Arranger and television composer
Frank Comstock, arranger for Les Brown and composer of Adam-12
20 September 1922 – 14 September 2013
Frank Comstock worked in American television and American dance bands, and he belongs in a British register for one reason: the job he did was the same job, done to the same clock, in a country that organised it differently.
The band years
Frank Comstock spent his formative professional years as chief arranger for Les Brown and His Band of Renown, one of the American dance bands that survived the end of the swing era by becoming a broadcasting and recording property rather than a touring one.
That distinction matters for understanding what an arranger of his generation actually was. A band on the road plays a book that changes slowly. A band that broadcasts needs new material continuously, in lengths that fit a slot, and it needs it written by somebody who can be relied on to produce playable parts on schedule. The arranger becomes the production department.
Television, and the part of the work that carries a name
Comstock moved into television scoring and stayed there. If you have heard any of his work it is almost certainly Adam-12 — the police series that ran from 1968, whose theme and episode scores are his, and which you would not have known to attribute to anybody.
The other side of that career is animation. He scored for Jay Ward’s productions, including the Rocky and His Friends and Bullwinkle material, which is a harder brief than it sounds: comic timing has to be hit to the frame, and the orchestra has to characterise a gag without slowing it down.
Why he appears in a British register at all
This site documents British light music, and Comstock was neither British nor writing light music in the British sense. He is here because a British enthusiast journal covered him, and because the reason it did is the reason this register exists.
The craft on both sides was identical. A composer supplied timed orchestral music, playable at sight, to an institution that needed a predictable supply of it. In Britain that institution was a broadcaster with a needle-time quota and a publishing industry selling library discs. In America it was a network with a schedule to fill. The music sounds different and the working method does not.
Reading the two traditions separately makes both look more national than they were. The people doing the work read the same trade papers, used the same timing conventions, and moved between the two markets when the work did.
What this page does not establish
The record is thin in the places that matter most to a discography. Television cue sheets of that period identify material by production number, and a cue written for one episode could reappear in another series years later with no new credit and no new payment. A complete works list for a composer in that position is not something anybody has produced, and this page does not pretend to one.
Nor does it settle the film credits. The ones circulating are attributed to him in places that copy from each other, which is the condition that makes an attribution look solid and mean nothing. Where a claim could not be traced to something better than that, it is not here.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Frank Comstock?
An American arranger and composer, 1922 to 2013. He was chief arranger for Les Brown and His Band of Renown, and he later worked extensively in television scoring.
What is he best known for?
Two things that have little to do with each other: his arrangements for Les Brown's band, and the theme and scores for the police series Adam-12. Neither is the kind of credit that makes a composer famous, and both are the kind that gets heard constantly.
Why is an American arranger in a British register?
Because the craft is the same one this register documents. Timed orchestral cues, playable at sight, recorded in a session with a fixed end: that is the technical problem whether the customer is an American network or a British music library.
Did he write for films?
He worked in film as well as television, but the film credits are the part of the record this page will not list, because the attributions circulating for that side of his career are not consistent enough to state as fact.
What did a chief arranger for a dance band actually do?
Decide what the band plays and how. The arranger fixes the key, the voicing, who carries the tune and who fills behind it, and how long the whole thing runs. A band's identifiable sound is usually the arranger's, not the leader's.
Is his catalogue complete anywhere?
No. Television scoring of that period generated cues that were logged by production number rather than by title, and the same cue could be reused across episodes and series without a new credit.
Where do the surviving credits come from?
Mostly from on-screen credits and from the paperwork of the productions themselves. Where a cue was licensed rather than commissioned, the trail runs into a publisher's ledger, which is not a public document.
What does this page deliberately not do?
It does not reconstruct the article that a journal once published about him. That work belongs to whoever wrote it. What is here is the outline, with the sources named.
- Sources
- Checked
- REF/FC-001 · 4 sources