Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong by Ricky Riccardi

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


“Though Louis Prima recorded widely and well throughout the '30s, achieving great popularity and visibility, his name is often conspicuous by its absence from standard jazz histories. Dealing with him seriously means confronting one aspect of New Orleans jazz which chroniclers, almost as a point of honor, seem to find distasteful.


That, of course, is the matter of showmanship. The flamboyance of Prima's latter career, in which his identity as a trumpeter became almost totally subordinate to his role as a high-energy showman, seems to offend those who would represent Jazz as an art music of solemnity and unstinting high purpose. The Las Vegas image, the raucous sound of Sam Butera and the Witnesses, the risque badinage with singer Keely Smith—such make it all too easy to mistake this showbiz aspect of Prima for the creative substance, ignoring his past achievements and core musicianship.


Far from being exclusive to such as Prima, the idea of hot music as an arm of highly commercialized show business runs throughout the early years. It's present in the singing, dancing, and impromptu comedy skits of the dance bands, including those that prided themselves on their dedication to jazz. Its absence is a root cause of the failure of the great Jean Goldkette orchestra, an ensemble which either stubbornly resisted advice to "put on a show" or acquiesced in a manner landing somewhere between perfunctory and downright hostile.


For New Orleans musicians, especially, showmanship was—and remains—a fact of life. Was it not Louis Armstrong, above all, who understood the relationship between music and entertainment, and never wavered in his application of it, even in the face of critical hostility? "You'll always get critics of showmanship," he told British critic Max Jones. "Critics in England say I was a clown, but a clown—-that's hard. If you can make people chuckle a little; it's happiness to me to see people happy, and most of the people who criticize don't know one note from another.""

-

- Richard Sudhalter, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915-1945. [1999]


I had no idea that the reverse chronology that Ricky Riccardi, Director of Research Collections for the Louis Armstrong House Museum, used to write his Pops Trilogy wasn’t intentional until I read the following in the Acknowledgement that closes Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong - “It was never my intention to write the Armstrong saga in reverse chronological order, but it ended up being a blessing thanks to the sudden accessibility of several important sources that turned up in the last decade.”


Here Ricky’s statement of non-intent within the contents of the full extract:


“The more I learned about Armstrong, the more it seemed that everyone agreed about the greatness of his early years; it was after 1928 when the biographers, critics, historians, and fans disagreed regarding his later career path: did he sell out? Did he go commercial? Did he waste his talent? Was he nothing but an Uncle Tom? I knew my response — a resounding no to each of those questions — and sought to learn as much as I could about Armstrong's post-1928 career, interviewing friends of his and the surviving musicians in his band, and eventually listening to all 700+ reel-to-reel tapes compiled by Armstrong himself, now a part of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, where I have served as director of research collections since 2009.


The results were two books, What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years and Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong, as well as a slew of CD, LP, and streaming reissues I co produced and/or wrote notes for, shining a big, broad spotlight on Armstrong's post-1928 career. I toyed with the idea of writing about his early years, but I felt that after his own Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans and the work of writers such as Gary Giddins, Laurence Bergreen, Thomas Brothers, Terry Teachout, Brian Marker, Gunther Schuller, and Robert O'Meally, there wouldn't be much more to add to the story.


If I had written about Armstrong's early years first and done the trilogy in strict chronological order, I would only have been able to rehash what had already been in print for many decades. It was never my intention to write the Armstrong saga in reverse chronological order, but it ended up being a

a blessing thanks to the sudden accessibility of several important sources that turned up in the last decade.”


These recently “turned up important sources” include:


[1] a copy of Louis Armstrong’s original typewritten manuscript for Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans as discovered by Michael Stearns the son of Monroe Stearns who served as the editor for Prentice Hall which published Louis autobiography,

[2] a 1960 draft copy of Lillian Harding Armstrong’s autobiography as told to Danish Jazz writer and historian Chris Albertson which allowed Lil’s voice to play a bigger role in the telling of Pops’ story,

[3] the acquisition of drummer Zutty Singleton's personal photo collection, some of which was used to populate the images used in Stomp Off, Let’s Go,

[4] Yoshio Toyama - “The Satchmo of Japan” - 1973 interview with Louis sister, Beatrice “Mama Lucy” Collins
[5] Bruce Raeburn at Tulane Hogan Jazz Archives “made available hundreds of interviews with Jazz pioneers,”

[6] Melissa Webster also at Tulane’s Jazz Archives “helped me access the research of the late Tad Jones who had been working on the definitive book of Louis Armstrong’s early years, 

[7] the research of James Karst about whom Ricky states: “ Since Tad Jones' passing, no one in New Orleans has made as many ground-breaking discoveries about Louis Armstrong’s early years,”

[8] access to the William Russell notes of the interviews he conducted for the 1939 book Jazzmen courtesy of the Historic New Orleans Collection.


