You may not instantly know the name Lalo Schifrin, but you definitely know his most famous song.
Strike a match and think of the original TV theme to "Mission Impossible." Schifrin wrote the tune for the CBS show in 1966, a striking piece of music that earned him a Grammy and also an Emmy nomination. But like some moments of great inspiration, incredibly, the piece almost wrote itself.
"Schifrin said it took him just three minutes to put the theme together, and he composed it without seeing any footage from the show.
“Orchestration’s not the problem for me,” he told the New York Post in 2015. “It’s like writing a letter. When you write a letter, you don’t have to think what grammar or what syntaxes you’re going to use, you just write a letter. And that’s the way it came."
Schifrin's distinctive tune was also used in the Tom Cruise films of the same name and he wrote numerous other movie and TV themes over the years, including the opening to Starsky & Hutch.
He was 93.
Lalo Schifrin, Acclaimed Composer of ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘Mannix’ Themes, Dies at 93