Mulligan and Desmond in the Studio - From "Jazz Heritage" by Martin Williams

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

“The Washington Post has called Martin Williams "the most knowledgeable, open-minded, and perceptive American jazz critic today," and countless others have echoed that sentiment. To Gary Giddins of The Village Voice he is "one of the most distinguished critics (of anything) this country has ever produced," and Nat Hentoff has observed, "Martin Williams persistently gets at essences, and that is why he has contributed so much to the very small body of authentic jazz criticism."”

The following are Martin Williams’ comments and observations about one of the recording sessions that was ultimately released on CD in 1989 as Paul Desmond - Gerry Mulligan TWO OF A MIND [RCA Bluebird BMG 9654-2-RB] with insert notes by Will Thornbury.

It is one of six essays in the MUSICIANS AT WORK segment in Jazz Heritage, a compilation of Martin’s writings published by Oxford University Press in 1985. 

As you can tell from the opening plaudits, anything by Martin on the subject of Jazz is worth reading and this one is especially welcomed because its story that is not often told - how Jazz goes about being made in a studio by two of the Giants of the modern idiom, in this case, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan.

And, as you read Martin’s description of the session, please keep the following insight in mind: “Like most jazz recording dates, this one combined constant pressure, banter, and even levity with utter seriousness, hard work, and musical accomplishment.”

We so often take excellent Jazz recordings as a finished product, distilled in some magical way from the musicians’ minds, emotions and souls, and while that may be so to some degree, recording Jazz in a studio is a challenge under the best of circumstances, even for the likes of Gerry Mulligan and Paul Desmond.

“Studio A at RCA Victor Records is a large rectangular room, and recording engineers will tell you they get a very special sound there. If the group of musicians is a lot smaller than the room they install baffle boards and place their mikes carefully, and the sound they get is still special. The four-man group that Victor engineer Mickey Crofford was to record in Studio A on a warm summer evening was small in size, but not small in fame or talent—saxophonists Paul Desmond (who, of course, does most of his playing with Dave Brubeck) and Gerry Mulligan, plus bass and drums. And they were to improvise freely around arrangements written by Mulligan, which he had kept modest and flexible, with plenty of room for solo invention.

Like most jazz recording dates, this one combined constant pressure, banter, and even levity with utter seriousness, hard work, and musical accomplishment.

Desmond was early and by 7 p.m. he was seated in the engineer's booth just off Studio A. The booth is also a rectangular room, smaller than Studio A, with elaborate tape recorders and control boards at one end, and a comfortable visitors' area with chairs, couches, and a table at the other. From this booth there is a clear view of the rest of Studio A through the wide glass panel which runs along one end.

Desmond was going over some of Mulligan's scores with A & R man George Avakian, who was producing the date, and Avakian's associate, composer Bob Prince. As usual, the alto saxophonist was dressed in a neat brown Ivy League suit, white shirt, tie, and fashionably heavy-soled shoes. Also as usual, his suit was slightly in need of a press, his shirt a bit rumpled, and his shoes not recently shined.

Avakian seemed vaguely worried—for no good reason, but Avakian usually seems worried at the start of a recording date. Desmond seemed serious; Prince, confident. And Crofford was busy in the studio and in the booth with his microphones, switches, and dials.

Suddenly, all heads bobbed up as a knock on the glass and a broad grin revealed that Mulligan had arrived in Studio A. In contrast to Desmond, he was dressed in a pair of khaki slacks, a sports shirt, and a thick cardigan sweater. He was obviously ready to go to work: ready to exchange his black shoes for the white sneakers he was carrying, and to take his baritone sax out of its canvas sack and start playing.

Desmond had selected the Modern Jazz Quartet's Connie Kay as his drummer, and Kay entered almost on Mulligan's heels, waving his greetings and going immediately to work setting up his drums. Bassist John Beale, who had arrived soon after Desmond, was quietly running over his part to Kay's right. Kay had just returned from San Francisco with the Quartet. "Glad I finally got to you, Connie," said Desmond, crossing from the booth to the studio. "I was about to send up a skywriter—Connie Kay call Paul Desmond."

Crofford had placed music stands and high stools for the two horns facing the rhythm, with Desmond's alto on one stereo microphone and Mulligan's baritone on the other. Avakian—busy enough to be just now grabbing his supper, an oversized and somewhat over-drippy sandwich—was seated with pencils, note paper, and a stopwatch beside Crofford's complex array of knobs, switches, and dials.