All of which provided Ricky with a kind of primary-source-heaven to tell a more accurate and enhanced story of Pops’ formative years.


And what an inspiring story it is made even more so by Ricky’s wonderful ability as a storyteller. He never gets in the way and lets the story tell itself.


As Ricky unfolds it year-by-year we witness a heart rendering example of a classic Horatio Alger rags-to-riches tale with an ascendancy replete with colorful chapter titles that include “Blessed Assurance [1912],” “Destined to be Great [1914-1915],” “The Memory of the Bullies and Trouble Makers [1916],” “Just Wasn’t My Time to Die, Man [1917],”  “Had to Eat [1917-1918], “Descending the Sky Like a God [1919-1920],” and “Big-Headed Motherf***ers, [1924 -1925].”


Ricky takes us on a journey that helps us understand the circumstances and influences that shaped the musician that Louis grew up to be. While doing so, he also stresses that his values as embodied in “Pops - The Musician as Entertainer” - never changed even if his repertoire did. 


Louis’s primacy as an entertainer is stressed over and over.


As early as the age of eleven, Louis was hamming it up with his friends as part of a Barbershop quartet the benefits of which were, as Ricky recounts it:


“Armstrong couldn't have known it at the time, but harmonizing with his friends developed his ear and provided an invaluable music education that would last a lifetime. Though he rarely liked to get into the nuts and bolts of music theory, in one interview from 1954, Armstrong shared advice he gave to a young trumpet player who struggled to improvise. "I said, 'Well, all you gotta do is think of you singing in a quartet and if somebody's playing the lead on a trumpet, you just play the second to every note he hits, the same as if you're singing a duet,'" Armstrong related. "He said he never thought of it that way. That's the only way to look at it."


Thus, for the rest of his career as both a vocalist and a trumpeter, Armstrong fell back on the lessons he learned in the quartet. When he needed to play or sing lead, he always had the melody front and center in his mind; when he needed to blend in an ensemble, it was never a problem; and even when he was improvising, the lead would be running through his head at all times, allowing him the freedom to create new melodies as if he was "singing a duet." Historians and critics have long debated whether Armstrong played like he sang or sang like he played but the truth is both were connected to the same soul. "You make the same notes, you know, like the horn," Armstrong explained about his singing. "That's why we could scat and do things like that I always would sing. I was singing before I played the horn, see." Armstrong's later bassist Arvell Shaw once said of him, "He would have been a singer regardless if he had played trumpet or not."


Although it may be hard to credit, as early as the age of thirteen, Pops was also an astute observer of trends in popular music, for example:


"It's a Long Way to Tipperary" achieved worldwide popularity after Irish tenor John McCormack recorded it in November 1914, a few months after the start of World War I. The Onwards choice of "Tipperary" is yet another example of men like Oliver and Perez playing the most popular songs of the era, a lesson not lost on Armstrong.” [Emphasis mine.]


Another feature of Ricky’s writing that I find to be particularly helpful is the way in which he summarizes certain milestones in Pops’ career. For example:


“The story of the Karnofskys buying a cornet for Armstrong would not be widely known until Gary Giddins published it in his 1988 book Satchmo. Thus, Finola's statement does seem to tie everything together: in late 1914 or early 1915, Armstrong returns to live with Mayann, works on the coal cart with Morris Karnofsky and selling newspapers for Charlie Wilson, falls under the spell of Joe Oliver at Pete Lala's, spots a cornet at Uncle Jake's pawn shop near the Karnofskys' new residence at 427 South Rampart, gets the Karnofskys to advance him the money for the instrument, and pays it off with funds earned from both the coal wagon and from selling newspapers.


