Johnny Mandel on the West Coast

Interview conducted by Bill Kirchner, April 20–21, 1995 (Smithsonian Oral History)

Bill Kirchner:
Alright, so we get to the point where you got off Basie’s band and moved to California.

Johnny Mandel:
Yeah. It’s really the beginning of a whole other phase.

Kirchner:
That’s the end of ’53, right?

Mandel:
Yeah.

Kirchner:
One of the first things you did when you got there was some string charts for Chet Baker.

Mandel:
That’s right. I also did some things for the Dave Pell Octet, which was good, and then some string charts for Chet Baker. I still knew very little about string writing.

Kirchner:
It was a very small string section.

Mandel:
Yeah.

Kirchner:
About eight players.

Mandel:
And the guys weren’t all that great. Later, maybe a year or so afterward, we did some things with just four cellos with Chet. I don’t like writing for small string sections. They don’t sound good.

Kirchner:
You can only voice them so much before they get thin.

Mandel:
Exactly. I tried writing thinner to get more lines, but it still didn’t sound good.

Kirchner:
How did you meet Chet?

Mandel:
I think Dick Bock set that up. I met Dick when I was getting my card. When I came back to town, he and Woody Woodward grabbed me to do a lot of work. Getting started in California was very tough then. I came in with a New York reputation but no work and no connections, and I was never good at that kind of thing.

Kirchner:
Did you have a plan to get into film writing?

Mandel:
I thought I had a way into Warner Brothers, but I didn’t. I really kicked myself for leaving Basie. I shouldn’t have done it. But I was writing more and more and playing less, and I was getting worse as a player. I realized you can’t do both full-time. Eventually you have to choose. Writing always pulled me away from playing.

Billy Byers did both very well for a while, but almost everyone stops playing. Bob Brookmeyer was another exception. He was miraculous — a great trombonist and a great writer. There was only one of him.

Kirchner:
Al Cohn stopped playing for years.

Mandel:
He didn’t really play his best until he gave up writing. I hated to see that. I begged him to keep writing, but he had spent years raising a family and writing music he didn’t like. After his eye surgery, he was out of music for a while. When he came back with Elliott Lawrence, that was his return. Once he put everything into playing, he became extraordinary.

Kirchner:
Back in L.A., you wrote four string charts for Chet Baker — “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” “I Love You,” “The Wind,” and “Love.”

Mandel:
I actually finished the bridge on “The Wind.”

Kirchner:
You used alto flute on that record.

Mandel:
I guess I needed something lower than regular flute. It never struck me as unusual at the time. I always loved the way Bud Shank played it. He was my favorite flute player.

Kirchner:
Chet also recorded your tune “Tommyhawk.”

Mandel:
That’s right. He recorded a couple of my tunes.

Kirchner:
Did you know Chet well?

Mandel:
Yeah. He was still a kid. A nice kid. What a musician — and a wonderful singer. A natural.

After Chet left town, I started working with Jack Sheldon. We did a lot together and had a lot of laughs.

Kirchner:
When you scored The Sandpiper, I heard you wrote “Miles” on Jack Sheldon’s trumpet part.

Mandel:
I might have. I was going after that sound. I heard it with the scenery in the movie. But I didn’t copy Gil Evans.

Jack was underrated. There was only one Jack Sheldon.

Kirchner:
He even starred in a TV sitcom.

Mandel:
A funny guy. He and Joe Maini were hysterical together.

Joe Mondragon was my bass player for a long time. A great bass player and a wonderful man. Once, after Jack got punched at a dance, Joe pulled a gun from his bass case, went to the mic, and said, “You hit a trumpet player in the mouth. That’s a mortal sin.” Then Jack woke up and said, “She can stay.”

That story probably doesn’t belong on tape.

Kirchner:
Joe Mondragon was Apache, right?

Mandel:
All Apache. Don’t mess with him.

He apparently introduced Miles to Concierto de Aranjuez, which led to Sketches of Spain. That wouldn’t surprise me.

Kirchner:
How well did you know Miles?

Mandel:
Not well. We were never in the same place at the same time. I moved north of Malibu in 1970 and didn’t hang much anymore. That’s why I go to festivals and cruises — I need to be with the guys.

Once you’re a road rat, it gets in you. Jazz musicians are like brothers. There’s a kinship that nobody else shares.

Kirchner:
It’s an era that’s gone.

Mandel:
Yeah. Woody Herman once said, “You make younger friends, or one day you don’t have any friends left.” That’s absolutely true.

Kirchner:
Just before you stopped playing, you worked with Zoot Sims at The Haig.

Mandel:
That was the last work I did. I played bass trumpet with Zoot and Jimmy Rowles. It was wonderful, but I didn’t want to play anymore. I knew I had to become a full-time writer.

I put the horn down and never missed it — except when I hear a big band. I miss being part of the section sound. As a soloist, it became frustrating because I couldn’t play what I heard.

Kirchner:
Chico Hamilton wanted you to join his group?

Mandel:
I don’t remember that at all.

But I’ll be honest — I was never a convert to West Coast jazz. I thought it was a weaker cousin to East Coast jazz. I liked living on the West Coast, but the music didn’t hit me the same way. After Basie, everything else sounded pale.

Kirchner:
What about Shelly Manne?

Mandel:
A wonderful drummer, but not a great big band drummer. He was the tastiest drummer I ever knew and had the best sense of sound. You never had to write a part for Shelly.

But Mel Lewis, Papa Jo Jones, Sid Catlett — those were big band drummers. Shelly was a great small-band drummer. Taste is the arbiter of greatness.

Count Basie had taste like no one else. Tiny Kahn had it. Sweets Edison had it. Mel Lewis had it.

Kirchner:
Did you write “Just a Child” for Bill Perkins?

