Crime jazz

Crime jazz is the body of jazz composed for crime films and detective television from the late 1940s through the 1960s, when composers fused big band and small-combo jazz with noir atmosphere. *Elmer Bernstein*'s score for "The Man with the Golden Arm", *Henry Mancini*'s music for "Peter Gunn" and *Alex North*'s "A Streetcar Named Desire" established its language of minor-key themes, walking bass, muted brass and sudden orchestral stabs. Though written as underscoring, crime jazz produced enduring standalone albums and permanently linked the sound of jazz to urban danger, smoke and neon.