= THE MANCINI TOUCH =

  THE MANCINI TOUCH, like swing, is something hard to define but easy to recognize. Put the two together and you get a swinging touch like nothing you've ever heard.

  Henry Mancini gave a new sound to television when he came up with the modern jazz background music to Peter Gunn. Now he gives an equally new sound to dance music, a rare and exciting combination of modern jazz ideas and swinging dance rhythms.

  Mancini won two Grammys (the Oscars of the recording industry) for his RCA Victor Peter Gunn album - best album of the year and best arrangements of the year. And he had the additional pleasure of seeing his double winner become one of the best selling albums in history.

  As a young musician, he played everything from jazz to Pennsylvania polkas. Later he brought his composing and arranging talents to Universal-International studios in Hollywood. In a very short time, he has won wide-acclaim both as a composer and arranger, with many great motion pictures to his credit as well as one of the country's leading television shows.

  However, in this album, Henry Mancini exposes still another side of his many talents. Remembering the lush days of the '30s when the Goodmans, Millers, Dorseys, et al., combined good jazz and good dance music into one, Mancini decided to turn his thoughts and talents somewhat in this direction - the results being presented in this album.

  Using the fines Hollywood musicians, Mancini has put together a thirty-five piece orchestra - twenty strings, four, French horns, four trombones, five rhythm (including vibes), and two solo woodwinds. It is an unusual instrumentation, but one which pays off sensationally in the soft wing approach he is using. There is a lushness to the strings, a brilliance to the brass, and organized background fullness against which the jazz soloists ad lib with bold inspiration.

  Similarly surprising and original in his choice of material, Mancini has come up with some well-known but not overworked favorites from the past and has added to them a group of originals.

  Trav'ling' Light was written by Trummy Young and Jimmy Mundy for the late Billie Holliday; she used to sing it with Paul Whiteman. Snowfall is Claude Thornhill's plaintive theme. That's All is a lovely ballad that for the past few years has been sneaking its way up to becoming a standard. My One and Only Love was originally known as Music from Beyond the Moon, and though it never has had a really big record, it has always had a devoted following. Sir Charles Thompson and "Illinois" Jacquet wrote Robbin's Nest as a theme for Eastern disc jockey Fred Robbins, and it has since become something of a jazz classic. And speaking of jazz classics, one of the great ones is Bijou, a Ralph Burns composition for the Woody Herman Herd. Of a more recent vintage is Like Young, an Andre Previn original, and Free and Easy, which Mancini wrote for the Universal-International picture "Rock Pretty Baby." The other four are brand new Mancini material, here being given their musical debut. The titles: A Cool Shade of Blue, Politely, Let's Walk and Mostly for Lovers.

  There have been big bands before, swinging bands. They've had fine arrangements and outstanding soloists. But no other band has ever had one thing that this band has. You can hear it . . . and it's worth listening to. You can feel it . . . and it's worth dancing to. It's THE MANCINI TOUCH.

- HAL LEVY