However it happened and whenever it happened, Armstrong never forgot the importance of the Karnofsky family in his early life. "As I said before I must have been born with talent," he wrote in 1969. "All that I needed was a little encouragement to bring it out of me. And they did thank God. I was just a kid trying to find out which way to turn. So that Mayann and Mama Lucy could feel proud of their Louis (me). Not trying to be too much, just a good ordinary horn blower. The Jewish people sure did turn me out in many ways." Armstrong would wear a Star of David around his neck for much of his adult life, a way of remembering the impact the Karnofsky family made on him.”



Or when in 1917, King Oliver joins the Original Creole Band for the grand opening of the Royal Gardens [to become more famous as the Lincoln Gardens] in Chicago, Ricky writes:


“Louis Armstrong was also at the train station that day to see Oliver off. He called it "a sad parting" but also summed it up as "that's Show Business for you." He had no time to sulk because he had to go to work. "The minute the train pulled out, I was on my way out of the Illinois Central Station to get back up on my cart, and continue to deliver my load of coal, when Kid Ory called to me," Armstrong recalled.


Ory told Armstrong he "had heard a lot of talk about Little Louis" and that the boys in the band "told him to go get Little Louis to take Joe's place," Armstrong recalled. "I went to see him and told him that if he got himself a pair of long trousers I'd give him a job," Ory said.


Louis was ecstatic and immediately ran home to share the news with his mother. "I had been having so many bad breaks, until I just had to make a beeline to Maryann," he wrote. "She was the one who had always encouraged me to carry on with my cornet playing, since I loved it so well." "Within two hours, Louis came to my house and said, 'Here I am. I'll be glad when 8 o'clock comes. I'm ready to go,'" Ory said. Looking back, Ory reflected, "There were many good, experienced trumpet players in town, but none of them had young Louis' possibilities."


Armstrong's whole life had seemingly been building up to this moment. Shooting off the gun on New Years Eve, learning the cornet in the Waif's Home, playing for Ory at the Labor Day parade, the encouragement of the Karnofskys, the lessons and mentoring of Oliver, the protection of Black Benny and Slippers, the countless hours of playing honky-tonks such as Pons's and Matranga's with the countless bullets sizzling past him, the excitement of the Brown Skin Jazz Band, the battles with Kid Rena, all of it had led him here.

He was ready.”


The last third of the book deals with developments in Louis’ life that led to his fame with more of Ricky’s excellent summations on hand. For example:

in 1919, Louis began an association with Fate Marable’s band on the Streckfus Mississippi River Steamboats and aside from his famous gravel voice which he got from a persistent cold while on the river boats, Ricky observes:


"There was a saying in New Orleans," drummer Zutty Singleton once said. "When some musician would get a job on the riverboats with Fate Marable, they'd say, 'Well you're going to the conservatory.'" Armstrong's three seasons with Marable represented his conservatory years in every sense of the word. He entered the world of the riverboats in 1919, armed with only a trout sandwich and a jar of olives, unable to read arrangements, too bashful to take a featured solo, derided for puffing when he blew, all while doing his best to ignore racist comments from ignorant passengers. By 1921, he was reading, soloing, singing, scatting, dancing, playing slide whistle and slide trumpet, doing comedy, coining slang, inspiring youngsters, and "descending the sky like a god" in the words of Jack Teagarden.”


As to where Louis’ career stood when he got the call in 1921 to leave New Orleans to join his beloved Papa Joe Oliver in Chicago at the newly renamed Lincoln Gardens, Rickey astutely puts it this way:


“Armstrong was leaving with a musical education that would get him through the rest of his career. "He was gathering knowledge all the time," Danny Barker said of Armstrong's New Orleans years. "When Louis went to Chicago, Louis was prepared."76 His cornet style now dipped into four separate buckets: the tone of Bunk Johnson, the fire of Joe Oliver, the high notes of Henry "Kid" Rena, and the harmonic knowledge of Buddy Petit. He had mastered their styles, mastered what was called "jazz," mastered the blues, which he played for countless hours in the honky-tonks.


