Jazz Soundtracks - Part 3

The following is an excerpt from the book Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979 (McFarland, 2008) by Kristopher Spencer, founder of Scorebaby.com.

While many crime scores barely qualify as genuine jazz, there are a handful from the era that come closer than most. One of the best belongs to I Want to Live! (’58), a true story about a murderess on death row. Johnny Mandel’s sexy smoky score is a classic. The 26-piece All-Star Jazz Orchestra burn through the main theme, “Poker Game,” “Stakeout” and “Gas Chamber Unveiling” and other hot-blooded and emotionally wrenching tracks. Also featured are half a dozen cuts played by Gerry Mulligan’s Combo.

The legendary baritone saxophonist leads veteran jazz greats such as Shelly Manne (drums), Art Farmer (trumpet), Bud Shank (alto sax, flute) and Red Mitchell (bass), Frank Rosolino (trombone) and Pete Jolly (piano) on “Night Watch” and “Black Nightgown.” Mulligan’s inclusion is significant. The original LP cover notes by William Johns describe how the film’s main character “moves through an atmosphere in San Francisco and San Diego where jazz hovers constantly in the background. One of the few stabilizing things in her life is her interest in jazz and, particularly, in the music of Gerry Mulligan.” Mandel penned the tracks specifically for Mulligan’s group, and they’re peppered throughout the film as source cues.

“We'd been through a lot of bands together,” Mandel said of Mulligan in a 1998 interview with Patrick McGilligan for the Rykodisc reissue. “I first ran into Gerry when he was with Gene Krupa and I was with Buddy Rich. This was in ’46. ‘Disk Jockey Jump’ had just come out and somehow Mulligan and I … were thrown together in the New York nightclub and session scene. We remained good friends, right to the end.”

The bits composed for the larger group are highly experimental and were daring for the era. Among the unusual instruments employed are contra-bass clarinet, contra bassoon, bass trumpet, bass flute, and E-flat clarinet. In addition, there is a wild assortment of percussion such as scratcher, cowbells, Chinese and Burmese gongs, rhythm logs, chromatic drums and claves as well as bongos and conga drums — collectively representing “the forces of law and order always hovering in the background,” as McGilligan observed.

More importantly, I Want to Live stands apart from most crime jazz scores in that it is genuine jazz featuring improvisation and not merely “scripted” jazz.

“I was really very nervous,” Mandel told McGilligan, “until I realized, after I learned the language and how to sync everything, that essentially it is what I’d been doing for a long time and just didn’t know it. It married all the things I’d been doing previously.”

Mandel went on to win an Oscar for “The Shadow of Your Smile” from The Sandpiper and scored many other popular movies, but his boldly inventive I Want to Live is among the best of the crime genre and of the era.

Jazz Soundtracks - Part 2

The following is an excerpt from the book Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979 (McFarland, 2008) by Kristopher Spencer, founder of Scorebaby.com.

A sure sign that jazz had found a home in Hollywood came in ’56 when Elmer Bernstein earned an Academy Award® nomination for The Man with the Golden Arm. The film’s gritty subject matter — heroin addiction — may have opened many eyes to the dangers hounding modern man, but the score opened audience ears to the high drama of hard-driving horn blasts, sultry woodwinds, rumbling bass and crashing percussion. No crime theme seems to swing harder than “Frankie Machine.” The brass screams against a backdrop of jackhammer percussion. On “The Fix,” the same theme takes on a nightmarish urgency. On “Desperation,” rumbling discordant piano and locomotive drums capture the single-minded obsession of the junkie. Golden Arm is simply one of the genre’s most iconic scores.

A year later, Bernstein scored Sweet Smell of Success, a cynical drama set on New York City’s Madison Avenue, where reputations are built up and torn down over cocktails. While Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis exchange Machiavellian manipulations, Bernstein’s score and additional jazz tracks by Chico Hamilton pour on sophisticated scorn.

As Bernstein stated in cover notes for a ’62 LP of his Movie & TV Themes, “Jazz is contemporary... (and) so are most films. Thus it seemed quite natural for me to utilize the elements of the jazz idiom in my work.”

Also in ’56, Bernstein contributed jazz for a short-lived TV detective show Take Five. “(It) failed,” he noted, “but similar shows that followed did not, and jazz took a firm hold in television scoring.”

Before the decade ended Bernstein would take another crack at TV crime with somewhat greater success, but first another young Hollywood composer would strike mainstream gold first with his own take on TV crime jazz.

The claim came in ’58 when Henry Mancini, a long-time apprentice arranger at Universal, bumped into producer Blake Edwards in the studio barbershop. Edwards invited Mancini to score TV’s Peter Gunn (’58-’61). Mancini’s theme for the suave detective quickly became a standard of cool jazz (and eventually surf rock) repertoire. One could easily compile two or three discs worth of Peter Gunn variations by artists as disparate as Quincy Jones and Art of Noise. In the show, Gunn hangs out in the jazz club Mother’s where a jazz group plays underneath the dialogue.

“The idea of using jazz in the ‘Gunn’ score was never even discussed. It was implicit in the story,” Mancini recalled in his autobiography Did They Mention the Music? (p. 87, Contemporary Books, 1989).

