Sometimes when you do things with a subject like this off the top of your head is the best way, otherwise you will be spending hours wondering which 5 one should list. So hear are 5 that just comes to mind, NOW - JOHN PATRICK SCOTT- MICHAEL LEWIS-RONALD STEIN-RICHARD BAND- ARMANDO TROVAJOLI
Underrated by whom? Maybe you mean under appreciated or not as frequently mentioned or discussed. In my collection, there are no underrated composers. While it's true some composers are more fully represented than others, they are all consdered by me to be important contributors to my musical Nirvana. If they weren't, their music would not be in my collection. FILM AND TELEVISION MUSIC = DRUGS OF CHOICE
I will kick myself for leaving names off this list if I stop to think about it for too long, but here are some composers whose praises don't get sung often enough IMO:
Angela Morley Laurence Rosenthal Marc Shaiman Ronald Stein Shirley Walker
Underrated, underdiscussed, underappreciated, misunderstood... I'm going to surprise even myself by not mentioning either Gil Mellé or Basil Kirchin again.
No, today I'm going to nominate only one, and that would be the late great Herman Stein. The thing about Stein is that many of us probably "know" his music without even being aware that he wrote it. A tremendous amount of his output went literally "uncredited" - "Music Supervision by Joseph Gershenson" was about the best anyone could expect on a multitude of '50s Universal films, of which the SFs are probably the best known and form part of our collective memories. But MMM has already written 325,000 words on the issue, throwing in other great composers such as Irving Gertz, so I shall leave it at that.
Summary of the Above for Those of a Short Attention Span --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course it is understandable a bunch of composers who worked for UNIVERSAL in the 40's and 50's would be underrated since it was hard for years to know who composed what at that studio.So in less then 16 remarks SALTER, STEIN AND SKINNER HAS BEEN MENTION GERTZ TOO. Let's not forget HENRY MANCINI[too popular to be underrated] also worked with that Universal team during those years and did music without credit recognition.
Not to get off topic but I was just listening to the soundtrack POLTERGEIST NO 3, and hearing the end theme I would have to say it is one of the most underrated themes [of course there are so many of those] I heard, purely pretty.
