From the moving Moon River to the groovy Pink Panther, Henry Mancini mastered the emotional connections between the music and the audience to create an incomparable body of jazz-infused tunes. Henry was born on April 16, 1924, in Cleveland, Ohio, to a pair of Italian immigrants: Quinto and Anna Pece Mancini.

When he was 4, the new family moved to Aliquippa, Penn., outside Pittsburgh. Quinto was a steel worker who played the flute in a local Italian American band, and it was he who insisted that his son take up music.