A few thoughts on Henry Mancini

Always a gifted musician, Henry Mancini (1924 - 1994) wrote music with great speed, yet his music always sounded natural without any effort-it just poured out of his very soul. To this day, much of what he wrote has a depth combined with an eternally youthful feeling of discovery and wonderment.

From his first job with NBC Radio as a composer/arranger/musical director stemming from his being an arranger for Tex Beneke in 1947, Mancini was a natural phenomenon. However, it took hard work and learning fast starting with his working for many years in the background at Universal Studios. There, he was the jack of all trades, going into their library full of scores to fit together music for a full length budget feature. Mancini's big break came in 1954 when he tapped by the music director at Universal, Joseph Gershenson, to write the score for "The Glenn Miller Story" starring James Stewart and June Allyson. Mancini's big break through hit was a lovely work initially known as the love theme, a work so lovely that it was played at a Glenn Miller Reunion Band concert played by veterans of Glenn Miller's great civilian band and led by Billy May. Trombone great Murray MacEachern played the trombone as he had in the movie soundtrack. For years, no lyrics were added until the 1960's when the love theme became known as "Too Late," a song of strong romantic character and great beauty.

In 1956 came "The Benny Goodman Story" with Henry Mancini contributing a score. He then went on to immortality by writing the score to "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" before another plum assignment landed in his lap. Orson Welles' film "Touch of Evil" set the stage for Henry Mancini's future career forever. Just about every genre of music was touched upon by Mancini in this horrible wallow into madness and hatred. After 1958, Henry Mancini left Universal Studios and became an independent composer landing a job in television.

Blake Edwards had been signed as the producer/writer for a detective series named "Peter Gunn." The score Edwards wanted was inspired by the West Coast jazz scene. Mancini quickly wrote the music for "Peter Gunn," Edwards' series starring Craig Stevens, Lola Albright and Herschel Bernardi. The show became a top rated program and resulted in another tv series with music composed by Mancini. This time it was "Mr. Lucky," starring John Vivyan as Lucky, the owner of a floating gambling casino just outside of international waters. This, too, became a top rated tv series and, along with "Peter Gunn," resulted in at least four albums that topped the charts for years and firmly cemented Henry Mancini as America's music man.

Movies also followed, starting off with several Blake Edwards movies such as "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "Days of Wine and Roses," "Experiment in Terror," "The Pink Panther." Mancini also worked extremely well with Stanley Donen, resulting in masterpieces such as "Charade," "Arabesque," and "Two for the Road." Howard Hawks wanted Henry Mancini to write music for "HatarI!" a film which nowadays would be considered politically incorrect-the story about the men who captured animals for zoos and the problems with the women in their lives.

At the same time, henry Mancini became a hot star in the recording studios, recording at least 90 albums with the majority coming from the 1960's.

Although he hit a dry spell in the 1970's, Henry Mancini still continued to appear as a guest conductor, something he had started in 1963 with The Cleveland Orchestra. In the late 1980's he began recording again for RCA, turning in modern sounding arrangements of the old standards as well as recording the scores for his more mature films which showed a great flare which had never died out completely.

His life ended in 1994 when he died from pancreatic cancer. He had been feverishly working on the stage version of "Victor/Victoria" which would star Julie Andrews in some of her final performances.

Master musician, composer, arranger, pianist and a very decent and very shy individual, that was Henry Mancini. His ability to create thoroughly memorable scores continue to publicize his genius to a new generation of listeners world wide. And there certainly can be no better legacy than that.