by  Allan Waterhouse

I am probably your OLDEST Mancini fan...

The following is from a memoir that I sent to Mr. Mancini. He graciously responded with a letter that hangs on the wall of the den of my home. It was 1991 when I wrote to him...

Way back on September 22, 1958, I was sitting in the living room of my parents' row house in Philadelphia watching our black-and-white Philco TV in anticipation of a new show premiering on NBC. I had read earlier in TV Guide that this was a new detective series written, directed, and produced by someone named Blake Edwards, which I thought had to be a typo since I had never heard of Blake used as a first name before. Perhaps they meant Edward Blake? Anyway, this TV Guide article had stated that Blake Edwards had tried to use the title This Gun for Hire but couldn't since some Hollywood studio owned the rights to it, so one night he sat up in bed and decided, "What the hell! We'll call it PETER GUNN."

I was sixteen. It sounded like my kind of show. I settled down to watch. I didn't know that I was making a memory, or beginning a lifetime interest in one man's music. 

Opening scene...

It is night. A limousine travels the curves of a dark country road accompanied by the sound of a walking bass and brushed cymbals and then an ominous flute starts playing. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a police car pulls over the limo. As two cops emerge from their vehicle and approach the limo, the limo driver rolls down his window. The cops look in, pull out their guns, and shoot the limo driver and the passenger in the back seat. The driver slumps against the steering wheel, making the limo horn blare. The two cops holster their guns, walk back to their police car, and drive away. All the while, the sound of the blaring limo horn continues for what seems like a full minute as the camera stays on the limo and then slowly zooms in on the driver's body slumped against the steering wheel. Then...

Cut to: a modern art background with the letters PETER GUNN and a "spider's web"-like design that is quickly pulsing toward and away from the camera accompanied by the sound of wailing brass instruments playing over a driving beat.

This was 1958. It was startling to see cops, symbols of law and order, behave like this. Visually and stylistically, this new show was certainly different from anything else on TV. Creative directing. Odd camera angles: scenes of a car's headlights at night driving right up to the camera; characters filmed in the reflection of a mirror. Things like that. And the music! Combining jazz riffs with a detective show was a new and innovative thing to do. The look and the sound of PETER GUNN created a lasting impression on me. It was radically different from anything else on TV at that time. And I had discovered it.

Peter Gunn (played by Craig Stevens) was a private eye - obviously modeled after Cary Grant's screen persona - who spent his nights at Mother's, a nightclub near the wharf, listening to his girlfriend Edie (played by Lola Albright) sing sultry songs backed by a small combo. Clients came to Mother's to hire Pete to investigate some personal problem. Pete also had a very droll relationship with a police lieutenant named Jacoby (who was played to perfection by Hershel Bernardi.) Pete went on to solve the case by discovering that the cops were phonies sent by one mob boss to assassinate another mob boss. But not without some great jazz riffs in the process.

Within a few days, I stopped by our local record store, Gettlin's, on Fifth Street in Philadelphia and asked for the soundtrack music to PETER GUNN. Soundtrack albums weren't as popular an item then, but I had already begun a record collection with the soundtracks from April Love, The Pride and the Passion, and Around the World in Eighty Days. The Peter Gunn album wasn't there, so I ordered it. A week or so later, I received a phone call that the album had come in. It was the best two dollars and fifty-some cents I've ever spent.

I played it over and over. Especially, side one, cut four, Dreamsville, described by Blake Edwards on the back of the album as a "love refrain for hipsters." I sat at our piano in the living room and picked out the melody by playing along with the record. Unfortunately, the speed on our Zenith turntable was a little fast, so I learned it in D flat instead of the key of C.

I didn't realize until years later that I had one of the 8000 original album covers that RCA had printed with the blue-black "blood-shot-eye" modern art design by Fritz Miller. RCA had not anticipated the popularity of the album and had to use a "generic" cover for the second pressing of this million seller.

Who was this Henry Mancini? This man with the impish grin shown on the back of the album? This man with the name that I wasn't quite sure how to pronounce? This composer of cool jazz that perfectly matched the action of the TV show?

When I played the record for my mother, who had studied piano at the Columbia College of Music in Philadelphia, she said something about the music being mostly in seventh chords, whatever that meant, and that many of the songs ended with a flatted fifth, whatever that was. I didn't understand the mechanics of what I was hearing. I only knew that I liked it. 

Soon, RCA released More Music from PETER GUNN. I especially liked Walkin' Bass, Joanna, A Quiet Gass, and Blues for Mother's. There was also a jazzy march called Timothy which had been used on the show in a scene involving a seal - the aquatic mammal. The album cover came from the logo that they used just before they went to a commercial half-way through the show.

It may be that, at sixteen, I really was at an impressionable age. At sixteen, sounds seemed louder and more distinct, colors were more intense, the sky brighter, and I was more passionate and more easily impressed. The visual images of the PETER GUNN show along with its distinctive music had impacted me and left an indelible impression upon me. It became the standard against which I measured other shows, other soundtracks. Today, I have too many filters working, and I wonder if, watching the first PETER GUNN episode today, would I be as impressed with it? All I know for sure is that it made me a life-long fan of Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini.

The letter goes on... I will be glad to post more if I get any response.