Mandel:
Yes. Stan Getz later recorded it — something I didn’t realize until much later. It was perfect for him.

Kirchner:
Hal McKusick recorded “Tommyhawk.”

Mandel:
I guess he did. This must be what dying is like — your whole life flashing before your eyes.

Johnny Mandel On Composing and Arranging for Film, Television, and Recordings

Interview conducted by Larry Fisher, September 23, 1996 (Originally presented at the IAJE Conference, Long Beach, CA, January 2002)

Johnny Mandel:
I didn’t do a movie for about four years. I really did everything else first. I wrote arrangements for many singers including Peggy Lee, Andy Williams, and Frank Sinatra. I also wrote for many acts that worked in Las Vegas. I even worked there for a while and basically did everything musically that it took to write for the movies.

I really wasn’t interested in doing movies until I reluctantly took on the challenge. I soon discovered that my previous experience with casino shows was very similar to working with the visual effect of dancers in Broadway shows. In New York, at WMGM, I wrote for radio dramas and had to make the music fit time intervals that were predetermined down to the second. When I got into movies, all of the individual skills I developed had to be used together, and it felt totally natural.

The first movie I was involved in was in 1958. It was I Want to Live!

Larry Fisher:
What a great movie and a great way to start.

Mandel:
It was good, and I said, “Hey, I like this kind of work.”

Fisher:
How did the jazz music fit into the whole scheme of the movie?

Mandel:
It was interesting because we had a story that really worked with a jazz score — one of the few I’ve ever seen. The female lead, played by Susan Hayward, was a jazz fan and loved Gerry Mulligan. Jack Lewis, a producer at United Artists, got the deal and called me to work on the movie.

His plan had two parts. First, I wrote the music for the film using a small jazz group that included Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, Bud Shank, Red Mitchell, Pete Jolly, Frank Rosolino, and Shelly Manne. I wrote all the tunes and arrangements. Later, we recorded another version of the score using a much larger wind ensemble — still no strings.

I wrote the score entirely with jazz material but used traditional movie technique, timing everything down to a tenth of a second. Bending jazz into dramatic situations felt right because the concept of the story was sound. It was probably the first all-jazz movie score, and it worked because the material was right for it.

People later wanted me to write jazz scores for other movies, but I declined. The scripts weren’t compatible with jazz, and I didn’t want it to sound like a shotgun wedding.

Fisher:
What came next?

Mandel:
The Americanization of Emily and then The Sandpiper.

I didn’t really become a songwriter until that time. I had written instrumental music and never thought of myself as a songwriter, but I was forced into writing a song that became “Emily.” They liked the theme music and asked me to make a song out of it. I said I didn’t write lyrics and that we needed a lyricist. They asked who I wanted, and I said, “Let’s start at the top — Johnny Mercer.”

He wrote the lyrics, and “Emily” became a hit. That was back when publishers aggressively promoted songs. I didn’t become a songwriter for money; I enjoyed the satisfaction and working with great people.

The next project was The Sandpiper. “The Shadow of Your Smile,” with lyrics by Paul Webster, won the Academy Award, a GRAMMY®, and Song of the Year. I also collaborated with Paul on “A Time for Love,” which was also nominated for an Academy Award.

Fisher:
What other films did you work on?

Mandel:
Being There, The Verdict, Deathtrap, Point Blank, The Russians Are Coming, and of course MASH*. The “Theme from MAS*H” is my biggest song, but certainly not my best effort.

Fisher:
How did “Suicide Is Painless” come about?

Mandel:
I had worked with Robert Altman before on That Cold Day in the Park. When he started MASH*, he asked me to write the music. There was a scene called “the last supper” where the dentist plans to commit suicide. Bob said the scene was dead and needed a song — “the stupidest damn song you ever heard.”

He came up with the title “Suicide Is Painless” and asked his fourteen-year-old son, Michael Altman, to write the lyrics. Michael wrote them quickly to a dummy melody. I later wrote the final melody. The song was prerecorded and then used under the helicopter shots at the beginning of the film. I argued that it didn’t fit there. They liked it and kept it. I’m glad I lost that fight.

For television, the lyrics were removed and it became the “Theme from MASH.” It turned into the biggest hit of my career.

Fisher:
You arranged Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable album. How did the duets work?

Mandel:
We jokingly called it “necrophilia tricks.” Natalie had been performing duets with film clips of her father in nightclubs. That became the genesis for the record.

We used a three-track tape machine. Nat’s voice was isolated enough that we could build new arrangements around it without conflicts. When Natalie sang alone, we muted Nat’s track. When they sang together, we combined her live voice with his recorded voice. It was eerie and very emotional. Natalie’s mother was in the studio and broke down in tears.

Fisher:
Any other stories?

Mandel:
Dave Grusin and I wrote for Andy Williams’s television show. Andy had extraordinary ears. I tried to fool him with impossible modulations and never once succeeded. He always nailed it.

Fisher:
What advice would you give students interested in film or television music?

Mandel:
You’d better want it badly. You’ll have to put up with a lot of crap. Paying your dues is how you learn. Getting good means falling on your ass, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. There are no shortcuts.

No film composer is fully in charge. Too many amateurs make bad decisions. That’s why I don’t want to do films anymore. It would have to be a very special situation.

Television? No. Absolutely not.

Fisher:
If you could do things over?

Mandel:
I’d get to know people better. When you’re young, you think everything will be here forever. I thought big bands would be forever.

Fisher:
What are you working on now?

Mandel:
I want to make records of my own songs and write big band arrangements and lush orchestra scores. I’m not worrying about selling them. I’ll just do what I enjoy. If someone wants it later, great. If not, I’ll still have enjoyed doing it.

I was lucky. I enjoyed every minute of it.