Thursday, September 23, 2010
Something for Cat
From Barney Kessel's Lp Breakfast At Tiffany's, He arranged all 12 songs from the soundtrack lp for a small group, in the same order.
I wish I liked the Lp more. But Breakfast wasn't nearly as jazzy as the two Peter Gunn albums. The songs from Gunn generally traveled well through a variety of jazz & pop settings. But in the Sixties Mancini was working with bigger budgets, & bigger orchestras with string sections. After Breakfast, when hired for a movie, Mancini was expected to compose a song worthy of an Oscar nomination, & one or two memorable novelty numbers. The weakest of his melodies sounded fine wrapped in beautiful 3 minute arrangements. But a new generation of movie composers - Lalo Schifrin, John Barry, Burt Bacharach - was about to overtake him.
