There were three main ways I learned about Spider-Man as a child. The first was his wordless appearances on The Electric Company. Then as a tween, I came to love the excellent Saturday morning series from the early 1980s, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends featuring Iceman and Firestar.

But before all of that was Spider-Man, the animated adventure series that ran on ABC starting in 1967. That series, of course, is the origin of the famous “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can!” theme jingle, but the musical bounty of the series hardly ended there.

The incidental music was credited to Ray Ellis, an arranger and conductor whose primary claim to fame is his orchestration on Billie Holiday’s 1958 album Lady in Satin. In the 1980s and 1990s Ellis was occupied with game shows like Hot Streak, Scrabble, and Scattergories, but his work on Spider-Man is a groovy and atmospheric marvel that rewards further listens, combining surf guitar, luxuriant horns, and some splendid hard bop.
 

Ray Ellis And His Orchestra, Our Man On Broadway, 1963
 
Someone went to a lot of trouble to go through the entire run of the series with the intention of isolating the background music as much as possible. It must have been a huge amount of work! There are occasional spots where the sound effects or dialogue—“Wait till you see the little surprise I have for you….” or “Nearly midnight… wonder when the action starts….”—couldn’t be removed without ruining the music, so it’s just there, which frankly adds to the charm. The whole thing is more than an hour long.

Ellis’ music here isn’t as delightfully frothy as, say, Henry Mancini but it’s in the same general vein. There’s way more hard-boiled menace in it. This would be a great thing to stream on your TV during a party.
 

 
via Retroist
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I thee web’: Spider-Man and Mary Jane get married at Shea Stadium, 1987
Spider-Man meets Ed Wood in this loopy amateur fan film from 1969