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If you are a ballroom dancer, Moon River is the song that evokes the romantic dreams that all that practice effort required. The man was a genius. even when I'm dancing with some little pint size over-bearing jerk, I can always dream that I'm in the arms of a real man when they play that or "Around the World".
More good Mancini, long available on LP and other disks, now in a nice collection.
This CD not only has some of the best of Mancini but the arrangements are easy to listen to while in traffic, at home or anywhere. Buy it.
However, the mix of this particular CD is simply too average. First, I really like Mancini's music generally and I am really concerned that he may be one of the greats of American music who will soon be forgotten if he hasn't been already. (US music schools tend to be a little snobby and don't give a number of truly great American composers their due). Many good songs are not on it and some weak ones are. I would not recommend this CD except to ManciniPhiles like me.
Henry Mancini gave us so much of our consciousness of the 1960s and 1970s, and yet was "out" almost as soon as he was "in."His work became synonymous with much-despised "elevator music" in the later 1960s. This stereotype (or monotype, for his earliest works) can mislead.For example, "Lujon" [not in this collection] was used in a movie just last year to exemplify mystery and an exotic atmosphere.Mancini dies way too young. While some would argue that he'd become a self-parody, his innate gifts compromised by relentless commercialization, you cannot take away his lasting gift to our culture. He was an original, and he captured an essence of our collective experience.He's here in this collection, waiting round the bend, my Huckleberry friend.
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