“It was the time of so-called cool West Coast jazz,” Mancini added. “That was the sound that came to me.”

Walking bass and drums, smoky saxophones, shouting trumpets were keys to the “Peter Gunn” sound, and the show also provided Mancini with his first opportunity to use bass flutes, an instrument that he used with great success throughout his career.

Peter Gunn was one of the first TV shows to receive a soundtrack LP release, which went to number one on the Billboard chart and held the position for 10 weeks — an astonishing feet for a jazz record as well as a soundtrack. It stayed on the charts for more than two years and eventually sold more than a million copies. All of this made Mancini a bankable recording artist and one of the few film or television composers to ever become a household name.

The Peter Gunn score was only the beginning of what would prove to be an immensely popular and influential body of work. The “chilled-out soundtrack” — as Steely Dan co-founder and jazz aficionado Donald Fagen called it (Premiere, ’87) — spawned two LPs and other related releases. Ten years later, Mancini scored the relatively unsuccessful Gunn ... Number One movie with a somewhat updated sound (check out the fuzz-tone guitar on “The Monkey Farm”).

While Peter Gunn was hardly the first show of its kind, its soundtrack helped to popularize the crime jazz genre through the biggest mass medium ever. Other shows of the era that touted hard-boiled brass were M Squad, 77 Sunset Strip, Mike Hammer, Perry Mason, Richard Diamond, Naked City and Staccato — the last of which features a Bernstein score.

If Staccato appeared to be a calculated response to Peter Gunn, its score was simply a reiteration of the sound Bernstein had already explored on the big screen. Johnny Staccato is a private eye who moonlights as a piano player in a jazz combo at a hip nightclub. Staccato’s theme aptly evokes an urban jungle’s sweltering atmosphere. The rhythm section prowls along like a panther on the hunt, while brass and woodwinds soar above in the canopy of night. The show didn’t enjoy Peter Gunn’s longevity, but its theme is nearly as iconic.

Loungecore, Jazz and The Gentle People

So I spent a hour listening to The Gentle People "Soundtracks for Living". The Gentle People are truly an international group, with members from the U.S., UK and Australia. Their style is a mixture of '50s, '60s kitsch jazz and '90s ambient (think Les Baxter, Martin Denny, Saint Etienne and The Orb.) The term at the time was called loungecore, as sub-genre of lounge music which was also a sub-genre of jazz. I always thought was pretty lame but that's just me. The best and most well known band in this genre was Pizzicato 5 from Japan (unfortunately lumped into this genre while being far and away ahead of it.)

The Gentle People have created a wonderfully relaxing vibe that made you curl up on the couch with a nice glass of wine and wish the day away.

"Soundtracks for Living" is their debut CD from 1997 (did I say 1997!). It holds up surprising well. I'm not saying this a stellar rediscovery and everyone should run out and buy or download it. But if you're looking for something fun, relaxing and relatively harmless this an excellent record for a Friday night with your companion or to close out an evening party. The band released their third album last year ("Galactic Confections") but for me "Soundtracks for Living" remains the standout. All their albums are available on iTunes. Take a listen and check them out...

A Jazz Starter Kit

I've been asked by friends on numerous occasions to give them a list of Jazz albums they should start their collection with. It's always slightly difficult. You know the top three or four right off the top of your head but then it starts to get a little subjective.

So I've decided to get a little subjective.

Below is short list of Jazz albums I think most people who enjoy music shouldn't be without. No difficult listening. Just great starters for anyone. I've tried to break it out by instrument with a brief commentary. All of these CD's are easy to find at your local record store or online. Enjoy.


1) Miles Davis "Kind Of Blue": The trumpeter's great masterpiece and also considered one of the greatest all around albums of all time.

2) Dave Brubeck "Time Out": A classic piano driven album.

3) John Coltrane "Blue Train": While there are a number of Coltrane albums that can make this list as a start point I think this is one of the saxophonist's most palatable for new ears.

4) Thelonious Monk "Brilliant Corners": For many Jazz music lovers this a good way to start with Monk. His playing and compositions are complicated but Brilliant Corners highlights a group built on tension and precision.

5) Charlie Parker "The Quintet-Jazz At Massey Hall": An amazing and historic live album featuring the legends Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach and Charles Mingus.

6) Charlie Parker "Yardbird Suite": A compilation but the perfect primer of his most influential recordings and performances.

7) Charles Mingus "Mingus Ah Um": A beautiful session from the legendary bass player featuring the classics "You Better Get It In Your Soul" and "My Jelly Roll Soul" makes this a standout in his catalog.

8) Clifford Brown & Max Roach "Alone Together": Brown and Roach were both extraordinary an trumpeter and drummer in their own right but together they are unstoppable. This two disc set as the title suggests features material of both together and with their own groups.

9) Billie Holiday "Lady Day: The Best Of Billie Holiday" and "Lady In Autumn": Both are compilations but both feature two separate periods in Holiday's career. So if you want the complete overview these are a good way to get the most of everything in a quick shot and impress your friends.

10) Charlie Christian "The Original Guitar Hero": This compilation gives a strong representation of what Christian did with the guitar. His career was cut short by TB in 1942. There are numerous compilations but this one shows how important his music truly was then as now.