Johnny Mandel on the Art of Orchestration: Part 3 - The Smithsonian Interview

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The following is excerpted from the JOHNNY MANDEL [1925-2020] NEA Jazz Master (2011) interview that was conducted by Bill Kirchner on April 20-21, 1995 in New York City. The 179 page transcript is in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian which can be reached at www.archivescenter@si.edu.

This portion of the interview deals with the period in Johnny’s life from the late 1950s and early 1960s and focuses on his development as an orchestrator and composer in a variety of musical contexts.

As previously noted, in 1959, Johnny Mandel was bringing Jazz underscores to the movies while Hank Mancini was writing the first television Jazz soundtrack.

Kirchner: Let's talk a little about orchestrating because it's common knowledge that even the most skillfully skillful orchestrators often have to bring in help for orchestrating just because of the time constraints.”

Mandel: You mean the most skillful composers or the most skillful orchestrators? 

Kirchner: Composers who are skillful orchestrators, such as yourself.

Mandel:   Oh, sometimes they give you impossible - you know, first of all movies used to have better, more leisurely schedules especially if there was a decent budget on the picture but television ruined that. Now they give you impossibly close deadlines, so very often you need people to come in and receive as much of the mechanical work from you as possible and if it's really impossible sometimes you have to actually get somebody to do some composing. In other words, work things over, not contribute creatively but just to take some of the weight off of you, because they want the score yesterday and they just gave it to you. That happens and I don't like that at all 'cause I like to do all my own work if I can.

Kirchner: Bill Holman told me once that he had done some orchestrating for you. 

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: And he said, I mean to compare and contrast you to say somebody who is not a skilled orchestrator but who's putting his name on a film as a composer he said in your case you gave him very specific and very detailed sketches of what you wanted and then he orchestrated from those.

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: As opposed to -well I mentioned the term, Hummers earlier, maybe this is a good time to discuss what a Hummer is.

Mandel: Oh God, there's so many of them around Hollywood. Those are the guys who really can't even write down music but they get hired to do scores, and they'll hum some, like a little fragment of a theme to an orchestrator who'll take down the fragment of a theme and they'll say, "give me five minutes of music for that," you know, for this scene and another eight minutes over here and this and that you know. These are what you call Hummers, guys who were just very good politicians who have no idea about music. There's a lot of them in Hollywood.

Kirchner: Or maybe they're rock stars with hits.

Mandel: Yeah, that kind of stuff, you know, there's.. .you know there's also the kind of composer who is actually a good composer but is not an orchestrator, they think in terms of the piano. And they'll write a very good piano sketch but don't orchestrate, they'll give it to an orchestrator and he'll divine what they want or they'll talk about it but I just can't think of music this way since the first music I ever wrote was orchestral music. I hear it all in my head. If I couldn't orchestrate it there wouldn't be - I'd have a very incomplete feeling because I think of it all as part and parcel, I hear a musical phrase in my head and I'll know what instrument's playing it, for any given occasion.

Kirchner: Now, for, I Want to Live! you did all your own orchestrating I assume.

Mandel: Oh sure, for everything I do.

Kirchner: Okay.

Mandel: If I get orchestrating help it's only because there's just no other way.

Kirchner: Is that, do you think that's still a pretty common attitude among say composers of your generation who got into film writing like Mancini and Neal Hefti and J.J. Johnson...

Mandel: I don't know.

Kirchner: Billy Byers, people like that...

Mandel: I can only speak to myself, Mancini always used an orchestrator but if you looked at his sketches everything was there. I don't think Neal did a great deal of film. J.J. I don't know what kind of film J. did, he's a wonderful writer though and Neal is too.

Kirchner: J.J. got in fairly late in the game I think, in around late 60s, 1970. As a matter of fact I'll just tell you a quick story. I was at a seminar last week that was given by somebody who's writing J.J.'s biography and he played a film clip from a movie that J.J. had done in the early 70s called, Across 110th Street.

Mandel: Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that film.

Kirchner: And there was a percussion segment and it was very similar to the one you did for I Want to Live! which I pointed out to J.J.'s biographer and he was very intrigued by that. It was just, I won't say it was a copy but it was conceptually very similar to what you did.