But there was so much more to his musical upbringing than just blues and jazz: the experience of playing ragtime from the "red back book"; playing waltzes, rhumbas, foxtrots for dancers; learning Art Hickman and Paul Whiteman arrangements directly from the records; interpreting the latest pop music hits in every band he played in; singing and harmonizing with his quartet; scatting and playing slide whistle and slide cornet on the riverboat; instilling his heart into funeral marches with the Tuxedo and Excelsior Brass Bands; humming along with the Yiddish lullabies sung by the Karnofsky family; gobbling up the operatic stylings of Enrico Caruso, Amelita Galli-Curci, and Luisa Tetrazzini on his Victrola; reciting Bert Williams's comedic monologues; singing all those songs about "Katie" and her assorted body parts. Armstrong's goal was to be a complete musician, one who could master every style, and he achieved it by the age of 21.


When a friend spotted him at the train station and asked, "Where are you going, Dipper?" Armstrong responded with pride: "Yeah man, I'm going up to Chicago to play with my idol, Papa Joe."”


Ricky is also fond of setting up “surprises” in his narrative with transitional statements like -


“Oliver also occasionally took Armstrong out on the town to hear Chicago's other jazz bands. One night they ended up at Bill Bottoms's Dreamland Café, where the orchestra was led by violinist Mae Brady. Oliver pointed at the band's pianist and told Armstrong, "That there is Miss Lil."


Oliver couldn't have known it at the time, but that simple gesture would change the sound of twentieth-century music — and eventually drive Louis Armstrong out of his band.” [Emphasis mine].


He follows this provocative statement with the chapter entitled “The Hot Miss Lil [1922-23] which of course sets the stage for their union as a couple and the resulting landmark Hot Five and Hot Sevens recordings under Pops’ leadership which “changed the sound of twentieth-century music.”


In his closing chapters of Stomp Off, Let’s Go, Ricky discusses these recordings in a way that makes them an informal track-by-track annotated discography. But this is not just any annotated discography, this one is brimming with a staggering bunch of original insights like the following one about Cornet Chop Suey:


 “But two caveats must be mentioned when discussing Armstrong's ‘ideas’ on "Cornet Chop Suey"—they weren't improvised, and they might not even have been his to begin with.” [!]


Or this fascinating assessment of what the introduction to West End Blues may represent in terms of a broader perspective of Louis’ life:


“The "introduction" turned out to be an unaccompanied trumpet cadenza that would soon take its place as one of the most iconic moments of twentieth-century music. In about 13 seconds, Armstrong drew on nearly everything that had inspired him up to this point in his career: the blues he immersed himself in in New Orleans, the tone of Bunk Johnson, the chromaticism of Buddy Petit, the classical patterns shown to him by Lil Hardin, the high notes of Kid Rena and B. A. Rolfe, the operatic stylings of Enrico Caruso, the drama of everyday life itself, the strength garnered from working on the coal cart, the hunger forged from not knowing where his next meal was coming from, all coming together to service a composition by Joe Oliver.”


The concluding chapters are also full of interesting anecdotes including Louis and Bix Beiderbecke jammin’ in Louis’ Chicago hotel room when Bix was in town with Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra, Pops’ engrossing interest in the “sweet music” of the Guy Lombardo Orchestra and Armstrong’s time on the sweet music band headed up by Carroll Dickerson.


The closing Epilogue recounts the roles of Lil Hardin and King Oliver as the “architects of Louis’ stardom,” the incredibly nostalgic 1949 reunion with Captain Joseph Jones of the Colored Waif’s home in New Orleans and contains this poignant description of Louis’ New Orleans roots in the book’s closing paragraph:


“Armstrong may have never moved back to New Orleans, but the lessons he learned in that city were present every time he stepped on stage or in a recording studio.


‘You know, I never did leave New Orleans,’ he claimed in 1950. ‘Right now I keep the essence of New Orleans every time I play.’


“‘They say, 'Where would you live?'” Armstrong asked in a tape-recorded conversation made in 1965. "I said I don't care where, I'm born in New Orleans, that's my hometown. That's it. I don't care where, I'll go to Guadalupe, wherever it is— [I'm a] New Orleans boy, and that's it."


Thus, it was fitting that the last words he sang on stage at the Waldorf in 1971 was the phrase "Boy from New Orleans." Armstrong knew what it meant to miss New Orleans, to love New Orleans, to celebrate New Orleans, to be hurt by New Orleans, and to hate New Orleans —but through it all, he knew that in many ways, he was New Orleans, with all of its complexities.


