Peter Gunn
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Peter Gunn was an American private eye television series which aired on the NBC and later ABC television networks from 1958 to 1961. The show's creator (and also writer and director on occasion) was Blake Edwards. A total of 114 thirty-minute episodes were produced.
Music
The show's use of modern jazz music, at a time when most television shows used a generic, uninspired orchestra for the background, was another distinctive touch that set the standard for many years to come. Innovative jazz themes seemed to accompany every move Gunn made, ably rendered by Henry Mancini and his orchestra (which at that time included John Williams), lending the character even more of an air of suave sophistication. Most memorable of all was the show's opening (and closing) theme, composed and performed by Mancini. A hip, bluesy, brassy number with an insistent piano-and-bass line, the song became an instant hit for Mancini, earning him an Emmy Award and two Grammys, and became as associated with crime fiction as Monty Norman's theme to the James Bond films is associated with espionage. Today, many people with no knowledge of the original show still can identify the theme.
The Boston University Pep Band, of Boston University in Boston Massachusetts, plays the Peter Gunn theme when the Terrier Hockey team comes out onto the ice
