Earlier entries of this series can be found here: http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/forums/vi ... ive#p45337
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70. Henry Mancini – Peter Gunn
The facts:
Year: 1959.
Genre: Jazz-rock.
Country: United States.
Album: Music from Peter Gunn.
Acclaimed Music ranking: #4546.
Song ranking on Acclaimed Music in the artist’s discography: 2nd.
Ranks higher than Your Love Is King by Sade, but lower than Truckin’ by Grateful Dead.
Place in the Acclaimed Music Song Poll 2015: Not ranked.
The people:
Composed by Henry Mancini.
Produced by Simon Rady.
Guitar by Bob Bain.
Piano by John Williams.
Alto sax by Ted Nash.
Trumpets by Pete Candoli, Conrad Gozzo, Frank Beach & Uan Rasey.
French horns by Vince DeRosa, Richard Perissi, John Cave & John Graas.
Note: Henry Mancini had a revolving group of trumpeters and horn players working on the score of the Peter Gunn show and it is unclear who appeared on what track. Therefore, there is some discussion on the session musicians appearing on the main theme, but the men listed above are mostly thought to have been present during the recording of this particular track.
The opinion:
Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn (also known as Theme from Peter Gunn or Peter Gunn Theme) reached many people in 1959 for the first time in a very short version of less than 20 seconds. It appeared during the opening of the tv-show of the same name (you can see the intro below). Still, most people now know it as a longer piece (though at a little over 2 minutes it can’t be said to be long). Henry Mancini initially only recorded very short pieces for the series, hardly more than what would be shown. Where does the longer, more famous version come from?
From the studio NBC. They heard something in the tiny show intro and they must have remembered how the theme of their show Dragnet had been made into a surprise hit by Ray Anthony. Although the original Dragnet theme wasn’t jazzy, the interpretation by Anthony was. And here was Mancini recording a jazz-like piece for Peter Gunn, with a similar punch. NBC tried to convince Mancini to make an album out of his music for the show, but Mancini initially wasn’t interested. Therefore, they turned to Anthony, who made a swinging, loose song out of what little Mancini had written for the Peter Gunn Theme at the time.
This seems to have convinced Mancini that there might be some gain in expanding on his compositions for the detective show. He agreed to make the album Music from Peter Gunn, but he insisted in rerecording the songs. Up till that time it was standard practice to release albums of film and television scores with the tunes exactly as they are in their visual presentation. Because of this, a score album at the time would contain many tracks of only about half a minute. Mancini wanted to have something more listener-friendly and wanted to recompose everything into full-fledged songs.
This turned out to be a good idea. People loved it and there seemed to be a high demand for more of the punchy theme song from the series. The album became a best-seller, topping the American charts for 10 weeks and remaining in the charts for two years. Indeed, the album was much more famous and popular than the series, which was watched by many people, but wasn’t by any means the most successful tv-series of its age. It went on to win the first-ever Grammy for Best Album.
Part of the appeal was that Mancini hit the zeitgeist in an unexpected way. It wasn’t all that usual in 1959 to write a completely new score for a show and writing it the jazz style was uncalled for. It was actually showrunner Blake Edwards who made the genre choice; Mancini originally thought he had signed on to a western series. Edwards wanted to have his detective show exude a kind of cool and in 1959 jazz was cool. The idea of using jazz as a music score was relatively new. Film noirs had used the music for some time, but it didn’t become a commercial force for film until 1958, when Miles Davis recorded some pieces for the French film Ascenseur Pour l’Echafaud. In 1959 Duke Ellington too wrote a famous jazz score for Anatomy of a Murder.
Mancini’s theme resembled these jazz works very little though. If there is any precursor of Peter Gunn I’d say it is The Harry Lime Theme by Anton Karas from The Third Man, it has that same playful and mysterious quality, even if Karas didn’t play jazz. What Mancini did was really update music for thrillers for the years to come. He added the familiar, exciting sounds of Hollywood to a jazz sound and used a propulsion that was more in tune with rock ‘n roll of the era.
In fact, Mancini called rock ‘n roll more an influence than jazz, even if the instrumental choices remind one more of jazz. Jazz purists have mostly despised Peter Gunn, because of its un-jazzlike simplicity. This was none of Mancini’s concern, he never considered himself a jazz composer. His background was in big bands and it is telling that he first made a name for himself as the composer/ arranger for the film The Glenn Miller Story, about the famous big band musician. But Mancini was a musical allrounder, who took influences from everywhere and found what was fit for the production. And he did use some actual jazz musicians of the time to help him record the track (fun fact: he also used John Williams for the piano; yes, that is the future composer of the music for Star Wars, Harry Potter and almost all of Steven Spielberg’s films).
