter was inducted into the Society of Composers & Lyricists Hall of Fame on Wednesday, December 20, 2023 at the 34th Annual SCL Holiday Dinner.

Clarence E. “Pete” Carpenter (April 1, 1914 – October 18, 1987) was an American jazz trombonist, musical arranger, and a veteran of television theme song scoring. After a long career playing the trombone in bands and as a studio musician, Carpenter started working with composer Earle Hagen and writing music for television on shows like Bewitched (1964), Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (1964), and The Andy Griffith Show (1966–1967).
 
Carpenter’s collaboration with composer Mike Post began in 1968 and lasted until Carpenter’s death nearly two decades later. The two wrote the theme for producer Stephen J. Cannell’s first show, the police detective drama Toma in 1973. The pair’s breakthrough was the top 10 Billboard hit and Grammy Award-winning theme for Cannell’s private detective drama The Rockford Files in 1974, starring James Garner.
 
Carpenter and Post went on to score over 1800 hours of television and to compose the music for television shows like CHiPs (1977), Magnum, P.I. (1980), Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (1980), The A-Team (1983), Hardcastle and McCormick (1983),Riptide (1984), Hunter (1984), Stingray (1985), as well as movies like Vanishing Point (1971), Rabbit Test (1978), and Will: G. Gordon Liddy (1982). In addition to their 1975 Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement for Rockford, for Hunter the duo won a Broadcast Music Incorporated TV Music Award in 1989.
 
The themes for the A-Team and The Rockford Files has also made appearances on other television programs and movies, including the pilot for David Chase’s hit show on HBO, The Sopranos (1999), and the films Not Another Teen Movie (2001), Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), and Miracle (2004). 
 
In 1989, Mike Post and the BMI Foundation established a Pete Carpenter Memorial Fund to benefit young composers.