And over 50 years after his passing, he's still New Orleans.”


Aside from being a totally delightful reading experience, Ricky’s Pops trilogy deserves to be cherished by every Jazz fan because with a nod to Dizzy Gillespie when asked about Louis’ influence on his playing: “No him, no us.”


My trilogy of the Jazz equivalent of The Greatest Story Ever Told is up on my bookshelf right next to The Bible and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.


Where are you going to put yours?


For order information, go here.





Saturday, January 11, 2025

Emily Remler 4 Queens Las Vegas 1988

Stick around for Manha de Carnaval at 32.40

4 Queens Las Vegas Host Alan Grant Guitar Emily Remler Bass Carson Smith Drums John Pesce 01. Welcome 0:00 02. Yesterdays 1:12 03. Polka Dots & Moonbeams 9:58 04. All Blues 18:25 05. Intermission 32:05 06. Manha de Carnaval. 32:40 07. Family intros song/band 47:30 08. D Natural Blues in Bb

Friday, January 10, 2025

Newport Jazz Festival 1958 Jazz on a Summer's Day

Shelly Manne - Anything But - Un Poco Loco [with Transcription and YouTube]

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


“Shelly Manne was one of the greatest, not only as a person but also as a musician who gave 120 per cent on every performance. Even though he was busy in the studios during the day, he would still be at the cub every night, and at the end of the set he would always say, ‘Do I sound O.K.?’”
- Chuck Berghofer, bassist

“Shelly Manne was a prince of drummers.”
- Jack Montrose, tenor saxophonist

“Shelly can sit in any rhythm section, from a trio to the biggest band and make it swing; he is an experimenter and an innovator of the highest order; he can, when the occasion calls for it, subdue himself to fit any style of soloist; and he is also a solo drummer of exceptional taste and quality.”
- Andre Previn, pianist, composer, arranger, conductor

“Take an eighteen-year-old New York City cross-country champ from a broken home, walk him into a Manhattan music shop with his alto sax, give him a set of drums in trade, and out walks what many would later call ‘the most musical drummer who ever lived.’”
- Jack Brand and Bill Korst, Shelly Manne: Sounds of a Different Drummer
  
Shelly Manne was not, as the title of the of Bud Powell’s tune translates - “A little crazy” – not even close.

For as Richard Cook and Brian Morton assert in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.: Shelly was one of the finest – and shrewdest – musicians in modern Jazz - … [who] became definitive of the West Coast sound, playing drums with a cool melodism and restrained dynamics. For a time he ran his own club, the Manne Hole, bred horses [maybe this is where the ‘crazy’ part comes in ?], but he was never anything but a whole-hearted musician.”

Ted Gioia, in his seminal, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945 – 1960, offers a broader context in which to view Shelly and his music:

“In the 1950s, the role of a West Coast drummer was beset by many contradictions. … [and as a result of these incongruities], West Coast percussionists came to be viewed as anti-drummers. Their distinctive approach to time-keeping was seen by many as a subversion of the modern Jazz tradition of high-energy drumming. In the eyes of their critics, such drummers meant their instruments to be seen and not – or only barely – heard. …

Shelly Manne was the drummer most associated in the Jazz public’s mind with this new approach to drumming. Yet Manne’s recorded legacy from the 1950s reveals that his highly stylized approach to Jazz drumming was anything but narrow and parochial. …

… Manne’s body of work becomes well worth consideration and praise when we evaluate it less as a stage in the history of drums, and more as a body of music.” [pp. 264-265]

While I wholeheartedly agree with Ted’s assessment, there are also times when Shelly’s drumming is the feature that makes this “body of music” so worthy of “praise and consideration.”

One example of how Shelly comes forward to shape and influence the music can be found in the following description of Un Poco Loco from the Swinging Sounds Vol. IV album [Contemporary 3516, OJCCD 267-2] 

“In 1956, Shelly Manne was to enter one of the most successful years of his career. By this time, Charlie Mariano's alto was heard with the Men in place of [Bill] Holman's tenor. On January 19th, the group recorded the first seven selections for Shelly's Volume 4, Swinging Sounds album.

Clearly, Shelly was escaping from the "West Coast Experimental" school and was playing in the type of group that made him the happiest — straight ahead, swinging jazz. The album included the theme [Bill] Holman had penned for him at the Tiffany Club [A Gem for Tiffany] and a Manne composition called "Parthenia," the street on which he and Flip and the critters [horses that he and Flip bred and put to show] lived.

