I have never attempted a music review before, for the simple
reason that I know nothing about music.
Yes, I did travel with the choir in 6th grade, but my duties
were confined to turning the tape recorder on and off. But I will attempt to express some thoughts
on a surprisingly lively soundtrack, to the TV series Mannix.
Frankly, I didn’t know TV series had soundtracks before
Miami Vice or Ally McBeal. Oh sure, I was
familiar with the legendary Henry Mancini score for Peter Gunn, and the
exquisite soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas which answered the question, “Can
Christmas music be jazzy?” But in a
pre-digital, all vinyl age, I wasn’t even aware that TV shows produced
soundtrack albums.
For those of you who don’t remember, Mannix was the story of
a private detective who got beat up a lot (IMBD Trivia says Mannix was knocked
unconscious 55 times in 8 seasons). I
don’t frankly remember it that well, but I do know that it was considered one
of the most violent shows on TV at the time.
I was surprised to see how well thought of it was at awards time—the series
won four Golden Globes including Best Drama and Best Actor (star Mike Connors,
who thankfully stopped using the name “Touch” Connors after a few years in
Hollywood), Gail Fisher won a Supporting Actress Emmy (the fact that a private
eye having an African-American secretary was considered a major step forward
for civil rights is depressing), and it even picked up an Edgar award for Best
Mystery TV series.
The theme music is by Lalo Schifrin, the genius behind one
of the greatest theme songs of all time, Mission Impossible. The Mission Impossible movie series has
jettisoned every vestige of the TV show except those latex masks that allows
anybody to impersonate anyone, and Schifrin’s jazz-infused theme that perfectly
melds with the show’s dynamic pacing. He’s
been nominated for six Oscars and four Emmys, picking up one (and a Grammy) for
Mission Impossible.
The album contains various styles of jazz—the theme and some
early tracks are very kinetic be-bob, there is some Big-Band-sounding numbers
with large brass sections, there are some Kenny G-esque numbers that I imagined
were titled, “Music while Joe Mannix buys groceries” or “Music while Joe Mannix
cleans his apartment.” There are a
couple of up-tempo soundtrack numbers that are possibly titled, “Music while
Joe Mannix tails a kidnapper” or “Music while Joe Mannix gets beaten up by
three underworld goons.”
There is one track on the album I am not sure what to make
of; a progressive, discordant piece that uses electric guitar, Moog
synthesizers, and I think a Theremin. It
starts to segue back to a Big Band sound, then the Moog synthesizer kicks in
and it sounds like Jimi Hendrix on cream-of-wheat (Jimi Hendrix on acid would
sound like . . . Jimi Hendrix). It’s
obviously experimental and I’d be interested in seeing how it was used in the
context of the TV show.
The Mannix Soundtrack is an obvious throwback to when TV was
innovative and unafraid to challenge viewers with a generic detective drama
that had a hoppin’ jazz score. With
scores like this, Peter Gunn and Mission Impossible, I now feel like searching
for other groundbreaking scores from that bygone era of television.
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