BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER VOLUME XXIX BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1993 HENRY MANCINI INTERVIEW THE BACKGROUND The promotion people put us in touch with Henry Mancini as part of the advertising campaign for a concert tour he was making at the time. He talked on a “live” local radio program with Don Kennedy. Mancini and Kennedy grew up within twelve miles of each other in the steel-making area of Western Pennsylvania, just thirty miles from Pittsburgh, although separated in time by half a generation. Mancini was a contemporary of Kennedy’s older musician brothers, so there were some common memories tied with the stories of his early years playing in steel-town beer joints. THE SCENE Unlike some celebrities of Henry Mancini’s stature, the Mancini at work. interview wasn’t difficult to arrange. He is so approach­ able and unaffected by his success, however, that he has BBJ: What kind of musical experience did you have a tendency to be off-hand with his answers, resulting in there? an interview with shorter answers and in some instances less depth than most musical celebrities. Mancini’s HM: Every kind! (Laughs) I started playing flute when answer to a couple of questions was something such as I was a kid, when my Dad gave one to me. He was a flute “Oh, sure.” Some of those one and two word answers player, too. That was at the age of eight, and then I were edited out in places where Kennedy’s persistence started playing piano about eleven and then took up eventually resulted in a longer, more meaningful answer, arranging on my own at about fourteen. but in some places there are still one and two word responses. Talking apparently isn’t important to Henry BBJ: You taught yourself to arrange? Mancini; music is. HM: At the beginning, yes. No one was teaching that THE INTERVIEW stuff then, and I also played flute in the high school band and played piano in the dance bands around the Beaver BBJ: Even though you’re internationally known, it all Valley there. started locally, didn’t it, in a place called Aliquippa, Pennsylvania? BBJ: What brought you to national prominence? HM: I was bom actually in Cleveland. W henlwasfour HM: Well, I did almost, you would call it, an my Dad got a job in the Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill in apprenticeship at Universal Studios from 1952 to 1958, Aliquippa, and I spent all my school years there, up and when I got out of there, Blake Edwards asked me through high school. to do Peter Gunn, and that’s when I really started to go. VOLUME XXIX BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1993 BBJ: During your time at Universal, you were respon­ HM: It looks like next spring. sible for much of the music for the GLENN MILLER STORY, about 1954. BBJ: And who will star? HM: I did that score, yes. Of course I didn’t write HM: Julie. MOONLIGHT SERENADE or any of those things, but I put them all together. B B J: When you’re on the road making concert appear­ ances, how many musicians do you take with you? BBJ: When you talk about PETER GUNN, that was your association with Blake Edwards, when you talk HM: I have five people with me, because we have such about the PINK PANTHER, that was with Blake limited rehearsal time with the orchestras, and to go in Edwards. All those became popular records, as well as and teach a drummer the whole book in two and a half music for the shows. hours is not very practical. HM: Yeah, that’s what happened. PETER GUNN BBJ: Are those five musicians mostly rhythm section made me a record force....a record act, actually. That players? was very unusual at that time, 1958, to have a jazz record become number one. HM: No, they’re trumpet, saxophone, bass, drums and guitar. BBJ: The vocalists were in power at that time. BBJ: And you are piano, of course. HM: Yeah, and rock was starting to happen, too. HM: Yeah, I play once in a while! (Laughs) BBJ: What’s the hope for Big Bands and “real music” coming back? BBJ: You have a recent magnificent CD having to do with giant medleys of tunes assigned to various compos­ HM: I think the future of Big Bands as we’ve known ers, and in one instance to the themes of the Big Bands. them is this, kinda’ like, you would treat a great work in a museum or something. I think it’s that way so far as HM: I called it Big Band Montage, and I had a lot of the form that we know it, because I think the older people fun doing it, because that’s what I grew up on and when remember the Big Bands along with the music they I had a chance I put all the themes of my favorite bands played... .the songs that stuck with us going up through together... .all into one medley. I’ve done that medley in World War II, and up through the Korean War and to concerts. Everybody’s in there: Goodman, Shaw, Kenton, Vietnam, when rock seemed to take over. It’s a state of the Dorseys....all of ‘em. mind, and I don’t think there’s a big enough market for it now for it to cause rock any problems. BBJ: You also have a tribute to Victor Young on that album. BBJ: You scored the motion picture VICTOR, VICTORIA with the hit song, LE JAZZ HOT. HM: Yes, Victor Young was probably one of my biggest influences because of his melodic approach to HM: We needed a number for Julie Andrews to sing as writing. the number in which she reveals herself as a woman playing a man playing a woman, and I came up with the BBJ: Your wife Ginnie is active in a vocal society, isn’t title LE JAZZ HOT and Leslie Bricusse wrote the she? words. We’re working right now on the Broadway Musical version of LE JAZZ HOT. HM: Well, she was a studio singer for a long time. She was with Mel Torme and the Mel-Tones, but for the last BBJ: When’s it going to open? ten or fifteen years or so she hasn’t been singing but she 2 VOLUME XXIX BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1993 has been president of a group called the SOCIETY OF SINGERS. BBJ: What does the SOCIETY OF SINGERS do? HM: They take care, financially, of singers that have come upon bad times. Everybody thinks that just because Helen Forrest made all of those records, for example... and all of this business... .they’re pretty well off,andthat’s justnottrue. Those singers in those days would get maybe twenty-five dollars for the record, and have no piece of the action at all, so a lot of the singers who were active in the Big Band days and later have come upon bad times, and the SOCIETY OFSINGERS takes care of them. BBJ: They have a fund-raising get-together every year, and also put out records. Mancini beckoning. HM: They’re good records, aren’t they? compose at the piano, although a lot of times I’ll think BBJ: Yes, we have the feeling each singer has selected of something away from that piano that I’ll write down. his or her own favorite, combined with some highly commercial material. What’s in the immediate future BBJ: Thanks very much for taking the time to talk with for you? Are you going to keep scoring for the movies? us. HM : You ’ re very welcome. HM: I am. I have two pictures coming out. I will do music for TOM & JERRY, the movie. (That movie was POSTSCRIPT: When you consider Henry Mancini’s released some weeks ago.) Oh, and the SON OF THE massive contributions to motion picture sound tracks, PINK PANTHER is coming out, and I have some including THE GLENN MILLER STORY, HATARI, albums out for RCA. THE PINK PANTHER series, VICTOR-VICTORIA and others, then add those to the TV music for PETER BBJ: Do you like arranging? It’s a lonely job, isn’t it? GUNN and MR. LUCKY, plus more, you begin to realize what an influence h e ’s had on music in the post HM: When you consider the world out there today, Big Band days. It’s not easy to go through a week sometimes it’s better to be by yourself! (Laughs.) without hearing some part o f Mancini's work, either originally or stylistically. He has been a part o f our BBJ: Is it more fun for you to be in the studio after you lives for four decades. write the arrangements? TOP TEN BIG BANDS HM: Well, yeah, it’s a two part deal. You’re in there figuring it all out, and then you go and put it in front of In the September-October, 1993 (previous) issue of the a band and they play it, and that’s the biggest feeling, BBJ NEWSLETTER we asked readers to name their that’s a great feeling. single favorite all-time Big Band. The results are listed on the next page, along with METRONOME BBJ: When you’re arranging, do you hear what’s going MAGAZINE’S swing band top ten poll results from on in your head? 1939 in an attempt to give a comparison of listeners' taste during one of the prime Big Band Era years as HM: Oh, yes.