There had to be at least one run-through to test balance and mic placement. "We'll try one, okay?" said Avakian into his microphone, as Mulligan turned to Desmond with a mock serious frown to remark, "And please try not to play your best chorus now."

"Yeah, I'll save it," he answered, perhaps implying that he really had no control over the matter.

The piece was Easy Living, with Mulligan carrying the melody, Desmond inventing a countermelody behind him and taking the first solo. The performance was promisingly good, but Prince and Crofford decided there was too much mike on Kay's cymbal, and went into the studio to move things around a bit.

After another partial run-through, Avakian asked, "Want to tape one to see how it sounds?" But Paul and Gerry had their heads together over the music sheets.

"Try that last ensemble bridge again," Mulligan was saying. "You have the melody. It's the part down there at the bottom of the page." He pointed. "It could be a little more legato sounding." Desmond looked it over.

"I just wrote those notes in so you could see the pattern," Mulligan reminded Beale. "You don't have to play anything."

"Suppose I blow what you're playing along with you?" They tried it, and everyone commented that it sounded good.

"Want to tape one?" asked Desmond, affirming Avakian's suggestion. "We can figure out from the playback what's wrong."

In a few minutes there was a preliminary take of Easy Living on tape, and after the last note of the playback had echoed through the studio, it was obvious that this was going to be a relaxed and productive record date. Even Avakian seemed convinced of it. Mulligan had played with buoyancy, Desmond with fluent melodic ideas, and the improvised counterpoint had had fine emotional and musical rapport. As one visitor said, "Yeah, tonight they're going to play!"

As saxophonist of the Brubeck Quartet, Desmond is in a rather odd position, for his talents are more respected by musicians and critics than those of his pianist-leader. There is, in fact, constant wonder in the trade as to why Paul doesn't leave Dave and go off on his own. At the same time, Desmond is of a cooler and more lyric persuasion than some of the hard-blowing funk merchants who sell well on records nowadays, which puts him out of fashion in certain circles. Mulligan is something of an elder statesman as things go in jazz: his popularity dates from the early fifties and the days of the Mulligan Quartet. Since then he has held a large following, while leading both large and small groups. Recently there has been as much talk of Mulligan the movie actor (The Subterraneans, Bells Are Ringing) and of Mulligan the Broadway composer (a promised musical version of Happy Birthday for Judy Holiday, who is to contribute the lyrics) as about Mulligan the jazzman.

Several visitors and friends were in the booth by now. And each time the door to Studio A was opened, the grinding monotony of a rock and roll date being held next door in Studio B assaulted the ears. It soon developed that some rather illustrious jazzmen were involved in that music next door, and their aesthetic escape proved to be frequent brief visits over to the Desmond-Mulligan session to hear what was going on.

After a good version of Easy Living had been put on tape, there was some banter in the studio about, "Okay, that's it. Everybody come back the same time tomorrow." And there was some serious unwinding over Cokes, while Connie Kay pulled out one of several hamburgers he had brought with him. 

But discussion of the music didn't stop, and Mulligan was soon demonstrating a point, seated at the piano that stood in the far end of the studio.

Desmond said he wasn't sure he had quite done his best by Easy Living, and requested they try a slightly faster tempo—that they "make it a little brighter," as he put it— and all agreed to try the piece again. Just then Avakian threw his switch inside the booth and announced over the studio loudspeakers, "Gentlemen, I hate to say this, but I suggest you tune up a little."

"What? How could you even imply such a thing?" protested Mulligan with affected seriousness. And he carried his heavy horn over to the piano again to correct the matter.

When the tapes were rolling, Mulligan felt free enough to do some improvising even in his written parts.

At the end of the new take, before anyone had spoken, there was silent acknowledgment that it was the best yet. "Fine," said Avakian into his mike. 

"Want to hear it back?"

Mulligan again affected his cantankerous tone. "It's bad enough making these things without having to listen to them." He turned to Desmond, bobbing his eyebrows a la Groucho Marx, "Right? That a good attitude?" And a moment later, "Well, Paul, what other tunes do you know?"

"I know Melancholy Baby."

"Who are you? Tex Beneke?" Desmond whispered quickly.

As Desmond improvised his solo, Mulligan again did his side-to-side strut. Then, with the tape still rolling and Desmond still soloing, Mulligan signaled to the rest of the group for a round of four-bar phrases from player to player, before he and Desmond went into the counterpoint choruses that finish the piece. An arrangement changed even while it was being recorded. They played the "fours," and as the saxophones were restating the theme at the end, Mulligan began to improvise and merely suggest the melody with a few key notes, as Desmond was playing it in full. It was an effective idea. This was really becoming a cooperative two-man date.

