Teasing the Korean

Really enjoyed this one yesterday!

The double live album on Columbia with the black cover. Also, I should clarify what I meant by not returning to the album anytime soon. I meant only that I have other albums by the participants that would be in heavier rotation.

Henry Mancini - Breakfast at Tiffany's Custom edit using tracks from the film version and the LP re-record.

Lee Morgan - The Rumproller

Was this around the time of Blue Velvet or shortly after?

The Prestige Blues-Swingers - Outskirts of Town Setting aside the high quality of the music, this is a great-sounding record!

It was a Mitch Miller directive. He loved him some reverb. On the one hand, I very much agree with you, but when I hear one of those records, the reverb totally transports me to a time and place. It's like the reverb is a part of their voices.

Lee Morgan - Lee-way

Listening now to Outskirts of Town. I've had this for years, in the massive "to-be-cleaned" section.

Listening now. The bass sound is the largest stumbling block for me. In retrospect, the album from a performance perspective sounds much more of its era than it did at the time. The two Herbie Hancock tunes and maybe one or two others come the closest to a mid-60s Blue Note/Miles aesthetic. For some of the other tunes, it is clear that the 1970s happened, for better or worse, even though they are not played with period instruments. Overall, a nice album with some really great playing, but not one that I will likely revisit any time soon.

Eric Demarsan - Le Cercle Rouge The Quintet - VSOP

In the early- to mid-1950s, Mancini was doing Universal horror films such as The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Many of these films had three composers working on a single film. After Peter Gunn, he generally ignored this phase of his career, although late in his life, he recorded some suites from these early scores. Also, just before Peter Gunn, he did some LPs for Liberty, including the exotica album Driftwood and Dreams, later reissued as The Versatile Henry Mancini. None of this music sounded anything like Peter Gunn or Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I think these are both factors. Another is that you don't have variety TV shows, which must have been a major form of promotion at the time.

Mitch Miller sure loved reverb. One of the things that gave Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis their distinctive sounds in the 1950s and 1960s was the reverb that was slathered onto their voices.

Yes, there is a pretty wide spread between a soundtrack album being exactly what you hear in the film, and having little or anything to do with the film. I guess you know that, because of musician union rules, it was cheaper to re-record a film score than it was to license the original film tracks. In the US, most soundtrack albums from the 1950s through the 1970s were re-records. This obviously gave composers a chance to re-work things, or not. Here's another Mancini track I love: And here's one from Breakfast at Tiffany's that Cal Trader recorded. This is the superior album version. The film version doesn't feature the same turnaround at the end of the bridge.

Was it the AIP House of Usher score, with Vincent Price? That is typically considered his greatest score, along with Pit and the Pendulum. Usher has been released on CD. The tapes for Pit are apparently lost. Cool! Did you get to meet him?

Yes! Mancini said the following: "A problem arose from the re-recording of my scores. The albums were made up of the most melodic material from the films. A lot of the dramatic music—which is what I really loved to do and really thought I had a feeling for—was left out. I used the source music that was the common denominator for my record-buying audience. And there was pressure from the record company: they didn’t want to know about dramatic music. It may have hurt my reputation as a writer of serious film music. The albums gave me a reputation as a writer of light comedy and light suspense, and at the time it was not easy for producers to think of me for the more dramatic assignments. I did that to myself."

The irony is that several of these tunes were written for the tie-in LPs, and were not necessarily featured in the TV shows. For example, "Fallout," in the TV show was only the opening bass and drum riff, and the rest of the tune was written for the album.

sgcim, have you met Angelo Badalamente? And The Dunwich Horror, with a score by Thee Great Les Baxter!!!

While tunes like "Moon River" and "Days of Wine and Roses" are among the last of what became known as "standards" or part of "The Great American Songbook," it is surprising to me that more of Mancini's deep cuts didn't penetrate further into the jazz world. Like "The Chaser" from Two for the Road: Or "The Brothers Go to Mothers" from Peter Gunn

Herbie Nichols - Love, Gloom, Cash, Love George Russell - Jazz in the Space Age

It is indeed great spring car music! Every Thanksgiving, for some reason, I listen to Nina Simone. And after Thanksgiving, I love listening to my beloved uptempo pizzicato string production music!

But that is appropriate. Bossa is inherently sad music. Right after January 1, I tend to listen to Moog and electronic music, because it conveys a bright, shiny future. Around February, I break out Scott Walker's first five albums. They are perfect for that time of year, bringing to mind bleak landscapes.