Even among the giants of the orchestra business, Neal Hefti was special. Over just three decades, the composer-arranger turned out masterful bop, swing and film charts with a distinctly jaunty and jovial feel. In the 1940s, his Repetition (1947) for Norman Granz and his bop charts for Harry James' band in 1949 are perfect examples. In the 1950s, his Verve and Roulette arrangements for Count Basie re-imagined the famed swing band—dropping a new, sportier, finger-snapping engine into the orchestra's instrumental chassis.
As for the '60s, Hefti's film scores gracefully crystallized the young-adult mood of those years. Like Henry Mancini, Hefti knew how to write simple, catchy melodies and bring strings together with horns and reeds in a way that kept the music hip and light. While Mancini's scores were always distinctly West Coast, Hefti's film music always remind me of New York. Or put differently, virtually all of Hefti's arrangements were for salty mating-game comedies that took place in New York.
So when I hear those scores, I always think of the city when cab colors were cherry and lime, buses were burnt orange and green, corners were occupied by hot dog counters, and, if you wanted a plane ticket, you bought one at the retail counters of different airlines located at street level on posh Fifth Ave.
The characters in almost all of Hefti's movies were on the make. Guys wore Kennedy-blue suits, women wore stoles and form-fitting white dresses. Older men wore hats, older women carried small dogs and everyone knew how to mix a perfect Manhattan. As for the music, it almost always sailed in like a vermouth mist.
So which are my favorite Hefti film scores? And how good are they really? I think you may be surprised:
JazzWax note: And don't forget the Hefti scores for Synanon, Batman, Dual at Diablo, Oh Dad Poor Dad, Last of the Red Hot Lovers and A New Leaf. All have catchy themes either in waltz or swing time.
As for impact, I'm sure Hefti's '60s movie scores helped prep my taste for jazz, which kicked in by the late '60s. Neal Hefti, Lalo Schifrin and Henry Mancini—but Hefti most of all.
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Speaking of Neal Hefti, I was digitizing some of my LP's and came across a Woody Herman LP w/notes by Herman. He says that in Caldonia, there is a key change in the middle at the end of the piano solo, which leads into the famous trumpet riff. Apparently the riff was written by Hefti for another arrangement in the Herman book and they decided to insert it into Caldonia instead. Since the riff was written in another key, they had to modulate Caldonia to that key in order to insert it into the arrangement.
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Marc Myers writes frequently on music and the arts for the Wall Street Journal. He is author of "Why Jazz Happened" (University of California Press). In 2012, JazzWax was named the Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year."
Quit with the nostalgia, Marc. You're making me cry... ;-)
Posted by: Grover Gardner | November 11, 2011 at 12:24 AM
Speaking of Neal Hefti, I was digitizing some of my LP's and came across a Woody Herman LP w/notes by Herman. He says that in Caldonia, there is a key change in the middle at the end of the piano solo, which leads into the famous trumpet riff. Apparently the riff was written by Hefti for another arrangement in the Herman book and they decided to insert it into Caldonia instead. Since the riff was written in another key, they had to modulate Caldonia to that key in order to insert it into the arrangement.
Posted by: Brett Gold | November 11, 2011 at 11:36 AM