Career
Mann was able to play the piano by ear, at the age of 4, and by age 13, he was playing around Philadelphia. He attended the Curtis Institute of Music, where, when Mann was graduating, Leonard Bernstein, was entering, and the two men became friends. In 1939, he changed his name from Freedman to Mann for the WCAU radio station's Mann-Irwin Show.
In late 1939, Mann moved to New York and became a Decca Records session musician. He was in Charley Spivak's orchestra until 1941. He also worked with the Jimmy Dorsey band, singer Gordon Macrae, and Artie Shaw's orchestra. All the while, Mann was composing, and had an office in the Brill Building.
During World War II, Mann joined the United States Army. Upon his discharge from the Army in 1945, they had the honor of placing Mann as personal pianist to President Truman.
Mann appeared in the films: Twenty Grand, I Dood It, Four Jills and A Jeep, Pin-Up Girl, and (during his Artie Shaw days) Second Chorus. He went to Hollywood, California in the 1950s where he composed the scores for three Disney Nature Series films, - The Living Desert, Water Birds and Seal Island.
One of Mann's hits "There I've Said it Again" - the Bobby Vinton version of 1963 - was the last #1 in the United States before the British Invasion. It was knocked off the top spot by The Beatles' song "I Want to Hold Your Hand". Thereafter his songwriting career fizzled away and he left the music industry.
David Mann died in March 2002 from complications due to pneumonia and kidney failure.
Read more about this topic: David Mann (songwriter)
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