At the end of the take, Mulligan registered approval by turning his heavy horn horizontal and laying it across a raised knee. Paul entered the booth and asked almost shyly, "Where'd that coffee come from? Is it a local concern?"

Soon they were listening to a playback of a Mulligan blues they later decided to call Blight of the Fumble Bee, and a few minutes later they were running through the arranged parts of All the Things You Are. As they finished the conservative Bach-like ending Paul asked, "Isn't that a little daring?"

"Maybe," Mulligan countered. "It'll go okay in the Middle West."

As all this talk filtered through the open studio microphones into the visitors' booth someone muttered, "Maybe those two are trying to work up some kind of act. The bantering, and this Alphonse and Gaston about who's got the first solos and who has the melody and who the harmony. Maybe they could take it on tour."

"Connie," Desmond was saying, "do you remember the tempo of the last take you did?" Kay started to brush his snare drum with perfect memory, and unbelievable lightness.

On another All the Things You Are at a faster tempo, Paul seemed to be more comfortable. Gerry had been better at the slower one. Their only musical disagreement so far.

In a final take of All the Things You Are, Mulligan was smiling broadly as Desmond went into his opening "break" over suspended rhythm, and then invented a lyric solo as the beat resumed. He was still playing hunched over his horn, but this time he was allowing himself a slight motion of the legs in  time to his improvising.

At the end, everyone seemed pleased with the performance. But the playback revealed a once-in-a-thousand accident: one of the microphones had briefly cut off during the counterpoint, and some bass notes didn't get on the tape. Desmond was especially disappointed, and for a moment looked as if he didn't want to play any more.

With their heads together, Avakian and Prince decided they could rerecord the bass part later and blend in the few missing notes, saving the performance.

"Otherwise, Bob," said Avakian, as everyone's relief settled in, "did you ever see a more relaxed and easy date?" Mulligan had again sat at the piano and was somehow running through a Mexican waltz, alternating it with some raucous low-down blues.

The ending Mulligan had designed for Stardust was rather complicated but Connie Kay had it after one explanation, and with no music sheet to refer to.

Mulligan said after a run-through: "Did you play a B flat there instead of a B natural?"

Desmond: "Um huh."

Mulligan: "Goodness gracious!"

As the take started, there was a fluent opening exposition by Mulligan, and it was evident from his first phrase that Stardust has a special meaning for him; he became so involved in his playing that at first he didn't hear Avakian calling out that there was not enough tape on the machines to finish the piece, that they had to put on another reel before making a full take.

On the next try, more new ideas rolled out of Mulligan's horn, and then Avakian waxed philosophical. "Very good! But it always seems to me if you get a very good one you should try another. A very good one may be a sign that an excellent one is on the way."

"Well, I don't hear anything dramatic about it," said Desmond quietly, "but otherwise it was very good."

They did Stardust again, and Mulligan's involvement was unabated. At one particularly delicate turn of phrase, a visitor in the booth yelled out. And in the studio Paul indicated his pleasure by smiling and pretending to conduct Kay and Beale, waggling his right forefinger in the student conductor's double-triangle 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4.

At the end, as they heard it played back, Mulligan smiled and laughed aloud at one of Desmond's phrases, and he danced a bit during the ensemble.

When  the speakers  were silent again,  Desmond said quietly, "I think it's about time to amble on home, for me, anyway."

Mulligan started to play his theme song. And Kay had his cymbals almost packed away. (1963)”

Gerry Mulligan: Born Again On the Little Bighorn by Brian Morton

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

“ … perhaps Mulligan’s most significant single contribution to modern Jazz has been, until recently, poorly recognised and largely mis-attributed. Mulligan has spoken without rancour of the history books being "re-written" on the legendary "Birth of the Cool" sessions, performances which only acquired that milestone title many years after the event, in 1954, when the original 78s were brought together on a single 10" long player (and later still on the dominant 12" format) and (here was the crunch) issued under the late Miles Davis's name.

