Songs for the Jogging Crowd

Victor Mizzy is forever ensured of a place in TV history as one of the great theme song composers — the themes from Green Acres and The Addams Family are only two of his best-known — but unlike most of his '60s-era contemporaries, he was still working four decades later, into his eighties. In fact, the last song on Songs for the Jogging Crowd is the charming theme for Spiderman 2, written by request for longtime Mizzy fan Sam Raimi. Other tracks include Mizzy's own version of the aforementioned TV themes; in fact, "Green Acres" is simply Mizzy singing along with Eddie Albert's lines on the original theme song recording, complete with Eva Gabor's interjections. The rest of Songs for the Jogging Crowd consists of genial novelty tunes with a definite old-school Borscht Belt feel to them, not too far removed from the great Mickey Katz or even Allan Sherman. Highlights include the catchy "Don't Forget Baby Baby" (which sounds like it could have been a particularly hip commercial jingle circa 1960) and the wry Hollywood jape "Name Dropping."