Did you ever have a hero, a real live person whom you revered, adored, looked up to and perhaps even tried to emulate from time to time? I was introduced to mine several times, many years apart. The first time was when I was 15, a freshman in high school, watching the tv show Peter Gunn, in our tiny apartment in Ennis, Montana.
At first I was taken in by Pete Gunn, played by Craig Stevens, and his girlfriend Lola Albright, a smoky beauty who sang in Pete’s favorite night spot, Mother’s. A curious aside here… right after I got out of the Berklee School of Music in Boston in ’67, (I didn’t graduate, couldn’t sight read) I got a great gig at a club there in Boston called, of all things, Mother’s! I was there for nearly two years, and it remains the best, the coolest steady gig I ever had.
See how easy it is to digress, take a right when you’re trying to go left? Yeah, I do it all the time. It’s what happens to the old ones who have so many good memories, they sometimes cross each other in the strangest, most unusual and ironic ways you can imagine. This particular story has several of those.
Anyway, I loved the Peter Gunn show, and was there to see it every Tuesday night. The more I watched it, however, the more its music began to grab me, and by the end of that season I could hum along with the themes, even most of the incidental music from scene to scent, and, of course, with Edie’s soft vocals at Mother’s.
And who was this Henry Mancini, anyway? My god, did he really write all this fantastic jazz I was falling in love with? Evidently he was! What a guy… and what great music! I was hooked!
Long after the Peter Gunn series ran its course I kept hearing more music by Mancini… Moon River, The Days Of Wine And Roses, the Pink Panther Theme… great songs that I recognized right away as having that Mancini touch. Then came the movie scores, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Two For The road, my favorites. There were many more, of course, and many more tv themes as well, the Mr. Lucky theme being a dandy. Through the years, however, the Peter Gunn collection remained my favorites.
As the arranger in me started to develop, I found myself subconsciously “borrowing” from the styles I’d heard, loved and remembered from Mancini and Quincy Jones. I’d done an arrangement copy of 16 bars of Q’s old tune, “Robot Portrait” and in doing so, I came to understand some of Q’s magic with horns and strings. Later on, much of it sneaked into my arranging style.
My primary influence through the years, though, was always Mancini. His jazzy style got into my blood, his unique use of low trombones and fabulous French horn lines, along with his unusual chordal structures and fine jazzy movement, stuck with me throughout my career, and strangely, not a single person ever recognized it or accused me of outright theft, which they could have. Here’s an example, from the credits music of a score I did for a short film noir, The Devil To Pay.
Skip Lane played the alto sax solo on this, simply killed it! Here’s a short blub on Skip’s magnificent career –
“Skip Lane, Henry Mancini’s longtime solo saxophonist – For over fifteen years, Lane served as the solo sax player for Henry Mancini, performing internationally in that role.”
Atlanta was home to another great musician, Cecil Welsh, whom I also played with from time to time. A true Southern Gentleman –
“Cecil Welsh played principal trumpet with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and later became widely recognized as the featured trumpet soloist with Henry Mancini. Welch toured with Mancini for nearly two decades, performing classic film and pop repertoire all over the world.”
Here are my e favorite compposers – Henry, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams. I only wish Johnny Mandel were also also in this pic.
Some say that copying, or “borrowing” style elements from the giants is a form of respect for their craft. Perhaps. I asked AI about it –
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chatGPT –
Transformation vs. Copying: “The line is crossed when imitation becomes duplication without adding anything of your own. Picasso put it bluntly: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” What he meant wasn’t literal theft, but absorbing influence so deeply that it becomes transformed into something new and personal.”
• The Real Trap: If a musician only copies the surface — the notes, the tone, the riffs — without absorbing the spirit or developing a voice, they risk becoming a clone. But if you internalize what you borrow and let it filter through your own sensibility, it comes out as something unique.
In fact, most great musicians sound like a mixture of their heroes. Miles Davis didn’t come out of nowhere — you can hear shades of Dizzy, Bird, Ahmad Jamal — but he distilled them into something unmistakably Miles.
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Remember those curious life instances I mentioned earlier… “in the strangest, most unusual and ironic ways you can imagine..” here’s the kicker. I actually got to meet Henry Mancini and play 5 concerts with him! He was gracious and kind, knew I was beyond nervous about playing well for him,, and several times he took a moment to help put me at ease.
One one of the evenings, we were playing his final piece, the whole orchestra was blaring away. Henry was conducting this dramatic finale, and he looked over at me quickly, and put his hand up to his mouth as if stifling a yawn I treasure that moment and I’ll never forget it.
Naturally, I hope my influences by Mancini and Q came out as “something new and personal.” Like I said, I have no way of knowing, but in 31 years of music writing and arranging, no one ever accused me of stealing their sound.
I feel like we’re lucky, those of us who have heroes to look up to, to see quality at its highest level, and to maybe even try to emulate, while certainly raising our own standards of excellence. We’re so lucky, those of us who have the greatness of others to show us a way to become better than we are.
Steve Hulse