It was clear that the trumpeter had provided the original impetus for the band but its focus was, as Leonard Father has recently described, Gil Evans's poky basement rehearsal room behind a Chinese laundry in New York City. Orthodox bebop enjoyed only a remarkably short life among its more innovative exponents. The patronage accorded Charlie Parker by the likes of Norman Granz, with his Verve label and Jazz at the Philharmonic packages, extended its perceived, public life and creative aftermath enormously. But at the tail-end of the 1940s, a substantial group of musicians, of whom Miles and Mulligan were among the most restless, were already looking for a new synthesis. What they created, with substantial contributions from Evans, pianist/composer John Lewis and the undersung John Carisi, was a music that consciously avoided the false climaxes of bop, the easily stage-managed harmonic and rhythmic tensions and obsessive individualism, in favour of a simpler, contrapuntal approach, with greater emphasis on instrumental texture and interplay, on modal patterns and intervals not associated with blues-based jazz.

“The intention was to create a sound that combined the rich palette of a big band with the speed of response associated with small group jazz.” ...

The recent European tour by his "Rebirth Of The Cool" tentette has put the spotlight firmly back on Gerry Mulligan. Critic Brian Morton assesses the career of the great baritone saxophonist.

- Brian Morton, Jazz on CD, 1992

“Ask almost any jazz horn player what attracted him to his instrument and chances are he'll make some reference to its proximity to the human voice. Since Bird and Trane, the notion of a “vocalised" tone has been closely bound up with that of the saxophonist as an impassioned shaman or a pentecostal adept, howling and crying and chanting in a language at several removes from everyday speech. Perhaps because he fails to fit the mould, Gerry Mulligan has been consistently undervalued as a saxophone improviser; perhaps because his language is so effortlessly logical, he has also been substantially discounted as a composer/ arranger.

If anyone's tone is vocalised, it is Mulligan's. He plays, as he speaks, in a deep, chesty burr, developing ideas logically (but not so logically that he can't indulge the odd non sequitur), punctuating his argument with unexpected gurgles of humour and outbreaks of quiet passion that sit uneasily athwart his allotted place in the ranks of the "Cool". The baritone saxophone, Mulligan's favoured instrument for over 40 years now, is one of the most thinly subscribed in the jazz orchestra. Harry Carney, in the Ellington band, was among the first to give it speech. Cecil Payne and Pepper Adams demonstrated that Carney's forceful, often dramatic approach was not just a one-off. Leo Parker played a brand of jovial bop on the big horn, trading on the same Eb tonality to create a deeper and inevitably slowed-up version of his namesake's dizzying flights. There was little more of substance until the ill-starred Serge Chaloff, who gave the baritone a dark, almost aggressive resonance.

Chaloff was Mulligan's first model, but tempered with the fleet, melodic scampers of Johnny Hodges and a hint of Hodges's aching ballad style. There is a story that Mulligan once walked into a studio where Chaloff was recording. Seeing his rival in the booth, Chaloff executed a perfect parody of the younger man's still awkward style and then tore it to shreds. Whatever impetus the experience gave him, Mulligan advanced by leaps and bounds and by the early fifties had become a soloist of astonishing poise and confidence. He has always denied hotly that the baritone is a cumbersome instrument, insisting that it has a physical balance and ease of execution that is missing on the lighter horns. Certainly, anyone who saw or heard Mulligan playing soprano saxophone during his brief flirtation with the straight horn may have heard "cumbersome" suggest itself as a paradoxically appropriate epithet. If he has made his name as an exponent of "cool" jazz, his work on soprano sounded merely frosty.

Labels, though, don't sit well on Mulligan. If you call him a radical only at your peril, it's equally unwise to dismiss him as a conservative. He has proved himself able to play in virtually any context, Dixieland, swing, be-bop, up to but significantly excluding free jazz. For Mulligan, there was no break in the continuity of jazz, in what it was possible to do with blues intervals and standard tunes, until in the 1960s (his "lost" decade) the scorched-earth campaign of the New Thing laid waste to much of what had gone before. (Mulligan was able to play comfortably not just with his mentor Johnny Hodges, but also with the supposedly maverick Thelonious Monk, whose own "modernism" was grounded on a strongly traditionalist view of jazz.) Mulligan believes that what Charlie Parker did was "logical" (which is still one step away of saying that it was predictable) and that there was nothing in any of his own so-called revolutionary work that wasn't already present in classic jazz and in the broad-brush arrangements of the swing era.

