Shelly Manne - Daktari

From 1968 here's Shelly Manne "conducting and performing his original music for the hit TV show." That show would be Daktari.

I was a kid when Daktari was on TV and I don't remember much about it except that it was a big favorite of mine and they rode around in jeeps with seats mounted to the front fender for lassoing rhinos and other large African plains mammals. As an adult, I'm taking an easy guess that the TV show was based on John Wayne's Hatari! movie which also featured jeeps that had seats mounted to the front fender for lassoing rhinos, giraffes etc etc.

When I was about ten or twelve, I had a big pile of model car parts that came from several different kits. I think that my modus operandi at that time was to get the model kit, open it up and promptly scatter and lose most of the parts all over our play area. I distinctly remember one day taking a Pontiac Firebird convertible body (ca 1968), painting it in zebra camo and frankensteining together my own Daktari style hot rod. I gave it big off road tires, a roll bar, a blower sticking through the hood and, of course, a seat mounted on the left front fender. That's how much I apparently loved that show! But enough about me...

Shelly Manne was a known and respected jazz conductor and drummer when he agreed to compose and record the music for this TV show. Its a VERY good LP and most all of the tracks fit extremely well with 70s exotica and a few would even mix well with the Classics from the 50s and 60s.

Those chimps: aren't they so cute?

Shelly Manne - Daktari