"Henry Mancini PURE GOLD" CD from 1987. 24 minutes of heaven?

Before I forget, its RCA 3667-2-R.

So I was breaking in some gear this afternoon and I played one of my old standby disks, this Henry Mancini hits CD. Same song selection as the old LP of the same name but much more dynamic range (almost 30 db on some songs) and a nice, neutral mastering by Joe Lopes at the old RCA Studio in NYC. Same ugly cover as the LP but we don't care. We want the music.

The first five are the "soft songs", the second five the crowd pleasing/"all stops out" songs. 24 minutes. Short and sweet. Leaves you wanting more. So, start it over again.

I remind you of this great sounding disk because you can probably get this sucker for $2.00 out there and YOU SHOULD. It will show off your system, it will impress your friends and annoy your neighbors when you crank the Pink Panther Theme full blast and P. J.'s sax cracks a window or two. That's gotta be worth two bucks, right?

So you get MOON RIVER/DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES/CHARADE/MOMENT TO MOMENT/LOVE THEME FROM "ROMEO AND JULIET" as the first mellow five. Then, the show stoppers: THE PINK PANTHER THEME/MR. LUCKY/BABY ELEPHANT WALK/PETER GUNN THEME/IT HAD BETTER BE TONIGHT (from Pink Panther).

Recorded mainly at the old RCA-Victor "Music Center Of The World" Studios in Hollywood. Same place that the Stones recorded SATISFACTION and the Monkees, Airplane, etc. recorded their hits. I dunno, these Mancini cuts sound so damn good..... Too bad they didn't use his engineer to do the above mentioned rock hits (but that's another story). Point is, how can the same studio, same microphones and same mixing console sound so wonderful one day and so piss poor (SOMEBODY TO LOVE) the next. Heh.

Final thought before you grab this for cheap. Is PETER GUNN THEME the coolest riff song ever? I mean, it's so neat to hear. When I was in a band back in the 1970's our keyboard player knew the brass and reed parts and would play them on his Vox Continental organ while I played the riff (along with the bass player) on the guitar.

Dun dun dan dun dooing dun dan dun over and over again for two minutes. The song never changes chords, never stops, just keeps chugging that riff while the horns go more and more crazy like. It's harder to play than it might seem. You have to really concentrate to keep that little double fret "dooing" on the fifth note over and over. It's like you become part of the music by playing the same 8 notes over and over again. It's pretty intense. Wish I had a recording of us doing it. It's so sucky bad it was pretty good.

I forgot all about Henry Mancini until 1987 when I was sitting in a diner in Santa Monica with Diana Reid Haig (one of those fake-o 1950's style retro diners) and she suddenly started looking through our table top juke box song selection. She pulled out a quarter and said: "Get a load of this".

She had picked "PETER GUNN THEME" by Henry Mancini and it started playing in the diner from a red label reissue RCA-Victor 45. It started gaining momentum and by midway I could hear the old four-tube optical limiter kick in and spatter the horns up against the percussion section. Wow the entire diner was rockin' by the end. I remember almost standing up and screaming "WHOOO!" It was that intense.

Right after that I discovered this CD and have been happy ever since.

At any rate, if you do not have the above CD, I suggest you get it. Don't confuse it with later versions that have more songs, remxed with wonky balances, too much midrange and wacky compression. THIS is the one to get...

Over and out!

 

That's the baby. So much pleasure for so little money.

 

You heard Lawrence Welk's hit version on the radio.

 

Three different mixes. The stereo, the mono LP version and the mono 45 version. Over the years they have been so mixed up that it's impossible to judge what has been used to cut, where.

Like Bobby Darin's MACK THE KNIFE 45 on Atco. So many recuts were needed that they were pulling all sorts of wrong tapes to recut the thing. I've seen legit Atco 45's with the stereo "far mike" version folded to mono, etc. There is even an Atco pressing that uses JUST THE RIGHT CHANNEL of the stereo version on the 45 recut. Urggh. Dreadful.

So same thing with PETER GUNN. I bet the "Gold Standard Series" 45 reissue on either the dark brown or red label would be the killer one.

I'd love to work on a Mancini comp. The 40 copies it would sell probably wouldn't buy our lunch in the mastering room though..