Shirley Walker an overlooked Composer

Shirley Walker was one of the composers responsible for the wonderful music in the far superior Batman The Animated Series (The cartoon series was much better than Burton’s films any day, and I will defend that statement).

During the early development of the Batman cartoon, the producers decided that they would use a completely different theme for Batman and asked Walker to write it. What she came up with was a dark theme that’s even better than Danny Elfman’s theme from the movies. However at the last minute, WB forced the producers to use Elfman’s theme, so people would think there was a connection to the 89 Batman movie. (Note: Despite being forced to use Elfman’s theme, they still used Walker’s theme for Batman during the show, ignoring WB’s orders, and only using Elfman’s score sparingly throughout the series)

You can hear the original Walker theme here TABR: Opening Theme

Here’s the demanded Elfman theme BTAS: Opening Theme

If you don’t believe me when I say that Walker’s composers produced better scores than Elfman’s Batman scores, go here and listen http://anbat.toonzone.net/music/index.html