Song:Peter Gunn
Album:Midnight, Moonlight & Magic: The Very Best Of Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini is one of the all time great film composers with four Oscars and twenty Grammys. This theme to the 1959 TV series Peter Gunn was his first hit even after RCA Records bungled the release. Mancini's music always had jazz elements and many West Coast jazz musicians worked for him regularly. He was born Apr. 16, 1924 in Cleveland. He was a big jazz fan growing up and after serving in the military in WWII, Tex Beneke hired him as pianist and arranger for the Glenn Miller Orchestra. His first film score was for the Abbott & Costello film Lost In Alaska. This led to Mancini scoring 1954's The Glenn Miller Story and 1956's The Benny Goodman Story. But Peter Gunn is what put him on the map. When the series became popular, RCA asked Shorty Rogers to record it. He told them Mancini should record it himself. He recorded it but RCA didn't release it as a single and only did so after Ray Anthony charted with his version of Peter Gunn. Mancini's Peter Gunn album sold a million copies. Mancini had a lot of success with his scores for Breakfast At Tiffany's, The Pink Panther and many others. You can get all his great themes on this comp. Henry Mancini was working on the Broadway version of Victor Victoria when he died of pancreatic cancer on June 14, 1994 at age 70. Here's Henry Mancini with the Terry Gibbs Orchestra performing Peter Gunn on Steve Allen 1984.
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