The fact remains, though, that just as Mulligan's crew-cut and Ray-Bans were once icons of West Coast "Cool", the sunny flipside of New York be-bop, so his music was once considered to be revolutionary, even "difficult". In his short story "Entropy", written in 1960 (and featuring a character bearing Monk's middle name, Sphere), the novelist Thomas Pynchon turns Mulligan's early 50s quartets with Chet Baker into the defining gesture of post-modernism, an accolade Mulligan would doubtless reject. The accepted version of the story is that when Mulligan and Baker turned up at the Haig Club in Los Angeles in June 1952, there was no piano available, and that the famous "pianoless" quartet was merely another instance of necessity mothering invention. Mulligan tells a slightly different version. There was, of course, a piano (what jazz club would be without one?) but it was no great shakes, and the saxophonist was already experimenting with small group, arrangements in which the baritone, already comfortably pitched for the task, took on much of the piano's role. Pynchon's version is more dramatic: improvisation without a safety net! No chords! Freedom! Uncertainty! The revisionist version is convincingly pragmatic: aren't most artistic revolutions a combination of inspiration and compromise? Mulligan's own account, though, is the most straightforward and the most illuminating. The relation between a be-bop solo and the informing chords had become ever more distant and uncertain and a growing understanding of modal or scalar improvisation - which abandoned the usual hierarchy of the harmonic sequence, allowing scales to be derived from any given note - was opening up the possibilities available to a jazz arranger in a way that suggests the experiment of a jazz group without harmony instrument was both '"logical" and, with a little hindsight, predictable, too.

Mulligan's gifts as an arranger were largely innate. While still in his teens, he was writing arrangements of popular material for Johnny Warrington's radio orchestra, but he first came to wider notice, after his recruitment to the sax section of the Gene Krupa band, with a hit arrangement of Disc Jockey Jump in 1947. He had an instinctive feel for the relationship of instrumental    voices and for the transpositions required to keep instruments with dramatically different stride-lengths in step. The two-part counterpoint he developed with Baker and later with valve-brass players like Art Farmer (who has been working with Mulligan again recently in the reformed Tentette) and Bob Brookmeyer had a robust logic that belied its deceptively understated delivery. The quartet with Baker was a resounding success and created a climate of expectation that afforded Mulligan enviable freedom of movement in an idiom that ran counter to commercial trends in jazz and popular music. He has long been insistent that there is still considerable public affection and demand for big band music and that the only reasons for its decline are economic. In 1960, Mulligan organised the legendary Concert Jazz Band, whose very title enshrined the importance he placed on big band jazz as music to be listened to, not just danced to. With rock and roll on the rise, the band folded and Mulligan's career as a leader was somewhat eclipsed. Though he continued to arrange and work as a sideman, opportunities to work on his own account were limited until the formation in 1972 of a new big band, named (in recognition of his passion for old locomotives) The Age of Steam. The new band saw Mulligan make a surprisingly comfortable accommodation to the rock idiom that had denied him work so long, and it set him back on a insistently successful course that has been maintained up to the present. The story, though, runs a little ahead of itself, which is appropriate, for Mulligan's career almost needs to be seen in reverse. keeping with a spirit of revisionism, of critical misunderstanding and ungenerosity that has stalked him at every stage it is clear that perhaps his most significant single contribution to modern Jazz has been, until recently, poorly recognised and largely mis-attributed. Mulligan has spoken without rancour of the history books being "re-written" on the legendary "Birth of the Cool" sessions, performances which only acquired that millstone title many years after the event, in 1954, when the original 78s were brought together on a single 10" long player (and later still on the dominant 12" format) and (here was the crunch) issued under the late Miles Davis's name.

It was clear that the trumpeter had provided the original impetus for the band but it's focus was, as Leonard Father has recently described, Gil Evans's poky basement rehearsal room behind a Chinese laundry in New York City. Orthodox bebop enjoyed only a remarkably short life among its more innovative exponents. The patronage accorded Charlie Parker by the likes of Norman Granz, with his Verve label and Jazz at the Philharmonic packages, extended its perceived, public life and creative aftermath enormously. But at the tail-end of the 1940s, a substantial group of musicians, of whom Miles and Mulligan were among the most restless, were already looking for a new synthesis. What they created, with substantial contributions from Evans, pianist/composer John Lewis and the undersung John Carisi, was a music that consciously avoided the false climaxes of bop, the easily stage-managed harmonic and rhythmic tensions and obsessive individualism, in favour of a simpler, contrapuntal approach, with greater emphasis on instrumental texture and interplay, on modal patterns and intervals not associated with blues-based jazz.

