During a recent appearance on the “Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw” podcast, Jimmy Hart commented on his work as a wrestling music composer, his picks for the Mount Rushmore of wrestling themes, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On creating the theme for Shawn Michaels: “Of course, we did Shawn Michaels and Shawn, when I first did Shawn Michaels’ song, he had his valet singing it, Sherri Martel. So then when she left, Vince wanted Shawn Michaels’ voice on it, so I had to tape it in Texas somewhere, so I had to book a studio, take Shawn up there to do it, so they sent me the tape from New York. So I went in there and I overdubbed his voice on it, and of course, Shawn goes, ‘I can’t sing, I can’t do this’. I said ‘this is going to be great’. He went in there and knocked it out, maybe one or two takes. But we didn’t have a girl singing it back up on it like I had down there, so I had to sing the backups and I tripled my voice three times going ‘sexy boy, sexy boy’. So we tripled it three times to make it sound like a girl, so that’s me really singing the girl’s part on it.”
On Dusty Rhodes’ theme in WWF: “Dusty goes, ‘look, Vince came to me, he wants you to cut a song on me.’ ‘I want you to cut one too, this is what I want’. First of all, you know how Dusty was very articulate about stuff. I said, ‘okay what do you want Dusty?’ He goes, ‘ well, I want some African American girl singers,’ okay you got it, I wrote it down. He says ‘I want some horn players,’ okay I wrote it down. He said, ‘you know, I’d like to have a cowbell on the front of that’, alright, cowbell on the front of that. I go, ‘what else?’And he goes, ‘write about the common man’. I said, ‘okay, write about the common man, the cowbell, African American singers, and horn players, Dusty why don’t you just write it yourself, you know what you want!’ He laughed, so I went, put it together, brought it to him, he listened to it three times, and he goes, ‘I love it, I love it’.”
On his Mount Rushmore of theme songs: “The Undertaker would have to be on there because everything was just simple. {impersonates Undertaker’s theme} Still, you gotta go with that. You gotta go with Triple H, drew a heck of a lot of money and I love that song that he came out to the ring to and I thought that was great. And of course, drawing the most money too, I always think about Hulk Hogan with the ‘Real American’. You know that drew a heck of a lot of money. But then, if I could put one of mine on there, it would have to be ‘Sexy Boy’, by Shawn Michaels. I love them all, but if the fans let me put one there, and I’m putting it last, you know, Shawn Michaels.”
(h/t – Wrestling Inc)
