TT 531: Lalo Schifrin

and his peers

Johnny Mandel passed away in 2020; the Henry Mancini centennial was last year; Lalo Schifrin died yesterday at 93.

All three could play jazz professionally, all were good tunesmiths, all were possessed of a kind of instinctive genius when it came to orchestration. (In Hollywood, orchestration really matters!) In every case there is a huge discography with a few lucky hit tunes—mostly from the 1960s—accompanied by seemingly endless hackwork done on deadline.

Those few hit tunes are part of the fabric of humanity, rare moments when something truly popular has idiosyncrasy and complexity. For some, this the peak of their listening sophistication; for others, they are gateway drugs.

We need these hits. We need them desperately. Those three helped raise the musical IQ of American society!

On the other side is the idealistic perspective: “What could they have done if they hadn’t been so successful in a commercial industry?” There wasn’t a lot of obvious deeper engagement with the blend of jazz, classical, and pop that made the hits. There didn’t seem to be a profound late style or worthy final masterpieces. There was mostly just answering the phone, negotiating the contract, and turning out what the producer wanted—all the while making the kind of money that most composers or jazz pianists could only dream of making. (After he passed away, Mandel’s Malibu midcentury compound with five bedrooms and servant quarters was listed at $23.4 million, while YouTube offers a glimpse “Inside Henry Mancini’s $11.6 Million Malibu Home.”)

In the end, being a huge success in Hollywood doesn’t seem to help one be either a jazz pianist or a composer.

Still, we remain eternally grateful for their monumental contribution to everyday musical life. The three in competitive creative juxtaposition:

Johnny Mandel was the most sophisticated and competent. He could write in any style, and also contributed the best standards (“The Shadow of Your Smile” alone). His score to Point Blank is a modernist masterpiece.

Henry Mancini made the best records. Each detail is a jewel. Sensational easy listening. Mancini kept up with the times in impressive fashion; his themes from the 1980s like Newhart are still good.

Lalo Schifrin wrote one of the greatest pieces of “danger jazz” in history, the theme to Mission: Impossible! (The only other contender for top slot is the James Bond theme by Monty Norman and John Barry.) Schifrin’s score to Dirty Harry is his modernist masterpiece: those disembodied vocals over fierce funk rhythm section are unforgettable. Schifrin was the most competent instrumentalist, playing jazz piano at high level with Dizzy Gillespie and others. (At this early stage of his career, the Argentinian Schifrin was an early international exchange student of jazz, proving that anyone from anywhere on the globe could contribute to the music.)

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Is writing a good melody the most challenging thing to do? Maybe so. Some of Lalo Schifrin’s tunes border on the hopelessly banal: The great Steve McQueen movie The Cincinnati Kid is actively harmed by Schifrin’s title song, an uninspired square ditty in 12/8 that even Ray Charles can’t save.

However, Schifrin certainly could also come up with a memorable theme on occasion. “Danube Incident,” a cue for Mission: Impossible!, had a bit of a resurgence around the turn of the century when it provided the framework for the Portishead hit “Sour Times.”

Ben Street and Reid Anderson both called my attention to this track; for a moment The Bad Plus even considered covering “Sour Times.” But my deeper interest was caught by the source, which I found hopelessly addictive.

Tootie Heath was a straight-ahead drummer supreme, but he also liked to listen to rock, pop, and funk in the car. When Ben and I presented him with “Danube Incident,” Tootie loved it right away. Plastic silverware was placed inside the piano to emulate the sound of Schifrin’s cimbalom, and we turned Tootie’s incomparable cross-stick up in the mix.

Tootie later told me that of all the records that he made, his family members liked Tootie’s Tempo, especially “Danube Incident.”