The intention was to create a sound that combined the rich palette of a big band with the speed of response associated with small group jazz. The "Birth of the Cool" nonet made unprecedented use of French horn and tuba and divided its sound range in such a way that the middle register (where one might expect to hear a tenor saxophone) was significantly attenuated. The effect was a music of superficial simplicity that nonetheless afforded the arrangers (and also the soloists, it shouldn't be forgotten) the possibility of considerable complexity. Mulligan's contribution to the sessions as composer was highly significant. He wrote and set three pieces for the group, Godchild and the wonderful Jeru for the January 1949 sessions, Venus de Milo, which featured his best solo of the time, for the second batch, cut in April, and the bouncy Rocker, recorded almost a year later.

It's difficult in retrospect to evaluate accurately the impact of these sessions, but Max Harrison has persuasively suggested that jazz's inability or unwillingness to capitalise on and develop its own innovations is what has condemned it to the status of a minor art. The ensemble playing on the "Birth of the Cool" sessions is as sophisticated as anything being attempted at the time by "legitimate" or "straight" composers and yet within a couple of years, jazz in general (though commendably few of the original participants) was content to settle back into the four-square thump of theme-and-solo "improvisation" on popular tunes.

The only slightly sour note surrounding The Birth of the Cool (as a product, rather than a misnamed historical moment) was the fact that it seemed to have been hijacked in Miles Davis's name. The trumpeter's subsequent career cast him with some unlikely bedfellows and with an acrobatic self-conception that pitched him at the opposite extreme from the notably purist Mulligan. Not least of his affectations seemed to be the belief that at every stage of his progress he shed yet another stylistic skin. Even at the end of his life, though, when he was set against (some thought) unpromising electronic backgrounds, Miles was still exploring the ensemble effects and minimalist gestures with which he and Mulligan had experimented in 1948 and 1949.

In the jazz fan's wish-list of great might-have-beens, there are few potential reunions more piquant than one that was mooted one summer night a year ago in Rotterdam. Mulligan told Miles of his desire to play the "Birth" music again. Miles asked to be kept posted, a willingness that may have seemed astonishing by the diffident standards of the Sixties and Seventies but which can't quite be explained away by his ubiquitous "special guest star" status of the final few years; for Miles's resistance to "jazz" was very specifically a resistance to the endless rehearsal of be-bop egotism. Sadly, he was already stricken in health, and died before the projected reunion could be realised.

Mulligan, though, stuck to the original idea and assembled a band that more than passed muster. With Phil Woods in for the otherwise-committed Lee Konitz (who has nonetheless appeared since in the reformed Tentette), and the young trumpeter Wallace Roney in for Miles, the band had a freshness and bounce that more than matched the original conception. With digital recording, "Re-Birth of the Cool" (not to be confused with a similarly-titled compilation of hip-hop music, a fact that caused Mulligan some little pain) dissolves the intervening four decades and brings to life some of the most effective charts in modern jazz. Mulligan's own voice has matured over the same period, losing some of the slight infelicities of diction and awkward caesuras [interruptions; breaks; pauses] that marked his soloing in the early days. At 65, he sounds stronger and more committed than ever, but committed not to a narrow conception of jazz as a particular ideology that has broken free of its own historical moment ("Re-Birth of the Cool" is emphatically not an exercise in nostalgia) but to the widest possible conception of music. [The recording is another of] … Mulligan's increasingly important forays into formal orchestral writing and can't be seen as a rejection of jazz, but simply as a rejection of the view that jazz is the only road to the joyous freedoms it expresses and stern disciplines it imposes. When Mulligan hooks on the big baritone, the voice is unmistakable. It's a speaking voice, which doesn't disdain to sing when the song is worth the breath.”

Gerry Mulligan, 'Rebirth of the Cool' - 1991

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

“When the seminal gatherings for the Miles Davis Orchestra first took place in 1947, Gil Evans was the old man at thirty-five; Miles Davis was twenty-one; and Gerry Mulligan was still only twenty years old.  He had already contributed excellent arrangements to the Elliot Lawrence and Gene Krupa bands, and, as has been mentioned earlier, one of his charts, "Disc Jockey Jump," had become a hit after having been recorded by the Gene Krupa Orchestra.  Even at that early age Mulligan was circulating among the best of the swing and modern musicians, including Charlie Parker.  Both his performing talent and his precocious genius were clearly recognized by his colleagues.

