think, Frank, as a singer." Sinatra was silent for a moment, then said, "Yes, but it's very good for her to get her education first, Vincenzo." Vincent DeRosa nodded. "Yes, Frank," he said, and then he said, "Well, good night, Frank." "Good night, Vincenzo." The exchange was given renewed exposure by Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Alex Ross in his book Listen to This. In the chapter "Edges of Pop," Ross highlights the famous article and calls the exchange between DeRosa and Sinatra "The sweetest moment in Gay Talese’s classic Esquire profile." One reason for DeRosa's appearance on so many of Sinatra's albums is that DeRosa was the preferred first horn for Sinatra's frequent collaborator Nelson Riddle (Riddle's biographer refers to DeRosa as a "horn player extraordinaire"). As an example of Riddle's esteem for DeRosa, he chose DeRosa as a featured soloist on the Sinatra album Close to You, an album on which the Hollywood String Quartet and typically one soloist per song accompanied Sinatra. Riddle was deliberate in his choice of sideman, selecting trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison, clarinetist Mahlon Clark, and DeRosa for this project. Work with Henry Mancini While DeRosa might be most closely associated with Frank Sinatra, he is also well known as Henry Mancini's first-call horn player, working with Mancini on at least eight albums and many film scores. The albums included The Music from Peter Gunn, the first album to win the Grammy award for Album of the Year (1959) and was selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The album's title song features famous, difficult-to-execute French horn lines, with DeRosa as first chair. Mancini often composed his themes with a favorite player in mind: "Sometimes when I hear people play, especially if they’re distinctive players, I actually try to incorporate their sound into a particular score." Mancini had Vince DeRosa in mind when he composed his Academy Award-winning theme to the film Days of Wine and Roses: "For the first yawning notes of this score, he was hearing the solid round tone of studio veteran French horn soloist Vince DeRosa, and that became the voice of solitude in the film." This theme won the 1962 Academy Award for best song. Influence DeRosa's impact on studio horn playing was significant, and set a new standard for studio