Quincy Jones - Theme from Ironside (1971)

Quincy Jones’s 1971 reading of the Ironside theme.
For those of you too young to remember, Ironside was a hit TV show that ran from 1967 to 1975  that featured Raymond Burr as a paraplegic, San Francisco police detective who went around solving crimes from the back of a specially engineered van.
The very groovy theme was penned by none other than the mighty Quincy Jones, the version you’re hearing today appeared on Jones’s 1971 LP Smackwater Jack.
Incidentally, while the opening theme music was written by Quincy and was the first synthesizer-based television theme song, much of the music score for the first few series of Ironside was by Oliver Nelson.
I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I suspect that like the version of Hikky Burr on the same album, this take on the Ironside theme was also re-recorded or embellished for that LP.
The whole affair manages to encapsulate a jazzy soundtrack feel, with some funky bass (Chuck Rainey), electric piano (Bob James), flute (Hubert Laws) and soprano sax (Jerome Richardson), taking the original theme and stretching it out for some solos. Jones manages to bring on the heavy brass without drowning out the rhythm section. This version starts out, like the TV theme, with (I think) a synthesizer imitating a police siren, with the Fender Rhodes bubbling underneath until the flute comes in to state the theme. There’s some groovy wah-wah guitar running in the background, and until the trumpet solo comes in, the feel is as much jazz rock as it is jazz. Aside from the impressive names listed above, the session was a who’s who of jazz and studio heavies, with Jones sharing producing duties with Phil Ramone and bass legend Ray Brown.
Very solid indeed.