It's the stuff of Hollywood legend. One day in 1958, staff composer Henry Mancini dropped by the Universal-International Studios barbershop when who should be in the next chair but producer/director Blake Edwards. "Hey," said the latter, "would you be interested in doing a TV show for me?" Interested! The 34-year-old Mancini, on notice that his services were no longer required, thought the most he could hope for at Universal was one last haircut. You bet he was interested. Edwards confided that, for his new private-eye series, he envisioned jazz as "an integral part of the dramatic action, fusing storyline and score." Jazz, he enthused, would be the "distinctive element to invest this series with something extra, something superlative."
Big-screen movies had long since conditioned us to the big bang of Crime Jazz much as Pavlov tutored his dogs. TV, however, would now cement the connection as immutably as some wiseguy in concrete wing tips with a reservation at the Riverbed Inn. The new wave of primetime crime dramas, pitched at adults who swilled cocktails and puffed Chesterfields in air-conditioned split-level suburbia, would pass off murder and mayhem as sophisticated entertainment. And for this, natch, they required music you could tap your toe to.
Accordingly, when NBC premiered Peter Gunn on September 22, 1958, it was a breath of smoky air, as suave leading man Craig Stevens breezed through the title role of a hip PI with a sexy, jazz-singer girlfriend. Rising to this challenge with an unfettered flair for mimicry, the resourceful Mancini gussied up the series' catchy theme with French horns filched from Claude Thornhill and twangy guitar glommed from rock 'n' roller Duane Eddy. And before you could say, "You're under arrest," trumpeter Ray Anthony scored a Top 10 hit with his quickie big-band cover of "The Peter Gunn Theme."
When an even grittier cover by Duane Eddy & the Rebels later twanged among the Top 100 for 11 weeks, it seemed like payback for Mancini's twang-theft in the first place. But by then, Mancini had bastardized Eddy's "Stalkin'" for Peter Gunn's "Spook!" Some shoplifters work so fast, even video surveillance cameras can't catch them in the act. In any case, Duane Eddy got off light with only two swipes from Mancini, whose primary marks were jazzmen George Shearing and Count Basie.
Read more: http://www.jazz.com/jazz-blog/2008/9/10/peter-gunn-at-50
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