Mandel: Uh-huh, I never heard this score so I...

Kirchner: It's quite interesting.

Mandel: But if J.J. copied anything I ever did, I'd be highly complimented.

Kirchner: [laughs] So, after you did that score, you did quite a bit of television writing then subsequently.

Mandel: Only as much as I had to, I never liked writing television. I always considered it a far inferior medium to film, budget wise, schedule wise, quality wise, in every way. It was anytime you did TV it was like doing "B" pictures. In fact it took the place of, B, pictures, that's what happened to, "B" pictures, in-case anybody wants to know.

[they both laugh]

Kirchner:   It's interesting, I got to know, do you know Duane Tatro?

Mandel: Sure, good boy.

Kirchner: As you know he basically made his career writing for television and...

Mandel: A lot of guys did, never left television.

Kirchner: For some reason he was never able to crack film.

Mandel: Very hard to make the transition sometimes, that's why I tried to stay away from television, I did not want to end up in the television graveyards, plus I just didn't like doing the work.

Kirchner: That was the same, the same could be said of Earle Hagen for example, he did mostly television right?

Mandel: Yeah, yeah he did, that's true and very well I might add, very inventive composer, did a lot of those good things like, "Mod Squad," and...

Kirchner: "I Spy."

Mandel: "I Spy," all those things, he wrote interesting stuff.

Kirchner: He used to give a lot of seminars for film and TV composers didn't he?

Mandel: Is Earle still around?

Kirchner: I'm not sure I haven't heard anything about him...

Mandel: In years I haven't...

Kirchner: In several years yeah.

Mandel: Good man, he was a lot older than I was.

Kirchner: He wrote, "Harlem Nocturne," in the late 30s.

Mandel: He did?

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: I don't know why I always thought Alfred Newman did that, I used to get it mixed up with, "Street Song," I guess, which was Newman's, or, "Street Scene." They all had that 30s New York sound.

Kirchner: Right, with an alto saxophone.

Mandel: You bet.

[They both laugh]

Mandel: Oh, so Earle wrote "Harlem Nocturne," good piece.

Kirchner: So, for television you did something, I remember seeing some Ben Casey episodes...

Mandel: Yeah, I did.

Kirchner: How many of those did you do, quite a few?

Mandel: Oh, I don't know, I don't know, I just never took count of those things.

Kirchner: And what else, Mister Roberts!

Mandel: Yeah, I did that. I didn't do much, I think I subbed for Frank Perkins a few times while he was ill, he was having an operation of some kind, but that was his show. He's the guy who wrote, "Stars Fell on Alabama."

Kirchner: Ah-ha. 

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Yeah and you did some things for Andy Williams' variety show right?

Mandel: Oh yeah, in fact Dave Grusin and I, that's where we met and became very close buddies, we were on Andy's show for a couple years. That was a fun show to do 'cause you know it was live TV, we had a good band.

Kirchner: And a lot of music.

Mandel: And a lot of music and Andy was a wonderful musician and singer, you know, this is one guy who has probably the best ears of anyone around, probably from all those years of singing hard parts for Kay Thompson. He has laser ears, I used to make a game of trying to throw him with modulations and I never succeeded. I'd write impossible, outrageous things you wouldn't do to a singer, not for a singer to a singer is really...

Kirchner: [laughs]

Mandel: And he'd never crack a smile, he'd just, he'd never flinch, you know, he'd just do it [laughs] because he knew I was doing a number with him. In fact I don't think we ever talked about it.

Kirchner: Well, Dave...

Mandel: Sort of a little like that, did you read the -well I won't mention that on this tape 'cause it's really not germane. Did you read Oscar Peterson's biography [The Will to Swing] that Gene Lees wrote?

Kirchner: Yes.

Mandel: You remember that scene when Ray Brown and Herb Ellis dyed their hair to each other's color and Oscar Peterson would never acknowledge that he noticed it.

Kirchner: [laughs]

Mandel: In all the years they've known him since.

[They both laugh]

Mandel: This was sort of one of those kinds of things.

Kirchner: Dave Grusin was Andy's musical director at the time, right?

