Shirley Anne Walker (née Rogers; April 10, 1945 – November 30, 2006) was an American film and television composer and conductor. She was one of the few female film score composers working in Hollywood during her career. Walker was one of the first female composers to earn a solo score credit on a major Hollywood motion picture (preceded by Suzanne Ciani for 1981's The Incredible Shrinking Woman) and according to the Los Angeles Times, is remembered as a pioneer for women in the film industry.
Walker often wrote her film scores entirely by hand, and always orchestrated and conducted her own scores herself.
She won two Emmy Awards during her career, while the ASCAP Shirley Walker Award was created in her honor in 2014.
Walker (née Rogers) was born in Napa, California, on April 10, 1945. Her father was an industrial patternmaker for the U.S. Navy, and her mother gave piano lessons while raising five children. She grew up in Napa Valley and Contra Costa County. She attended Pleasant Hill High School. Walker was a musical prodigy. She had an early start performing as a teenager at various hotels, jazz and art bands in 1964-1967. Walker was also a piano soloist with the San Francisco Symphony during high school, and later attended San Francisco State University on a piano scholarship. She studied music composition under Roger Nixon and piano studies with Harald Logan of Berkeley, California.
Shortly after graduating from Pleasant Hill High School, Walker composed the score for a full length musical adaptation of Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid called Make Way For Love, with book & lyrics by W. Grant Gray. It had its world premiere at the high school, with Shirley playing keyboards with a quartet at all performances.
For several years, she wrote jingles and composed for industrial films. Walker's career in film began in 1979, when she was hired to play the synthesizers on Carmine Coppola's score for Apocalypse Now. Her work and arrangements can be heard, eerily interwoven throughout the film, notably during cues like “Do Lung” and “The Delta”. Almost immediately, she would work again with Coppola, orchestrating the score for The Black Stallion (1979) as well as writing additional cues, receiving credits such as “Additional music by” or even “Co-composed by”. This gave her an official start and made her one of the rare and few female film composers of the time alongside Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind, Delia Derbyshire, Angela Morley, and Suzanne Ciani. However, what made Walker stand out among her peers was her ability to work with an orchestra and this talent would come to shape many beloved film scores.
Conducting, orchestrating/arranging, scoring for film and TV
Her apprenticeship in film music included working as orchestrator and conductor with a substantial list of established film composers such as Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Brad Fiedel, Mark Snow and Carter Burwell. It is not unusual to be a composer, orchestrator, or a conductor, but what is unusual is to be one that does all three, and Walker was such an example. She reportedly knew exactly how music worked, how it was written, and how (or if) it could be played by musicians. Her roles would include making sure each cue was recorded how it needed to be with the speed, tone, and musical sound design in mind, based on the composer's wishes as well as her own.
While she was still writing for television in the early 1980s, Walker would be frequently hired by other composers to orchestrate or conduct their scores. Some of these included Murder in Coweta Country (1980) for Brad Fiedel, Cujo (1983) for Charles Bernstein, and Ghost Warrior (1984) for Richard Band for which she also wrote additional music. Shirley would also team up with Band as co-composers on The Dungeonmaster (1984) and Ghoulies (1985). Walker's imprint makes these latter two scores stand out. The score for Ghoulies specifically sounds much like a classic Danny Elfman score, though it predates Walker's work with Danny, and even his very first film score for Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) by six months. Walker continued to score various television projects and work simultaneously as an orchestrator/conductor into the late 1980s, continuing a long-running collaboration with Brad Fiedel. Around the time of orchestrating and conducting Fiedel's score for The Accused (1988), Walker would conduct the score for Scrooged (1988), marking her first work with Danny Elfman. She would go on to orchestrate or conduct his scores for Batman (1989), Nightbreed (1990), Dick Tracy (1990), Darkman (1990), Edward Scissorhands (1990), and Article 99 (1992). Walker also composed additional cues for both Nightbreed and Dick Tracy, and unless it was Elfman regular Steve Bartek, she likely orchestrated and conducted the theme for Tales from the Crypt.
One of Walker's most important efforts was the uncredited job of conducting the score for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989). Chevy Chase, who would play the lead in John Carpenter's 1992 film Memoirs of an Invisible Man, recalled visiting a recording session for Christmas Vacation and being impressed by the conductor. She was suggested to work on Memoirs of an Invisible Man when Jack Nitzsche fell through – a landmark decision, not just because Carpenter often composed his own scores, but because it was one of the first times a female composer had a solo credit on a major studio picture. It would become Walker's first official solo film score. Walker has the distinction of being the first woman to have composed an entire symphonic score, which she also orchestrated and conducted alone. "The first two days of that score, there were a lot of people who had come to visit the scoring stage because they were here to witness this event," Walker said in an interview in a 1998 issue of Soundtrack Magazine. "I was almost in tears about that. I had to ask somebody why all those people were here, and when they told me it was just incredible." Walker later collaborated with Carpenter on Escape from L.A.
Walker served as composer for numerous productions, including films such as Willard, the first three Final Destination installments, and television series such as Falcon Crest, Space: Above and Beyond, China Beach, and The Flash. The Flash was one of many collaborations Walker did with composer Danny Elfman. While managing her working relationships with Elfman and Fiedel, Walker would mentor and collaborate with up-and-comer Hans Zimmer (who would provide synths for Mask of the Phantasm). She would orchestrate or conduct his scores for Black Rain (1989), Bird on a Wire (1990), Backdraft (1991), A League of Their Own (1992), and Toys (1992), among others. She would also collaborate with Carter Burwell at the end of her orchestrating/conducting-for-others days, including the score for Fear (1996).
She served as a Board Member (1986–1994) and Vice President (1988–1992) for The Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL), often speaking out on behalf of composers and their working conditions. Articles and interviews are written by and about Shirley Walker in the SCL's publication, THE SCORE, a publication in print since 1986 by and about professional film/television/video game composers, songwriters and lyricists—and where Walker would speak her mind.
Walker served as composer for Batman: The Animated Series (1992–1995), Superman: The Animated Series (1996–2000), The New Batman Adventures (1997–1999), and Batman Beyond (1999–2001); setting a standard for the musical tone of the DC Animated Universe. Walker worked with Danny Elfman on many DC Comics works. She served as conductor for the film Batman, wrote most of the scores for Batman: The Animated Series using a theme inspired by Elfman's, scored the pilot and all the episodes of The Flash (the main theme was written by Elfman) and scored episodes of Batman Beyond with Michael McCuistion, Lolita Ritmanis and Kristopher Carter. Though her involvement in the DC Animated Universe ended after Beyond, several of her themes would be used in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.