Thrift Store Vinyl: Music from Peter Gunn

Peter Gunn was a TV series that ran from 1958 to 1961 on NBC and later ABC.  The main character was Peter Gunn, a private detective, who enjoyed cool jazz music.  According to wikipedia, 114 episodes of the show were made. 

While the show lives on in late night reruns, it is best known for Henry Mancini's theme music.  Like my all time favorite show, Miami Vice, Peter Gunn made music an integral part of the show.  However, I first heard the Peter Gunn theme playing the SpyHunter arcade game in the early 1980s.  I was really excited to find this Peter Gunn sound track album at Goodwill for about 79 cents.

If you'd like to hear a bit of the music, check out this YouTube video:

If you'd like to see the TV series, you can find it on Hulu or order the DVD set:



Overall, it's a really cool addition to my vinyl collection.  It was a fun Goodwill find.  However, if you can't wait to strike thrift store gold, you can get the Peter Gunn soundtrack music, Amazon has it in MP3, CD, and Vinyl formats.

The Best and Worst of My 77 Cent Vinyl Albums

When vinyl record albums are cheap, you can experiment and take some risks. So far, I've bought less than a dozen vinyl LPs. Most of the albums that I have purchased have been classical music. But, don't worry. I'm not going to get all snooty. My primary criteria for buying a classical record is that it "kick ass." If you can't fire rockets from a helicopter and level a third world village to the music, I don't want it.

Using that criteria, so far, I like the soundtrack to the old movie: "Blue Max." At least, the album cover is kick ass!

My worst album I've bought so far was the "Smokey and the Bandit II" soundtrack. First of all, it's country and second of all it's for a movie sequel so the music is very derivative. One song is a total rip-off of "Southbound and Down" from the original movie.

In truth, I bought this album on the same day as my record player.  I needed a disc to see if it would work. At least, it wasn't Lawrence Welk and it wasn't scratched.