Mandel: Yes he was, no, first he was his piano player. I got knocked out the first time I ever heard him play, I said, "Good, God, what's this, something new."

Kirchner: Yeah, there are some film scores of his that maybe we should - there's a technique he uses in his, some of his film scores like for, Three Days of the Condor...

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Where he does, I guess what you'd call motivic development...

Mandel: Um-hm.

Kirchner: Just starting out with a basic motif and developing it throughout the film.

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Is that a technique that interests you in doing scores?

Mandel: Sure, I've done that, Point Blank's a good example of something I did in fact I wrote that whole — That's totally a twelve tone score, I wrote it around a row and a motif, a tone-row and a motif.

Kirchner: When did that come out, I'm not familiar with that one? 

Mandel: 1967. That was one of my favorite projects. 

Kirchner: Does that show up on television or anything anymore?

Mandel: Oh yeah, all over the place, Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, a lot of good actors in there.

Kirchner: I'll have to watch for that.

Mandel: Lloyd Bochner, a real solid bunch of Canadian actors, John Vernon. John Boorman film. A lot of fun to do that movie, work, but fun, that's one of the more rewarding ones.

Kirchner: Before we... I don't get too far ahead of ourselves chronologically although I want to get back to your specific, other films later like, The Sandpiper, and The Americanization of Emily, and The Russians are Coming, but what I wanted to do is talk about some of the vocal albums you did in the late 50s with people like David Allyn and Sinatra and Jo Stafford and Mel Torme.

Mandel: Yep.

Kirchner: I guess first of all maybe...

Mandel: Peggy...

Kirchner: The David Allyn...

Mandel: Yep, go ahead.

Kirchner: Like Sure Thing, and the other one that came out about twenty years after you did it, In the Blue of Evening.

Mandel: Oh yeah, um-hm. Around the same time I did a Dick Haymes album, which was good too.

Kirchner: I just think it'd be interesting to talk about how you collaborate with different singers and the similarities and differences of getting together a vocal album in as far as picking tunes, deciding on keys, deciding on orchestration.

Mandel: We sit down and decide those things, that's what we do.

Kirchner: For example with David you were doing an all Jerome Kern album with the Sure Thing.

Mandel: You know with most of those dates at that time it was what can we afford, how big of an orchestra can I have. We'd mutually agree on the songs and you tried to get the nicest orchestra you could and try and get the best mixer you could and record in the best studios you could. That was really the name of the game.

Kirchner: Yeah, the Sure Thing I think in particular' is regarded by a lot of people as the record that David Allyn's best and most fondly known for and remembered for.

Mandel: It was a labor of love making it. I think we made it in about 1957, something like that. 

Kirchner: Seven or eight right? 

Mandel: Seven or eight, yeah, I guess so.

Kirchner: And then there was the second one that was done but Warner Brothers kept in the can for twenty years and then Discovery put it out in around '79 which is a mystery since it's a wonderful record.

Mandel: One of those record company decisions that we often fall victim to. I mean thank God for CDs.

Kirchner: Exactly.

Mandel: A lot of things have come out that never would've left the vaults as a result and a lot of things that have come out that maybe have been in the vaults fifty or sixty years.

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: Including a lot of old Bessie Smith records, you know it's just CDs have done that for us, because all of a sudden when they came out with this new format they were so starved for product we got treated to a lot of out-of-print items.

Kirchner: Absolutely.

Mandel: And they're still coming and I love it.

Kirchner: Oh, absolutely.

Mandel: Yeah, stuff that never would've seen the light of day again, absolutely not. And we were lucky if any of them were still in existence too, it's unbelievable how badly recorded material has been treated over the history of recording.

Kirchner: Oh, I've heard, I'm sure you know many horror stories too...

Mandel: Oh God.

Kirchner: Of just idiots going through the vaults and trashing things...

Mandel: Yeah!

Kirchner: Because they want to make room for…

Mandel: For filing.

Kirchner: On the shelves.

Mandel: Having no idea what they were trashing and couldn't have cared less if they had an idea, absolutely true. We live in a time of cretins.

Kirchner: [laughs]

Mandel: A lot of them.

Kirchner: Now David's record was done around - you did those two with David...