… on February 2nd, the Men recorded "Un Poco Loco," featuring the now legendary drum solo that Manne fans had marveled at during the [1955 Shorty Rogers] Giants' tour with the Kenton Festival. Now he recorded a rendition with his own swinging group."

To say that Shelly Manne was a unique drummer is an understatement. Even today it is difficult to imagine an extended drum solo played with a bare left hand, a brush in the right hand and a tambourine sitting on the head of a small floor tom tom — and the entire solo played on a small four-piece kit with just a ride, crash, and hi hat cymbals.

Fortunately it was recorded on Contemporary and thanks to Fantasy's Original Jazz Classics series, it is available today on cassette and CD. This particular song, com­posed by pianist Bud Powell, was included in many "hip" jazz groups' repertoire.

A simple theme made complex by its rhythmic statement and by the fact that it was always performed at a very fast tempo, Un Poco Loco had been played by nearly all the East Coast bop players. Max Roach had recorded the tune with Powell as early as 1951. Roach's first takes on the session were common­place mambo rhythms, but on the third take he used a double paradiddle-type of rhythm be­tween a cowbell and the tom toms.

Now, five years later, Shelly recorded the tune using a very complex pattern under the main theme and then a symphony of rhythms based on four notes, the tones of the snare drum (snares off), the small tom, floor tom and bass drum — all tuned to perfection. The tambourine offers an unusual percussive message — tonal because of the tom tom underneath, yet stark and outstanding in its contrast with the other sounds.

The arrangement of the song is a unique weaving of Latin and swing passages. Shelly and the band introduce the main theme with a very fast Latin rhythm (played with the brush and hand). As Charlie Mariano's alto begins to solo, Shelly switches to a drum stick in his right hand, playing a montuno rhythm on the ride cymbal bell, while his bare left hand moves to the vari­ous torn toms.

As the bridge goes into a half-time swing beat, he picks up the brush with his left hand to play triplet patterns against the ride cymbal jazz pattern. As Mariano's solo eases out and Stu Williamson's trumpet solo begins, the piano and bass melt into a quarter note ostinato.

It is here that we hear the imagination of Shelly Manne take control. He uses sleigh bells to accentuate the quarter note pulse that becomes almost hypnotic until the bass and piano ascend their notes up to the ultimate release into swing, then Shelly uses two drum sticks to take the last trumpet chorus out in the original fast Latin tempo.

Freeman's wonderful rhythmic style is heard soloing at this tempo until he brilliantly relinquishes the music to Vinnegar's half-time swing bass solo. During the last measures of Leroy's solo, Shelly begins the four-tone theme that he will use to build variations upon.

To fully comprehend the subtle mufflings with the palm of the left hand pressing on the drum head, finger rim shots and bass drum patterns, brush scrapings on the heads, and the complexity of the solo's musical construction, the listener must hear it over and over again. The written solo, wonderfully transcribed by Robert DeVita, cannot tell the entire story; one must listen to fully understand the musical genius of Shelly Manne.









Thursday, January 9, 2025

A Gerry Mulligan Reader: Table of Contents.

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.



Dear Steve,

 

“Thanks so much for sending and, indeed, for composing your opus on GM. You did an extraordinary job of finding obscure and illuminating pieces that would otherwise never be seen and which fully represent Jeru as man and musician. It’s the kind of book that you dare not open unless you’ve got time to spare because it’s impossible to stop flipping through and getting ambushed by pieces you never expected. I hope it gets the attention and readership it deserves.”

 

Best,

Gary Giddins


“Gerry Mulligan lived through almost the entire history of jazz. It is against that background that he should be understood.”

  • Gene Lees, Jazzletter


 

The Gerry Mulligan Reader: Select Writings on a Jazz Original is my first book which I self-published on Kindle Direct Publishing. It took the better part of three years to collect, compile and annotate the articles, interviews and commentaries contained in this anthology. A special shout out to Gordon Jack who was my constant companion and invaluable counselor throughout the research process. His assistance was invaluable.


It is available exclusively through Amazon.com and, given that it offers 355 pages of information about Gerry and his music, I have priced it very reasonably at $25.99 for the paperback and $9.99 for an eBook.


