= THE JAZZ SOUND OF PETER GUNN =

THE great composer Henry Mancini (whose real name was Enrico Nicola Mancini), was born on April 16, 1924, in Cleveland, Ohio, but was actually raised in the steel town of West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, to where the Mancini family had moved during his early childhood. His father, a steel-worker, was an amateur flautist.

At the age of eight, Henry began to study the flute and piccolo, and before long was sufficiently competent at both instruments to join, at the age of eleven, the West Aliquippa Sons of Italy Band. And by the time he'd reached thirteen, his father having insisted that his son continue his music studies, the boy began taking piano lessons. Broadening his horizons, he developed into a high school whiz and became first flautist in the Pennsylvania All-State Band Festivals, a position he held for four years.

Henry first became interested in jazz when he heard recordings by some of the big bands of the 1940s. Two of his first idols were Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller, and one of his great pleasures was to write out arrangements after listening to records.

While still attending high school he continued his music studies at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and he also took lessons in composition and theory from Max Atkins, a conductor and arranger who led the pit band at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh. During that time, Atkins, who happened to he a friend of Benny Goodman, gave the famous bandleader one of Henry's arrangements. Benny liked it, and commissioned Henry to write some arrangements for his band, but things didn't work out too well with Goodman. As a result Mancini felt he needed to learn more about music before starting a professional career, so at the age of seventeen he went to study at Julliard School. But just one year later, in 1943, and before he could get the kind of musical training he sought, he was drafted into the Air Force and sent overseas.

On his return in 1945 he joined the Tex Beneke-Glenn Miller Orchestra as pianist and arranger, remaining with the band for three years, after which he went West to Hollywood where he substituted writing for playing. He continued studying composition with Ernst Krenek, Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco and Alfred Sendry. However, he could not find the kind of work he was looking for, and he took on whatever assignments that came along as arranger for singers or jazz groups, and five difficult years passed before he signed with Universal-International in 1952 to write some music for an Abbot & Costello picture entitled "Lost in Alaska". The contract required his services for two weeks only, but he stayed for six years as a staff composer, where he soon acquired a great reputation for his contributions to several film scores, such as "The Glenn Miller Story" in 1954, which brought him his first Academy Award Nomination, and which was for Mancini a labor of love. In 1955, he wrote the main song for the crime movie "Six bridges to cross". His second important assignment was in the motion picture "The Benny Goodman Story" in 1956, and also assisted in the scores of "Congo Crossing". "Rock Pretty Baby" and "Man Afraid" (1957). The next year, was especially prolific for him, with "The Big Beat", "Damn Citizen", "Flood Tide", "Summer Love", "Voice in Mirror" and a the film of whose music Mancini was particularly proud, the celebrated Orson Welles' movie "Touch of Evil", which was the most trascendent work up to date for him.

That same year film scenarist and director Blake Edwards was hired to prepare a series for television, and one day on the Universal-lnternational movie lot, Edwards had lunch with his good friend Henry Mancini to discuss a new project. It was a lunch from which sprang some rather startling ideas for the "Peter Gunn" series and the kind of music that would be used as background. Edwards did what is known as a pilot film for NBC-TV, for which Mancini wrote background music strongly influenced by the jazz idiom, utilizing a small ensemble since funds were limited. This was the birth of "Peter Gunn". Edwards stated that: "Gunn (Craig Stevens) is a present-day soldier of fortune who'd found himself a gimmick that paid him a very comfortable living. The gimmick was trouble. People who have major trouble will pay handsomely to get rid of it, and Peter Gunn is a man who will not only accept the pay, but do something about it. He knows every element of the city, from cops to crooks. He has also, of
course, hic soft side, and will occasionally take on a charity job for free." The setting was a big city and Peter Gunn's hangout was a neighborhood night club with the unlikely name of Mother's. Mother's was presided over by Mother her self (Hope Emerson), and provides employment for Edie Hart (Lola Albright), a torch singer who was burning for Peter Gunn. "But", said Edwards emphatically, "we'll never make the mistake of letting her catch him. Never.

Henry Mancini always felt that jazz would be very effective in film scoring, and with "Peter Gunn" he was given total freedom to go all out. The series first went out on September 22, 1958, and not only was the show itself an immediate success but, somewhat surprisingly, the background music was a hit too. Mancini wound up getting a third of all the fan mail, and his gutsy jazz revolutionized TV scoring. It also gave a huge impetus to "live" soundtracks, and it took jazz out of the special effects department and into the solidly commercial field. A hot TV series with a cool hero suddenly found itself famous for its equally hot and cool jazz soundtrack. Blake Edwards was one of the first to concede that much of the enormous appeal of "Peter Gunn" was due to the effectiveness of Mancini's music.

From TV it was but a short quick hop to the recording field, and Mancini's "Peter Gunn" music racked up incredible sales. Never before had any TV music made such an impact on the viewing public, and warranted such coverage and continued exploration. which brings us to the arrangements on this CD. They were done by Maxwell Davis, Pete Candoli and Bob Florence, who took the original Mancini themes and made jazz variations on them. The sound is similar, but the shape is different, and what we find here are jazzier versions of jazz themes, that feature in the main the very same West Coast jazz soloists originally chosen by Mancini himself for the Peter Gunn backgrounds. Today, more than thirty years later, we can once more enjoy the Jazz Sound from Peter Gunn, the music that put Henry Mancini on the road to stardom. 

On the final day of preparing this CD. the sad news of Mancini's death at 70 years of age was announced. The day was June 14th, 1994. I had first met him in 1986 and he was always very encouraging about releasing hic music, and this CD is by way of homage to this exceptional composer and fine gentleman of music.

- Jordi Pujol

Compiled and produced for CD release by Jordi Pujol