Top Ten TV Theme Songs

Let's explore PasteMagazine.com's list of theme songs, this time see what made #3 on their list:

3. Sanford & Son - Quincy Jones

Forget Thriller, "We are the World" or his work with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Sammie Davis Jr. If all Mr. Jones had given us was the funky intro to one of the best sitcoms of the 1970s, it would have been enough.



Sanford and Son is an American sitcom that premiered on the NBC television network on January 14, 1972, and was broadcast for six seasons. The final original episode aired on March 25, 1977. The show was based on the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son.

Sanford and Son starred Redd Foxx as Fred G. Sanford, a 65-year-old junk dealer living at 9114 S. Central Ave. in the Watts neighborhood of southern Los Angeles, California; and Demond Wilson as his 28-year-old son, Lamont Sanford.

Redd Foxx played Sanford as a sarcastic, stubborn, and argumentative antiques and junk dealer, whose frequent money-making schemes routinely backfired and created more troubles. Lamont dearly would have liked to enjoy independence but loved his father too much to leave him to his devices and schemes. Although each owned an equal share in the business and technically Fred was the boss, Lamont often found himself doing all the work and having to order his father to complete tasks and duties.

On the show's premiere in 1972, newspaper ads touted Foxx as NBC's answer to Archie Bunker, the bigoted white protagonist of All in the Family. (Both shows were adapted by Norman Lear from BBC shows.)

Ratings:
Season Ranking
1971-72 #6
1972-73 #2
1973-74 #2
1974-75 #2
1975-76 #7
1976-77 #27

interesting tidbits:

The truck driven in the series is a 1951 Ford, which was still functional as of July 2006 and used by its owner, Donald Dimmitt of Dimmitts Auto Salvage, a real-life junk dealer in Walnut Township, Marshall County, Indiana.

On King of the Hill, Dale routinely refers to Sanford and Son, frequently returning from an extermination job and saying "Good, I didn't miss my show," before settling in to watch Sanford and Son.

The episode "Fred Sanford, Legal Eagle" was edited before being aired on the cable TV network TV Land. In the unedited version, Fred represents Lamont in traffic court as his legal counsel. At the climax of the episode, Fred confronts the white traffic policeman who wrote Lamont the ticket. "Hey, look here", Fred asks the policeman, "why don't you arrest some white drivers?" When the policeman answers, "I do", Fred gestures to the court observers, who are all black, and asks, "Well where are they? Look at all these niggas in here!" Upon uttering this statement, the live studio audience went crazy with laughter and applause. Redd Foxx had to pause for the crowd to settle down before delivering the coup de grâce: "There's enough niggas in here to make a Tarzan movie!" In the TV Land version of this episode, Fred's questioning of the policeman abruptly ends after "What do you have against black people?".

In my opinion, this show did as much for TV as "All In The Family." It is one of my favorites and I must have seen every episode 5 times over, but will never turn the channel if I happen to be surfing and catch it on. Classic and timeless.