NEW YORK, (Reuters):
SINGER MONICA Mancini had a typical American childhood, growing up to the sounds of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - and Matt Munro.
Of course, her father was Oscar-winning movie music composer Henry Mancini, and the likes of Mel Torme, Quincy Jones and Johnny Mercer were frequent visitors to the family home. So the musical choice is not quite so surprising.
However, although Mancini credits her mother Ginny, a studio singer, for helping her follow a musical career, Munro was an important early influence.
"I wore out his LP - This is the Life," she said of the late English singer best known for recording theme songs for the second James Bond feature, From Russia With Love and Born Free, the movie about Elsa the lioness.
"Sure, I listened to Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt too, but Matt Munro...I know nothing about him, but there was something about his voice."
Perhaps it was inevitable Mancini would record an album of film songs, given her love of Munro's singing and her father's legendary catalogue of classic movie music from The Pink Panther to Moon River and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
"When I went to the movies, I always paid attention to the music," she told Reuters at her home overlooking New York's Museum of Modern Art.
The inspiration for her new album, Cinema Paradiso, came when she was asked to sing a mood piece, Senza Fine ,for the movie Ghost Ship.
"It came out better than I expected," she said of the haunting theme.
The album is her third, after a debut disc of standards and another of lesser-known collaborations between her father and Mercer, who had been the Oscar-winning creators of Days of Wine and Roses.
Her new disc includes songs like A Love Before Time, an English lyric for the Chinese film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Summer Knows, from Summer of '42 and Baby Mine, from Dumbo.
The songs were "My choice, right off," she said.
"Alfie, I absolutely wanted to do, The Shadow of Your Smile (from The Sandpiper) I have always liked. Soldier in the Rain (by her father) has haunted me for years."
Cinema Paradiso, the nostalgic film about the movie theatres of post-war Italy, was one of her father's favourite films, she said, recalling that Henry Mancini's family roots were in the Abruzzi region.
"We approached (composer Ennio) Morricone for an English lyric to Cinema Paradiso and he finally agreed." said Mancini's husband, Gregg Field, who produced her album. He wrote the lyric.
"Over the Rainbow, that was Judy Garland's song and there was no way Monica would do that (for the album)," said Field, who sat in on the interview. "But the VP of Concord Records called and said that (chipmaker) Fujitsu wanted Monica to sing Rainbow for an ad.
"Monica did a unique performance and the record company said 'You have to put that on the record'."
Field, who played drums in Frank Sinatra's band for several years, said the choice of songs for the album was limited. "We wanted to include more contemporary music, but the quality after about 1980 started dwindling."
Film music nowadays is run by music supervisors and their aim is to compile a pop catalogue soundtrack or CD of hits that sometimes have little to do with the plot or atmosphere of a film.
A KNACK
Mancini's dad had a knack for writing film music that was appropriate to the mood of the story, and also a pop hit.
Monica Mancini did not always want to be a solo singer, despite growing up in Los Angeles in the shadow of the movie studios and one of the greatest Hollywood composers.
"Henry Mancini was always in the background and I didn't always realise it growing up. It's only later you appreciate it," she said. "I only realised he did something important when he came home one day with two Oscars."
Her father was nominated 18 times for Academy Awards and won four Oscar statuettes - for the score of Breakfast at Tiffany's and the song Moon River from that film, as well as for Days of Wine and Roses from the movie of the same name and the adapted score for Victor/Victoria.
"He would go to work at Universal Studios like any other dad. We knew he wrote music but we (twin sister and older brother) were pretty oblivious to his fame early on," said Mancini, a slender brunette with a ready smile.
PIANO LESSONS
All three Mancini children sang on their father's recordings. "He was always encouraging and we all did piano lessons with Mr Schumann," she recalled.
"I remember Quincy (Jones) or Mel (Torme) would come over to the home, and of course Johnny Mercer (who collaborated with Mancini). But Sinatra hung with a different crowd.
"There were lots of parties and people would come and sing, but Dad wouldn't sit at the piano. Mel would be singing, he loved to sing."
Her mother was a studio singer in Los Angeles on a variety of recordings and live television shows in the 1950s and 60s.
"She used to take my sister and I to shows after school and one I remember is the Red Skelton show on CBS," said Mancini, who is planning to hit the road next year for concerts in major United States cities.
"We would see the whole process and it looked like what I wanted to do. I was not inspired to write or compose. I was a studio singer until Dad passed away."
That was in 1994. "I knew all the things dad did with Blake Edwards and when dad got ill, they asked me to go on tour.
"When you're a studio singer, you do what they tell you - rock 'n roll, opera - so you don't really know what your voice is. It has taken me this long to find my voice."
However, despite singing on hundreds of recordings as back-up or on advertising jingles, Mancini was terrified the first time she was in front of an audience.
"I did a gig for a couple of weeks at Feinstein's (a club in New York) and it was more demanding. It was hard to get past all the eyes (looking at you.)
"I was terrified the first time (I did a solo show), especially after Dad died and I sang his songs. It got very emotional, it was a difficult couple of years.
"Moon River, now that was my biggest challenge, because I had heard the song so many times."
