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Herschel Burke Gilbert (April 20, 1918 – June 8, 2003) was a prolific orchestrator, musical supervisor and composer of film scores as well as television scores and theme songs, including the themes for The Rifleman (starring Chuck Connors), Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater and The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor. Gilbert once estimated that his compositions had been used in at least three thousand individual episodes of various television series. Gilbert was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the age of nine, he began studying the violin in Shorewood in Milwaukee County. By the time he... MORE

Herschel Burke Gilbert (April 20, 1918 – June 8, 2003) was a prolific orchestrator, musical supervisor and composer of film scores as well as television scores and theme songs, including the themes for The Rifleman (starring Chuck Connors), Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater and The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor. Gilbert once estimated that his compositions had been used in at least three thousand individual episodes of various television series. Gilbert was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the age of nine, he began studying the violin in Shorewood in Milwaukee County. By the time he was 15, he had formed his own dance band. He attended Milwaukee State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee) and studied for four years: two as an undergraduate and two as a graduate, from 1939–1943 at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. After Juilliard, Gilbert won a music scholarship to the Berkshire Music Festival in Massachusetts, where he studied under Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. He also played the viola with bandleader Harry James. Gilbert was known to millions for theme songs on American television, including among others The Rifleman, The Big Valley, LESS