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During the 60s the fine art of creative orchestration reached new heights. Originally inspired by impressionist composers like Debussy and big band innovators like Ellington, progressive big band arrangers like Don Ellis and Gil Evans, as well as exotica/easy listening composers such as Les Baxter and Henry Mancini, were driven to even more creative tones and colors when the new fangled world of stereo effects opened up even more possibilities. These influences from Mancini and the others then passed on to the world of RnB in the 70s as artists such as Isaac Hayes, Herbie Hancock and EW&F continued to make music in which creative orchestrations played a big part. For Mancini to re-orchestrate some 70s RnB that he may have helped inspire seems like a natural fit, but unfortunately his “Symphonic Soul” album does not live up to expectations. I would have expected Mancini to have a little more cool than this, but his feel for jazzy funk and RnB is disappointingly clumsy.
Mancini certainly picked some great tunes for this endeavor. Herbie’s original “Butterfly” is a modern space lounge masterpiece, and EW&F’s “Sun Goddess” is RnB that aspires to be futuristic progressive big band. The “Sun Goddess” cover is possibly one of the most successful on here with the funky keyboard playing of Joe Sample helping out quite a bit, but the cover of “Butterfly” does nothing new for the tune, and instead seems to drag it down. The only interesting part on this one is Mancini’s ability to re-create Herbie’s string synthesizer sound with his ‘real’ string arrangement. The rest of the tunes on this album can be worse. The title “Symphonic Soul” conjures up cool images of some of the best work by Isaac Hayes and Barry White, but instead, on here ‘symphonic’ often means cheezy classical imitations and ‘soul’ means disco. The cover of AWB’s jazz-funk classic “Pick up the Pieces” probably has kitsch value for collectors of odd instrumental covers, but Manicini’s clumsy strings doubling the bass line kill the groove on this one.
Although Mancini has a hard time picking up the 70s funk vibe, some of the best cuts on here take place on tunes like “Slow Hot Wind” where Mancini’s old school easy listening string swoops make for an interesting and odd mix with the loungey funk rhythms. This album has some good moments, but overall Mancini seems to be out of his element, which is really kind of surprising.
