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Henry Mancini (1924-1994) - classic themes and songs:
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Mancini scored the music for numerous films from the 50s until the early 90s. During this time he frequently teamed up with director Blake Edwards. Perhaps because of this the films he worked on tended to be light-hearted stories, even the thrillers being more like romantic comedies, and his light Jazz style was very suited to this type of film. Although there are rarely any dark moments in Mancini's music, there is a wistful sadness to some of his songs. For these songs Mancini would frequently team up with lyricist Johnny Mercer, for example on "Breakfast at Tiffany's", "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Charade".
Mancini's musical background was in jazz bands, and before his work in films he spent a few years writing for TV series such as "Peter Gunn" and "Mr. Lucky". His background in swing bands made him ideally qualified for two of his earliest film scores "The Glenn Miller Story" and "The Benny Goodman Story". In these and other films, the Mancini style is frequently more akin to Big Band than the symphony orchestra sound. His orchestration will typically include a drumkit perhaps with brushes and a Latin percussion set, the lead tunes are very often played by Trumpet (think Herb Alpert) or Saxophone with occasional flute or voices, perhaps accompanied by bass, guitar, tuned percussion, and a tinkling Lounge Lizard easy-listening piano. The tunes may employ Latin rhythms or Blues-influenced chords and melodies, augmented with Jazz-style improvisation riffs on various solo instruments.
The one thing which makes Mancini's music memorable is simply the good tunes. In many ways a Mancini soundtrack is more a collection of tunes or songs rather the "background" music of other composers. This was intentional since Mancini (unlike most film composers) usually negotiated to retain the rights to his music in order to re-release it on albums. His facility as a tunesmith has produced theme songs (full of affection), and instrumental themes (full of humour) which people have been humming and whistling for decades. Among his many well-known tunes that have stood the test of time are items like "Peter Gunn" and "The Pink Panther", the song "Moon River" as used in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "The Baby Elephant Walk" from "Hatari!".
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Films by Henry Mancini:
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- The Glenn Miller Story - ideally suited to the composer since he joined the Glenn Miller Band for a while
- The Benny Goodman Story
- Breakfast at Tiffany's - with the unforgettable "Moon River"
- Days of Wine and Roses - with its well known title song
- Summer Love
- Arabesque - has some suspenseful moments and a little Middle-Eastern promise
- Touch of Evil - for Orson Welles, with a dark theme and some latin and jazz source music
- The Pink Panther 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7? - just how many sequels were there?
- A Shot in the Dark - number 2 from the Pink Panther series and providing another tune for the spin-off cartoons of The Pink Panther and Inspector Clouseau
- Gunn - based on the successful "Peter Gunn" television series and retaining the theme that has spawned so many cover versions
- Charade
- Gaily, Gaily - includes a pleasant Tango with solo Gypsy violin and guitar
- That's Entertainment
- The Molly Maguires
- Experiment in Terror - some of this is darker than most of Mancini's output, yet still displays his wit
- The Thief who came to Dinner
- The Prisoner of Zenda
- Condorman
- Grease 2 - song material for this
- An Officer and a Gentleman - song
- Hatari! - this has some drum and percussion-driven tracks for the African setting, and fun pieces like the funky "Baby Elephant Walk" based on simple blues chords
- Victor/Victoria - with lyricist Leslie Bricusse and featuring director Blake Edward's wife, Julie Andrews
- The Man who Loved Women
- The Right Stuff - a Mancini song for Bill Conti's score
- Fletch
- Lifeforce
- 10 - co-writing the song "It's Easy to Say"
- Santa Claus: The Movie
- The Great Mouse Detective
- That's Life!
- Blind Date
- Tom and Jerry: The Movie - with Bricusse again
- Glass Menagerie
- The Presidio - song
- Born on the fourth of July - song
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TV themes by Henry Mancini:
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- Peter Gunn - this was also used in "The Blues Brothers" movie and elsewhere, as well as the main theme you might come across tracks called "Fallout!", "Dreamsville" and "Timothy"
- Mr. Lucky - among the many recorded tracks from this series there's one called "March of the Cue Balls"
- The Pink Panther - the long-running animated series spawned from the first film's title sequence, generally shown alongside the cartoon version of Inspector Clouseau
- Remington Steele
- The Thorn Birds - another easily likeable theme tune showing a certain Celtic heritage, and Meggie's tune called "Anywhere the Heart Goes"
- Hotel
- Mystery Movie Theme
The Peter Gunn theme is reputed to be the first ever use of Jazz for television theme music.
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Recommendations:
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There are many albums available of Mancini songs - original soundtracks, song collections and cover versions. Among his best film-related material are the soundtrack albums to "The Pink Panther" (available at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com) and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (available at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com). Many of Mancini's most famous songs and themes are also available as sheet music arrangements for piano and other instruments, including "The Pink Panther", "Peter Gunn", "Moon River", "The Baby Elephant Walk" and "The Thorn Birds". These you can find as individual pieces or in collections. If you are looking for song collections (usually including a few instrumental tracks too) then the first two links below suggest two which are worth looking at, both from Sheet Music Plus:
You might also want to check out our reviews of two recent albums, released in 2004 to mark the 10th anniversary of Mancini's death and celebrate his wonderful legacy of music:
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