Germaine Franco’s star turn as ASCAP’s Shirley Walker Award honoree had people wanting to learn more about Shirley Walker. As it turns out, she was a trailblazing female film and television composer at a time when there were even fewer than there are now.

Mentor to Hans Zimmer and Mark Watters, she had a bit of a break-out when Carmine Coppola gave her the opportunity to play synthesizer on the score to Apocalypse Now and to be co-composer for The Black Stallion, both released in 1979.

The Napa-born Walker went on to conduct, orchestrate and compose for numerous low-budget films during the heyday of the home video boom, and animated TV series, becoming closely aligned with Warner Bros. From 1995-96 she composed for 23 episodes of the live action TV series Space: Above and Beyond.

She was an in-demand conductor and orchestrator. In 1989 she conducted the scores to Danny Elfman’s Batman and Ridley Scott’s Black Rain. Through the ’90s she also served in that capacity to Carter Burwell and Zimmer.

She was one of the first women to receive sole composer credit on a major studio feature, on John Carpenter’s 1992 Warner Bros. release Memoirs of an Invisible Man, starring Daryl Hannah and Chevy Chase, and Escape From L.A., with Kurt Russell.

She also scored New Line’s Final Destination trilogy, but in addition the feature realm was mainly relegated to genre pictures (MGM’s Black Christmas, New Line’s 2003 Willard remake).  “People didn’t want to hire her because she was a woman and they didn’t believe she could write action music,” said Zimmer, admitting, “I’m known for writing fairly tough action music but Shirley’s stuff could rip your head off.”

Zimmer called her “the most educated composer I’d ever met” and said she “saved me from my ignorance,” teaching him “how the orchestra worked.” Although Walker died in 2006 at age 61, there is no shortage of those she inspired, now eager to sing her praises. 

Shirley Walker and Hans Zimmer. (Photo courtesy ASCAP)