THE MANCINI GENERATION GOES ON:
 Talking With Henry

Article from Sheet Music Magazine, November 1985
by Ed Shanaphy

In 16th century Italy, Curzio Mancini composed church music in Rome. In the 17th century, Francesco Mancini composed organ music in Naples. In the 18th century, Giambatista Mancini composed in Bologna. In the 20th, Henry is in Hollywood, and aren't we the lucky ones!

Henry Mancini, winner of four Oscars, fourteen Academy Award nominations, twenty Grammy awards, and dozens more awards and degrees, doesn't know if any of those earlier Mancinis are truly ancestors. "If they are," he told SMM [Sheet Music Magazine], "and one of them was a great pianist, perhaps I would have inherited something more in the way of piano talent."

Henry Mancini is quick to minimize his keyboard ability. When asked if he ever had any aspirations of becoming a jazz pianist, or keyboard performer, he stated: "I found out very early that I wasn't going to be a piano player of any importance at all. I used to listen to Art Tatum records. I loved them. I knew them note for note. But I just knew I wasn't going to be an instrumentalist." That may be. However, the first musical award Henry was ever to receive was as an instrumentalist. It was the award of Principal Flutist of the Pennsylvania All-State Band of 1936.

A lot of notes have been played and written since Henry was selected as the best young flutist in his home state. He is only recently back from London where he just completed scoring the new film, Santa Claus ...The Movie starring Dudley Moore, which will be released around Thanksgiving in time for the Christmas season. From that he segued inmediately into A Fine Mess, a film which marks the twenty-third collaboration with producer-director Blake Edwards. Such Edwards/Mancini films include Henry's latest Oscar-winner, Victor Victoria (Best Original Song Score), plus the long line of Pink Panther adventures.

The productive relationship between Mancini and Edwards began twenty-eight years ago when Henry received the luckiest haircut of his life; he bumped into Blake Edwards as the barbershop. "How'd you like to do the music for a new TV show I'm putting together?" Blake asked. "Fine," Henry replied, "What's it called?" "Peter Gunn," Edwards answered.

Peter Gunn was to television music what stereo was to the recording industry. It was a whole new experience. The jazz idiom had come to TV. And it came with a bang. The album won a gold record, plus two Grammys from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Two years later, it was followed by the most popular Theme From Mr. Lucky (this issue). Mancini's music, typified by the Lucky theme was the time of dimly lit boites and jazz cafes, and cool blondes smoking smart cigarettes, building their fortunes at baccarat. Not only did Mr. Lucky clean up the gold record and Grammy awards, but organists nationwide were running out to get the sheet music to add to their repertoire. The theme was such a perfect marriage to the organ; was he thinking of the organ when he composed it?" "The theme was originally played by Buddy Cole on the Hammond," Henry relates. "I got the idea, actually, from listening to guys like Wild Bill Davis play; that lock-hand, block style writing. And I just applied it to the Lucky theme."
Is there ever any talk in the front office about reincarnating those older shows, Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky, for TV again? "From time to time they talk about it. But, then, they talk about a lot of things out here."

Henry Mancini was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1924. His father, Quinto, and his mother, Anna, soon moved to the steel town of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. It was there, at the age of eight, that Henry was first introduced to music and the flute by his dad, who played the instrument himself.

When he was twelve years old, Henry took up piano study and within a few years became interested in arranging." Henry met Max Adkins, who was conductor and arranger for the house orchestra at the Stanley Theatre in nearby Pittsbugh. "It was 1938, and there weren't many arranging teachers around, primarily because the craft had just come in with the big bands, and there were many changes taking place. Secondly, all the guys who knew how to do it were doing it and not teaching it. Max was the guy who set me on the right path." (Henry has helped to solve such a problem for present day musicians with his wonderful book on arranging entitled Sounds and Scores - A Practical Guide to Professional Orchestration.)