Blake Edwards himself must have been convinced that Mancini was a jazz master, because he used the cool sounds of Mancini for many of his subsequent films. There is more than a hint of jazz in the music for Edwards’ The Pink Panther (a comical version of a detective theme in the vain of Peter Gunn) and The Party. Yes, there is also Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but that one’s not very jazzy, although Moon River sounds surprisingly similar to the sung version of Dreamville, another theme from Peter Gunn.
Jazz or no jazz, it seems that Peter Gunn set the template for most of the thriller music for the next decade. Surely there is a big hint of it in the James Bond Theme by John Barry, where the rock roots of Peter Gunn are followed more closely than its jazz feel. Even more obvious is the influence of Peter Gunn on Lalo Schifrin’s composition for the tv-series Mission: Impossible. And there’s more were those came from.
Let’s face it: it is easy to see where the love for such a theme comes from. Unless you are completely resistant to the excitement of the thriller genre it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t like Peter Gunn. The simplicity of the piece, in which the jazz purists found fault, is its appeal. It is short, but punchy and there is a great anticipation of incoming danger. There is the feel of something extremely cool and tough happening. It’s hard not to feel like a bad-ass private-eye when listening to the Theme from Peter Gunn.
8/10
Other versions:
Everyone wants to be a tough cop, so everyone covers Peter Gunn, or so it seems. The list of versions of this song (and mine is far from complete) is one of those odd whose-who’s of music. Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, The Art of Noise, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The Cramps, Pulp, Dick Dale, The Kingsman, Jeff Beck and Clarence Clemons all make an appearance, among many, many others.
Personally, I first got in touch with Peter Gunn through its appearance on The Blues Brothers, one of my favourite films from my teenage years and an introduction to many famous artists of blues, soul and jazz. One reason why you won’t hear me accuse The Blues Brothers of being racist appropriators of black music is simply because they made me aware of all these musicians instead of taking attention away from them. It’s the respect for the music and their creators they showcase that filled me with love for the genres and made me want to seek out the artists appearing in the film. Peter Gunn plays more of support role in the soundtrack of The Blues Brothers, as fill music, but that is some awesome fill music. Though I was already familiar with the music of The Pink Panther it was the appearance of Peter Gunn in The Blues Brothers that garnered my interest in Henry Mancini at the time.
The most interesting cover is the one by Sarah Vaughan, which adds lyrics to the track. It’s beautiful and cool. Released in 1964 it might have been recorded as a response to the popularity of the rather similar Goldfinger by Shirley Bassey for the Bond film of the same name (I wrote about it in an earlier edition of this series). It’s very well done.
Duane Eddy had a hit with it in the same year as Mancini released Peter Gunn. It’s a good cover, but not the most exciting in the list. It did inspire The Art of Noise, though, for their more creative, electronic take on the song, which includes an appearance of Duane Eddy. The Art of Noise kept redoing the songs for years and the playlist contains an odd live rendition in which Peter Gunn gets mixed with Kiss by Prince.
Shelly Manne, who had drummed on the Peter Gunn album but not on the title track, rerecorded the music of the series himself with his band and also made a looser version of the main theme. It’s quite nice. I already mentioned Ray Anthony’s recording in the main text and if you want another lose version of the song to go with the one by Manne it is a recommended listen.
Don’t be too excited about the famous names mentioned above, though. Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley delivered only unfinished demo’s that don’t make much impact. Dick Dale, Clarence Clemons, Pulp and The Kingsmen cover the song in a solid way, but don’t surprise. Better take The Cramps, who have perhaps the best straight cover (so not counting outliers like Vaughan), with a very hard-rocking, though rendition. Also awesome are Emerson, Lake & Palmer who used the song as a frequent concert opener. They pound away as if there is no tomorrow and I’m sure it got audiences exited. The live version was released as a single in some areas and was a hit in my home country The Netherlands. Also very good is a playful dance interpretation by Deodato.
The song has inspired musicians also in another way. The Surfaris also saw the link between the main themes of Peter Gunn and James Bond and mixed them in an awesome way. The B-52’s used the main guitar riff as the basis for their own song Planet Claire. Bauhaus did he same thing with their Hair of the Dog, which uses the guitar riff as a foundation too, but manages to sound completely different.
That’s enough for me, but the list below contains a lot more versions.
The playlist:
Intro to the tv-series Peter Gunn:
[youtube-https]https://youtu.be/vXBX-vb46Bg[/youtube-https]
It was also used in the tv-series The Bishop, one of my favourite shows ever:
And here is a great article about the creation of the album Music from Peter Gunn:
http://morningsonmaplestreet.com/2014/1 ... -page-one/