Henry Mancini performs the legendary “Peter Gunn Theme” on the Steve Allen show circa 1983 or thereabouts, with friends Pete Candoli, Conte Candoli, Carl Fontana, Jerome Richardson, and Plas Johnson –

The iconic theme has inspired, been used, or been covered by… just about everybody, from The B-52s, to a Monty Python sketch, to a just-fooling-around Monkees version to a rather flat cover by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. I expect much hate mail from prog-rock fans, but it’s really not that great a cover. Deal with it.

There was also a beyond lame rap duo called Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz, who had one hit with the atrocious “Deja Vu (Uptown Baby).” The less said, the better, except to note that they broke up after releasing exactly one single from one album. Reportedly they  surrendered large amounts of money to Steely Dan for sampling their song “Black Cow” without permission. One wonders if the events are related.

Art Of Noise did their version of the song in their own very 80s performance-art style, complete with video –

I remember it being on the radio quite a lot back then, during the Golden Age of Popular Music.