Songoftheday 6/10/14 - Break out your unconstructed summer blazers and T-shirts...

Jan Hammer - "Miami Vice Theme"
from the album Miami Vice (Original TV Soundtrack) (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's Song of the Day comes from the Czech composer Jan Hammer, who was once a part of the seminal jazz fusion band the Mahavishnu Orchestra as keyboardist in the early 70s before striking out on his own. He also worked with major rock artists like Jeff Beck and Journey's Neal Schon, the latter whom he collaborated with for a couple of albums at the start of the 1980s, and had a minor rock hit with "No More Lies" in 1983.

In 1984, Jan was hired on as the score composer for the new cop show Miami Vice, which also was one of the first shows to majorly promote current hits in their episodes, helping both the series and the recording artist. When the summer of 1985 rolled around the show was cresting in popularity, and the theme to Miami Vice started to get airplay on radio stations, and the soundtrack and single were selling like hotcakes. The video that went with the song even was like a mini-episode, as show stars Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas were on the hunt for the artist....

The theme became Jan's first and only appearance on the Hot 100, going all the way to #1 on the pop chart for a week in November of 1985. The record (as an extension of the show itself) was such a phenomenon that the single crossed over to the R&B (#10), rock (#23), and even adult contemporary (#16) radio charts in Billboard magazine. You could even hear the track in dance clubs, as the song went to #29 on the club play list as well. Internationally, with the shows popularity, the single was a hit all over the world, topping the chart in Canada and going top-10 in the UK, Germany, and Ireland, among others. It would be the last "true" instrumental to top the American singles chart so far.

Jan released a second single from the soundtrack, "Crockett's Theme", which only nicked the adult contemporary list in the U.S. for a month peaking at #42, but in Britain it did even better than his first, climbing to #2 on the UK chart in 1987, and even reappearing on the list in 1991 at #47.

While Hammer's been absent from the charts, he continues to score TV, movie and even video games, and probably live quite well from the royalites from the show and soundtrack.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Here is Hammer and his band live performing the theme (witness the keytar wonder)...

...and finally the extended version that made the dance club play chart...

Up tomorrow: An Englishman is demolishing toy buildings.