John Alfred Mandel was 94 years old when he left us, and he led an incredible, full life in the professional music world from his teen years to his death. He loved to encourage young composers; he would go up to an arranger at a music presentation and tell him/her that he enjoyed their work.
He also had one of the most incredible memories of anyone I’ve ever met. I once told him that I was working on a Neal Hefti fakebook and was delighted to correct a credit for something Neal wrote that had been listed as written by someone else. When I told him that it was written for the Buddy Rich big band ca. 1946, he asked the name of the piece. When I told him “Great Moment,” he proceeded to play the piece at the piano, even though Neal told me that Buddy rarely if ever played it. I was shocked, and Johnny told me that that was nothing; he remembered vividly music he heard at five.
Of course Mandel is remembered for his many film scores, and particularly for his songs, many of which are classics, and he had the awards to prove it (I got to hold an Oscar in his studio). He told me that he had written concert music (he mentioned a string quartet), but nothing excited him more than writing a good song.
Mandel was a prodigy who studied arranging with Van Alexander, and was playing in professional bands when he was a teenager during WWII, playing trumpet, bass trumpet and trombone with Billie Rogers, Boyd Raeburn, Buddy Rich, Alvino Rey, Georgie Auld, and Count Basie. After he left that band, he told me his playing days were over. “I couldn’t go any higher than Basie.”
For Raeburn, he arranged:
- Magic is the Moonlight
- How Deep is the Ocean
- An original, The Eagle Flies
For Buddy Rich, Route 66.
The Artie Shaw Orchestra from 1949–50 didn’t last long, but it was one of Shaw’s best bands. I cannot leave out a beautifully written piece that Mandel wrote called Innuendo.
He also arranged:
- So in Love — the vocalist is Pat Lockwood
- Love is the Sweetest Thing
Mandel was one of the musicians who hung out at Gil Evans’s apartment during 1949, and was invited to contribute to Miles Davis’s Nonet, but he wanted to establish residency in Los Angeles, although he would arrange for TV shows in New York later. He was busy writing for small groups during the 1950s.
- Bud Shank/Bob Brookmeyer — Low Life
- Hal McKusick Octet — Tommyhawk
- Hoagy Carmichael — Baltimore Oriole
For the soundtrack of The James Dean Story, Mandel arranged Leith Stevens’s composition Jimmy’s Theme.
For vocalist David Allyn, A Sure Thing
1958 was the year Mandel composed the music to I Want to Live, a landmark film score which fully established using jazz as dramatic music. Mandel was now in demand for film work, but continued arranging music until his death.
We continue in Part II to explore his post-1960 arranging work.
[Ed. note: Johnny Mandel presented a wonderful ASMAC masterclass in 2010. ]