Mulligan, like Evans, gained his compositional skills and arranging craft not at a college or conservatory but on his own, for he left high school for the road. His performance abilities as the premiere baritone saxophone soloist are well known by most jazz fans, but it is a lesser known fact that he was also a truly versatile single-reed instrumentalist, playing other saxophones as well as the clarinet at a remarkably high professional level. ….

Of the twelve numbers recorded by the Miles Davis Orchestra for Capitol Records in 1949 and 1950, the largest number—six—were arranged by Mulligan, three were composed by him, and he also played on all the tracks. In addition, he composed and arranged another piece for the band, ")oost at the Roost." On the basis of these accomplishments, he must be credited as a major architect of the Miles Davis nonet and as a founding father of the style and movement called cool jazz. In the immediate period after these recordings, he, like Miles Davis, faced a difficult time artistically and financially, and in 1951 he hitchhiked from New York to California while seeking greater opportunities in jazz.  His chance soon came, just as did Davis's, but these two men, who remained friends over the years, followed dissimilar musical paths from this point on.”

• Frank Tirro, The Birth of the Cool of Miles Davis and His Associates [2009]

“The phrase ‘jazz repertory’ has many definitions and dimensions. Perhaps the most basic is: the study, preservation and performance of the many diverse musical styles in jazz. In recent years, the phrase most often applies to big bands and jazz ensembles performing classic and new music written for reeds, brass, and rhythm section in various sizes and combinations.” 

- Jeffrey Sultanoff, Bill Kirchner, ed., The Oxford Companion to Jazz [p.512]

“There has been some rewriting of the history books on behalf of Mulligan and pianist/arranger John Lewis vis-a-vis the original Birth Of The Cool. Mulligan is on record as feeling that the project was subsequently hijacked in Miles Davis's name. Though Miles 'cracked the whip', it was Lewis, Gil Evans and Mulligan who gave the music its distinctive profile. In 1991, Mulligan approached Miles regarding a plan to re-record the famous numbers, which were originally released as 78s and only afterwards given their famous title. Unfortunately, Miles died before the plan could be taken any further, and the eventual session featured regular stand-in Roney in the trumpet part. With Phil Woods in for Lee Konitz, the latter-day sessions have a crispness and boppish force that the original cuts rather lacked. Dave Grusin's and Larry Rosen's production is ultra-sharp  …. An interesting retake on a still-misunderstood experiment, Re-Birth sounds perfectly valid on its own terms.”

• Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.

Interestingly, the first decade of Gerry’s career ended with his major involvement in what collectively came to be famously known as The Birth of the Cool recordings. The last year of his career began with recordings that he labeled The Rebirth of the Cool. 

Whatever the back story or, if you will, motivation, Gerry’s enduring friendship with Dave Grusin, co-owner of GRP Records along with Larry Rosen, resulted in a four-decades-later make-over of the 1949 Birth of the Cool recordings with some additions and subtractions in both the compositions and the personnel.

As explained in the commentary that opens this piece, Gerry had approached Miles Davis about a reunion to produce a new and different version of the original recordings. Of course, we can only surmise how this revisit by two of the principals associated with the original recordings might have turned out, but in a way, Miles’ ultimate declination and subsequent death brought forth other possibilities.

As Richard Cook and Brian Morton note - “Phil Woods in for Lee Konitz, the latter-day sessions have a crispness and boppish force that the original cuts rather lacked. Dave Grusin's and Larry Rosen's production is ultra-sharp  …. An interesting retake on a still-misunderstood experiment, Re-Birth sounds perfectly valid on its own terms.”

And David Badham in the 1992 November edition of Jazz Journal was pleased to note “ … that this reprise of Miles Davis's landmark session was 38 percent longer than the original. Almost exactly 43 years after the original Move date for Capitol, these come up absolutely fresh and vital, and quite as good as anything produced since in this vein. Personally, I have always regarded the original sessions as Gerry Mulligan’s not Miles Davis’s since he arranged seven of the 12 numbers and was by far the most impressive solo voice! If anything he is even better now, so I wel­come this issue wholeheartedly.”

More information about how and why The Rebirth of the Cool came about is contained in these liner notes by Leonard Feather that accompanied the GRP CD [GRD-9679].

“It all began in a basement room behind a Chinese laundry on West 55th Street in New York. Gil Evans, who lived there in the late 1940s, was a magnet for some of the forward-looking musicians of the day: Charlie Parker ("Bird"], the composers Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, George Russell and John Carisi, saxophonist Lee Konitz, and, of course, Miles Davis.