Mandel: Yes.

Kirchner: Then there was one called, Jo + Jazz, with Jo Stafford.

Mandel: Oh that was nice, we got to use some good musicians on there like, Ben Webster, I mean all the records used good musicians, you know, I got the best guys I could but here we got to use a lot of guys out of Duke's band.

Kirchner: Like Ray Nance and Ben Webster.

Mandel: Didn't have Ray Nance, we had Ben Webster, we had Lawrence Brown, you know it was just great having these people, Harry Carney. And Duke was on one of his periodic European trips where he didn't take the band and I got to use them. And let's see, Hodges [Johnny] had come back, so he was laying around.

Kirchner: [laughs] Now to do that kind of...

Mandel: And having, "Rabbit," on anything was...

Kirchner: Sure.

Mandel: Oh, good God, my favorite player I think of all of them.

Kirchner: I would say that you could, that he was probably Ellington's greatest soloist, you know I mean some people would argue that, but you'd have to make a pretty serious argument.

Mandel: Well, he was another one that was a great communicator; it was like there was nothing between his brain and your brain. There was no saxophone, there were no pads, no mechanism, it just went right from where he was thinking right to your brain. It was something very few have been gifted with, Stan Getz had it, Lester Young certainly had it,

Charlie Parker had it and there's a few others but you know what, out of all the great jazz players there aren't that many that had that particular thing. Louis [Armstrong] of course had it.

Kirchner: Where you're not conscious of the physical limitations of the instrument.

Manclel: Yeah, there's absolutely no, there's no instrument between them and you and that's, that's I guess what I mean. You're not conscious of it unless they mention it, they're able to move you because there's nothing in-between.

Kirchner: Now for that album, was that your concept to use say, Ellington players with Jo?

Mandel: Well, it wasn't really my concept, it was Irving Townsend's concept, at the time, you know he was the A and R man there and god bless Irving, you know we...

Kirchner: This was for Columbia [Records]'?

Mandel: This was for Columbia in the late 50s and...

Kirchner: That CD by the way, you can get that record, it's out on CD now.

Mandel: Yeah, um-hm.

Kirchner: I think Jo and Paul Weston put it out themselves right?

Mandel: They did, on Corinth [Corinthian Records] I think, they bought the masters and put it out, I guess they liked that record.

Kirchner: With good reason.

Mandel: Yeah, great people, both of them.

Kirchner: So Irving came up with the concept then?

Mandel: He came up with the concept but Irving was wonderful at concepts, he was one of the great A and R men who have been forgotten. Not by me though.

[They both laugh]

Kirchner: Whose choice of tunes was it primarily Jo's or did you have some suggestions for tunes or did Irving?

Mandel: I think it was mostly let Jo choose them, anybody with the kind of taste she has, shouldn't be told what to do.

Kirchner: And around the same time you did the Mel Torme record, I Like Duke, I Like the Count. [I Dig the Duke! I Dig the Count!]

Mandel: That was a nice experience too. I honestly think that - Mel told me it's his favorite record.

Kirchner: Really?

Mandel: Yeah, he really likes that, one of the best he ever did.

Kirchner: Yeah, I think probably that one and the two with Marty Paich with the Dek-Tette.

Mandel: Oh the Dek-Tette stuff yeah.

Kirchner: Those are probably...

Mandel: He liked those too...

Kirchner: Yeah, those are probably his finest, from my admittedly subjective opinion.

Mandel: Um-hm.

Kirchner: Now somebody like Mel, is someone who taught himself to orchestrate and...

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Does he get more involved with an arranger in terms of dictating what he wants or does he give you a freehand or how does he operate?

Mandel: He gave me a freehand, but he gave me some input here and there and I gave him a lot of input. I don't know, it was a very nice collaboration, it was effortless. We both agreed on what we wanted to do, if he had an idea here I'd write it down very quickly and do it.

Kirchner: And as far as the material it was probably a labor of love just because you were both Ellington and Basie fans...

Mandel: Right...

Kirchner: For many years

Mandel: It was just matter of what he wanted to sing.

Kirchner: Now the Sinatra Record Ring-a-Ding-a-Ding.

To be continued in Part 4.