To give you some idea of the breadth and depth of the writings on offer in the anthology, some of which are extremely rare, I am posting the book’s Table of Contents for you to look over.


Also, please keep in mind that I am sharing 50% of the profits from the sale of the book with The Gerry and Franca Mulligan Foundation for the purchase of musical instruments for individual students and school music programs.



“A man is all the people he has been.”

  • William Manchester, Prologue,

Goodbye Darkness, A Memoir of the Pacific War



Table of Contents


Chapter 1 - THE 1940’s: 

BOP; BIG BANDS; BIRTH OF THE COOL


Peter Clayton, Insert Notes to Gene Krupa Plays Gerry Mulligan Arrangements. [Verve MGVS 6008] and [World Record Club LP release [TP 351]


George T. Simon, Insert Notes to Elliot Lawrence Plays Gerry Mulligan 

Arrangements. [Fantasy F-3 206; OJCCD-117-2]


Gerry Mulligan with Ken Poston, “Claude Thornhill, Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan: Three of a Mind - from CLAUDE AND GIL” in Being Gerry Mulligan: My Life in Music. [2023]


Ira Gitler, Jeru and Bird,  from Swing to Bop to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition of Jazz in the 1940s. [1985]


Peter Welding/Gerry Mulligan Insert Notes to CD Reissue Birth of the Cool. [Capitol Jazz CDP 7 92862 2]


Chapter 2 -THE 1950s: 

THE QUARTETS, TENTETTE, AND SEXTETS; THE “MEETS” LPs;


OVERVIEW: Joe Goldberg, Gerry Mulligan, Jazz Masters of the 1950s. [1965]


Steven A. Cerra, “Gerry Mulligan and Stan Kenton - Opposites That Didn't Attract Excerpts from the Jazz Literature.”


Gordon Jack, Interviews with Gerry Mulligan and the following members of the 1952-53 Gerry Mulligan Quartet featuring Chet Baker: bassists Bob Whitlock and Carson Smith; drummers Chico Hamilton and Larry Bunker in Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective. [2004]


Will MacFarland, Mulligan - The Sound Alone, Theme Magazine, January, 1954.


Herb Kimmel, Mulligan - The Man Behind the Sound [An Unpublished Rejoinder to Will MacFarland sent to Jimmy Valentine, publisher/editor of Theme Magazine].


Arlene [Arlyne] Mulligan, Make Mine Mulligan, Theme Magazine, March, 1954.


Gordon Jack, Arlyne Brown Mulligan and Gerry Mulligan. [May 16, June 20, July 25, 2019, Jazz Journal]


Gerry Mulligan, "Gerry Mulligan Tells - The Importance of Jazz Tradition." [Downbeat, September 21,1955]


Peter Welding - The Complete Pacific Jazz and Capitol Recordings of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and Tentette with Chet Baker. [Excerpts from the Insert Booklet notes to Mosaic Records, MR 5-102]


Matthew Ruddick, Chapter 4, The Gerry Mulligan Quartet in The Life and Times of Chet Baker. [2012]


Michael Cuscuna, Konitz Meets Mulligan: Lee Konitz and The Gerry Mulligan Quartet. [Pacific Jazz LP PJM 406 and Capitol CD CDP 7 46847 2]


Alun Morgan, The Fabulous Gerry Mulligan Sextet. [Insert Booklet notes Fresh Sound Records FSRCD 418-419] 


Gordon Jack, The Gerry Mulligan Sextet, Jazz Journal 3/2016.


Michael Cuscuna, Insert Notes to Reunion: Gerry Mulligan with Chet Baker. [Pacific Jazz Series 1957 CDP 7 46857 2]


Gordon Jack, Gerry Mulligan Quartet - Newport Rarities from 1957. [intended as sleeve notes for a never released CD; submitted to Jazz Journal, as yet unpublished]


Raymond Horricks, Gerry Mulligan and the“MEETS” LPs, in Gerry Mulligan: Jazz Masters Series. [1986] 


Gordon Jack, Stan and Gerry: Occasional Collaborators, Jazz Journal 10/2017.


