I Want To Live - Johnny Mandel

 

I Want To Live

Johnny Mandel's Great Jazz Score

I Want To Live!

Featuring Shelly Manne, Jack Sheldon, Bill Holman & Frank Rosolino

United Artists UAS-5005

1958

From the back cover: The slight, brown-bearded young man on the podium wearily picked up his jacket, slung it across an arm and walked toward the exit, a singular expression of tired satisfaction etched on his face.

Behind, already in the can, was his freshly dubbed underscore to Walter Wanger's shocking drama of life and death of Barbara Graham, I Want To Live! In sum it represents the most exacting and brilliant music in the career of composer John Mandel.

"This was a very tough picture to write," he remarked a little later as he relaxed in a nearby restaurant. "There are scenes that required very careful handling. The preparations in the gas chamber, for example. And the execution itself... The nightmare sequence, in particular, was difficult to handle dramatically."

Then he smiled and confessed, "There were so many short cues and dissolves, I nearly lost my mind. To show you what I mean, there's one scene in which Perkins, the accomplice, collapses a house of cards on the table after Barbara tells him she's to be married. At that point I had to cover the developments of a year-and-a-half in 40 seconds of music!"

While a composer's technical adroitness is no small factor in motion picture work, the content of what he writes is an underscore must, in the final analysis, determine his true worth as a creative artist.

Because Johnny Mandel is a creative jazz musician, there is no room in his scheme of reference for the trite and imitative. What he has accomplished in his contribution to the film – the music contained between these covers – is to bring to motion picture background music a new dynamic dimension – American jazz.

This underscore and source music is not the pseudo-jazz of prior attempts by more established movie composers to lend added excitement and tension to dramatic action. In conception, feeling and execution Mandel's music is jazz – from the opening measures of the main title to the final closing climax.

In short, John Mandel, at 32, has made musical history. No composer writing for films before him has employed the jazz idiom to such telling effect in integrating music and dramatic action.

While those who have seen the film will undoubtedly derive most enjoyment from this album, the music can solidly stand on its own artistic merits as modern jazz to be listened to apart from the medium for which it was composed. In itself this is a rarity for movie soundtrack albums.

"Two tracks of special interest, I think," pointed out the composer in discussing the recording, "are numbers five and six – the scenes in which Barbara surrenders after much tailing and a stakeout by the police. There are five drummers in that position, and they're playing everything in the world!"

Warming to the subject, he continued, "A point worth noting is that throughout the picture, the drums represents the forces of law and order. Consequently, when there is primary actions on camera, such as the scene where Santo beats Barbara before giving himself up, the drums in the background keep reminding the audience that the cops are just outside, the building surrounded."

For the record, those hard-working drummers on the side of the law are Shelly Manne (standard drums), Larry Bunker (rhythm logs, cowbells and claves), Mel Lewis (scratcher and cowbells), Milt Holland (chromatic drums, cowbells, Chinese and Burmese gongs) and Latin specialist Mike Pacheco (bongos and conga drums). 

"A really knotty problem," according to Johnny,  "was musical treatment of the gas chamber preparations and the execution itself. You know, Bob Wise, the director, fought for music in those scenes. At first, I didn't want to write anything for them. Then, I saw Bob's point. So I wrote score to be played at a very low level, using the instruments in their freak registers. Reason for this is simply that at this point you have the audience. There's no need for thunder and lighting."

A measure of the composer's imagination in scoring the difficult sequences leading to the actual execution (shown with detailed and chilling realism) may be gathered from his choice of unorthodox instrumentation. From the point in the story where Barbara and her "accomplices" are convicted there appear in the underscore such offbeat horns as E flat clarinet, contrabass clarinet, contra bassoon, bass trumpet and bass flute.

Effectively supplementing the "blowing" combo jazz that is heard as source music throughout most of the film (available in a separate album on United Artists LP UAS-5006, Mandel employed solo voices constantly as part of the underscore to the almost total exclusion of large orchestral tuttis. Virtually, the cream of the current crop of jazzmen active on the west coast, the soloists are – Bill Holman, tenor and baritone saxes; Joe Maini, alto; Jack Sheldon, trumpet; Frank Rosolino, trombone; Russ Freeman, piano; Larry Bunker, vibes and drums; Harry Klee, flute and piccolo; Abe Most, E flat clarinet; Al Hendrickson, guitar; Red Mitchell, bass and Shelly Manne, drums.

Bongoist Mike Pacheco, in addition to his constant work on the soundtrack, is seen playing during the San Diego party scene.

In the welter of boisterousness at the unrestrained party, much fine jazz blowing by Maini and Sheldon is drowned. Through exciting to view, happily the party bedlam is absent on the record!

It will be noted that the music in this album does not consecutively follow the filmed action.

"I think the purpose is pretty obvious," explained Mandel. "At the end, the music is very depressing – hardly a note on which to conclude an album... (Matter of fact, when I was writing for the gas chamber and execution scenes, I'd be so depressed at the end of the day that I'd rush home and throw on the turntable the happiest music in my record collection.) In the album, however, I assembled the various tracks reasonably in sequence." 

Abruptly reverting to the execution scene, Mandel commented, "Harry Klee is beautiful here." He's playing piccolo, down in the instrument's lowest register. You'll notice that it doesn't even sound like a piccolo... almost like someone's dying gasp."

In just tribute the composer noted, "It was primarily through the imagination of the director, Robert Wise, that we had a jazz score at all. And so much credit, too, must go to Jack Lewis, who was music advisor on the picture.

"Oh! And where would a composer be without good editing and sound mixing? I know I'd've been lost without having on my side Byron Chudnow, the editor, and Vinton Vernon, who engineered all the recording. Y'know, it's pretty obvious that credit for the music end of this production by no means belongs to just one man.

"From now on," declared Mandel emphatically, "I want to be associated with a high-quality product – perhaps one, two pictures a year. After all, "he shrugged, music isn't sausages, is it? And how much money do I need to make, anyway?"

This ex-Count Basie arranger-trombonist, who says he is "...studying electronics intensively" to help him in the future recording of his music, is justifiably proud of his inspired score for I Want To Live! At the suggestion that the music is more than a good bet for an Academy Award in 1959, he shrugs fatalistically.

"This is the first time I've gotten credit for something important I've done," he smiles. "A composer is what I am – and, in a way, that's really enough." – John Tynan - Associate Editor (West Coast) - Down Beat Magazine

Main Title

Poker Game

San Diego Party

Henry Leaves

Stakeout

Barbara Surrenders

Trio Convicted

Peg's Visit

Gas Chamber Unveiling

Nightmare Sequence 

Preparations For Execution

Letter Writing Sequence

The Last Mile 

Death Scene

End Title