Henry graduated from Aliquippa High in 1942. His yearbook caption reads: "Henry Mancini, a true music lover, collects records, plays in the band and has even composed several beautiful selections. He wishes to continue his study of music and to have an orchestra of his own some day."

And continue he did, enrolling at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. His studies were interrupted by World War II when he served overseas in the Air Force and later in the Infantry. Following his release from the Armed Forces in 1945, Henry joined the Glenn Miller-Tex Beneke Orchestra as pianist-arranger. It was there he met his wife, the former Ginny O'Connor, who was singing with the band and was one of the original members of Mel Torme's "Mel Tones" singing group. He continued his studies privately with composers Ernst Krenek, Mario Castellnuovo-Tedesco and Dr. Alfred Sendry.

In 1952 he joined the music department of Universal-International Studios where the big band veteran contributed to over a hundred films, most notably, and appropiately, The Glenn Miller Story, as well as The Benny Goodman Story. It was about six years later that Henry and Blake Edwards met at the barbershop and Peter Gunn catapulted Henry Mancini to national fame.

What's most fun about being Henry Mancini, the composer? Is it marching up for the Oscar? Or inventing the original melodies to a new theme - or, perhaps, creating the melody for a Moon River? There's an upstairs room in the Mancini home where Henry composes, complete with piano ("I use it for reference when I compose") and a video cassette player. "Most of us use video cassettes now. No more the old moviola. In fact, I never used anything for the first twenty years I wrote for the movies. I would run down to the studio, watch the movie, remember it, make up my timing sheets and go from there. But now they send me a video cassette and I can run it back and forth. And the most fun for me is running the orchestra through the film for the first time ... when you are on the sound stage and the movie itself is projected in the background. It's that first musical run-through when it all fits together, and you find out what you've really got, and if it's right. It is very exciting."

Music has been going through so many changes in recent years, one wonders how someone who crosses continents and oceans to score films, maintains a busy conducting tour schedule, and runs Henry Mancini Enterprises, can ever find time to keep up with all the technology, the new-fangled gadgets, synthesizers, drum machines and all the special effects. "I've been using them [synthesizers] for nearly fifteen years, since the art first came out. My players really keep up. I know what I want and we work it together. I own a DX7 (Yamaha keyboard synthesizer) myself, but these fellows own everything. So when I have a thing I need to use them on, I consult them."

Closer to home, Henry can also turn to his son Chris, an accomplished musician and composer, who is an expert on the latest synthesizers. He plays guitar, piano and flute as well, and has recently signed a new recording contract with Atlantic Records. The twins, Monica and Felice, complete the newest Mancini generation of talent. Together with their mother, they are frequent members of the chorus, backing Henry Mancini on many of his film score soundtracks and records. Felice has also distinguished herself as a songwriter; Sometimes is the title of the first Mancini-Mancini composition featuring lyrics by Felice Mancini, music by Henry Mancini.

On the subject of today's music, is the composer of Moon River, Days of Wine and Roses, and so many other great melodies dismayed by the predominance of rock music today, and the melodic void it often represents? Not really. "People don't realize what's happened. Rhythm sections have changed, true. But there are a lot of good songs out there. Lionel Ritchie writes really good ones. Barry Manilow writes them ... Kenny Rogers sings them. There's a whole other world out there."

Part of that whole other world, of course, is the good solid composing that goes on for television. And it's thanks to great composers like Henry Mancini that there are good themes to latch on to and enjoy - not only for listening, but for playing too. In this issue you will find three wonderful Henry Mancini contributions: the evergreen Theme from Mr. Lucky (for old time's sake), the rhytmic and exciting Theme from Remington Steele, and the Theme from Newhart. "I did that arrangement myself," says Henry of Newhart. "It has kind of a classical, Mozart-like, approach."

Mozart? Perhaps ... Or could it be the distant echoes of another Mancini generation, of passages composed for the organ by that 17th century Neapolitan Francesco Mancini?

Hmm ...