Chapter 3 - THE 1960s: 

THE BLINDFOLD TESTS; THE CONCERT JAZZ BAND;  BRU & JERU - COMPADRES WITH BRUBECK


OVERVIEW: Nat Hentoff, Gerry Mulligan, The White Mainstreamer, Jazz Is. [1991] and The New Yorker [3/21 and 3/28, 1959]


Leonard Feather, Before and After, Gerry Mulligan, Down Beat May 26, 1960 and June 9, 1960.


Leonard Feather, “Mulligan Stew,” - Gerry Mulligan Blindfold Test, Down Beat, November 14, 1957.


Leonard Feather, “Gerry Mulligan - The May 26,1960 Down Beat Blindfold Test.”


Robert Gordon, The Gerry Mulligan Quartet in Concert -[1957 and 1962]. [Insert notes to Pablo PACD-5309-2]


Leonard Feather, Harry Carney and Gerry Mulligan - Two of a Kind, Blindfold Test, Down Beat, November 18, 1965.


Bill Crow, Gerry Mulligan, From Birdland to Broadway: Scene from a Jazz Life. [1992]


Bill Kirchner, Booklet Notes to Mosaic Records “The Complete Verve Gerry Mulligan Concert Band Sessions. [MD4-221]


Bert Vuijsje, Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band: Young Blood Live in Amsterdam 1960. [Netherlands National Jazz Archives NJA CD - 1902]


Gordon Jack, Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band, JazzJournal September 7, 2021.


Gerry Mulligan and Judy Holliday as Told By Gene Lees from Meet Me at Jim and Andy’s. [1988]


Jerome Klinkowitz, Compadres with Gerry Mulligan, Listen Gerry Mulligan: An Aural Narrative. [1991]


Chapter 4 - THE 1970s: 

THE AGE OF STEAM; THE 1974 REUNION WITH CHET BAKER; THE RECONSTITUTED CONCERT JAZZ BAND


Steven A. Cerra, “Gerry Mulligan at Mid-Career, The 1970's and Onward.” 


Gerry Mulligan with Ken Poston- “The Age of Steam: A Turning Point.” Being Gerry Mulligan: My Life in Music. [2023]


Michael Cuscuna, Booklet Notes to The Age of Steam, A&M CD, Artist House Music DVD.


Steven A. Cerra, “Gerry Mulligan - Chet Baker 1974 Carnegie Hall Concert: Some Personal and Professional Perspectives.”


Steven A. Cerra, Gerry Mulligan’s European Period aka The Mulligan Renaissance. 


Richard Cook, “Gerry Mulligan - The Elusive Giant,” Jazz Review, October, 2001.


Richard Brown, “Gerry Mulligan, Cool Charts Bearish Tone, Down Beat, June 7, 1979.


Chapter 5 - THE 1980s:  

WALK ON WATER; LITTLE BIG HORN; SYMPHONIC MULLIGAN; MORE CJB; QUARTETS WITH PIANO


Steven A. Cerra, Mulligan in the 1980’s, Busier than Ever, Meeting New Challenges.


Les Tomkins, “Gerry Mulligan: My Approach to the Orchestra,” Crescendo International, June/July, 1985.


Richard Cook, “Gerry Mulligan, Big Band, Baritone and Beard, The Wire, No. 25, 1986.


Michael Bourne, Gerry Mulligan, Singing a Song of Mulligan, Down Beat, January 1989.


Chapter 6 -THE 1990s: 

REBIRTH OF THE COOL; DOWN BEAT HALL OF FAME; OBITUARY


Steven A. Cerra, “Gerry Mulligan, 'Rebirth of the Cool' - 1991 - A Collective Overview.”


Steven A. Cerra, “Into the 1990s - Gerry Mulligan and the Piano Quartets.”


Gordon Jack, After You Jeru, [On the 50th Anniversary of the Original Gerry Mulligan Quartet], March 22, 2002, JazzJournal.


Mitchell Seidel, “Mulligan Enters the Hall of Fame,” Down Beat, January, 1994.


Gerry Mulligan 1927-1996 - The Obituaries.


Chapter 7 -RECAPITULATION: 


Gene Lees, “Gerry Mulligan: I Hear The Shadows Dancing,” Arranging the Score: Portraits of Great Arrangers. [2000]


Epilogue


Franca R. Mulligan 6.12. 2023 Phone Interview


Selected Discographies


Selected Writings