"Everyone seemed to gravitate to Gil's place," Gerry Mulligan recalls. "We all influenced one another, and Bird influenced us all."

Bebop had brought startling innovations to jazz. Gerry, Miles, Gil and others foresaw the possibility of a new dimension that would allow an orchestral vision integrating bop's characteristics with written elements.

As Gerry pointed out, "We wanted the arrangers to have useful orchestral colors to work with, at the same time retaining the lightness and freedom of a small band." After much deliberation, this is the instrumentation Gil and Gerry decided on.

"One of the things that made it practical to use instruments such as tuba and French horn in the ensemble was that there were players who were already trying to adapt their instruments to a new approach. When Gil first told me about Bill Barber, he said Bill liked to transcribe Lester Young solos for tuba!"

Much of the inspiration stemmed from the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, to whose library both Evans and Mulligan had contributed. In fact, it was Gil who brought the, then, 19 year old Mulligan into the Thornhill orbit.

But it was Miles Davis who, as Gerry explained it, "...put the theories to work, called the rehearsals, hired the halls, and generally cracked the whip."

Move, Jeru, Godchild and Budo were recorded January 21, 1949, and were released as two 78s. Venus de Milo, Boplicity, Israel and Rouge were cut three months later, and the final session in March of 1950 yielded Moon Dreams, Deception, Rocker and Darn That Dream. In 1954, eight of the tunes were released on a 10 inch LP. Three years later a 12 inch LP, with all 11 instrumentals (omitting the vocal Darn That Dream), appeared under the Birth of the Cool title by which the sessions have been known ever since.

In the summer of 1991, in Rotterdam, Gerry told Miles he was planning to play the music again. Miles, who was very enthusiastic about the concert at the Montreux Festival two weeks before, (where he had played many of the great works Gil Evans had written for him, with an orchestra assembled by Quincy Jones), said to let him know when it was going to be. and maybe he would do it. Sadly, it was not to be.

With Miles' death the decision to find a suitable trumpet for this demanding role resulted in the selection of Wallace Roney, whose career had reached a high point when he joined Miles in an historic duet at the Montreux concert. Thus he was a logical choice for the "Re-Birth" project.

Gerry says, "He really understands something about Miles' melodic sense. He did some astounding melodic things on this album."

Gerry and Bill Barber were on all three of the original sessions, and John Lewis was on the last two. Gerry recalls, "John was Ella Fitzgerald's accompanist and it was just our bad luck that Ella was scheduled to record the same day as our first session!"

Lee Konitz, who was on all the early sessions, was originally scheduled to join the "Re-Birth" recording, but due to previous commitments that had him on the other side of the globe, it was impossible to get everybody together at the same place at the same time. "When Lee asked me who was going to take his place on alto, and I told him Phil Woods would like to do it, Lee laughed and said, 'I think you just invented the 'Birth of the Hot!"'

Gerry went on to say, "Phil told me he'd always wanted to play this music, so it was like a dream come true for him. He plays some absolutely fantastic solos and adds a great spirit to the whole project!"

Rounding out the "Re-Birth" group are trombonist Dave Bargeron and French hornist Dave Clark, both of whom were associated with Gil Evans in later years.

Gerry called on old friend and colleague Mel Torme to sing Darn That Dream, the one vocal in the collection. "Mel was happy to do this," Gerry says. "He always loved this instrumentation, and later on, my Tentet. In fact, he made an album with a similar instrumentation and we've talked for years about doing an album together along similar lines, which we'll get  around to eventually. When I told him we were doing this, he was eager to take part."

As these notes go to press, Gerry is planning a tour of the summer festivals with his Tentet, the instrumentation presented here, plus the addition of another trumpet and a clarinet. "We're introducing the band at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago (where Gerry is currently Artistic Director of their "Jazz in June" series), at the Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, and Carnegie Hall in New York.

The Birth of the Cool concept (which, in fact, was by no means as cool as the name implied!) lives on, some 40 years after Miles and Gil and Gerry and their fellow dreamers put their innovative ideas on record. It might well be added that the cool was not reborn, since for anyone who recalls its pristine

glory, it never really went away!”

-Leonard Feather

And here is an in performance review of the music by John Pareles that appeared in the June 30, 1992 NY Times 

Review/Jazz Festival; From Gerry Mulligan, 'Rebirth of the Cool'

“Each jazz era finds its own ancestors. Now that many musicians and audiences are turning toward music that prizes structure as well as solos, it's appropriate that Gerry Mulligan has decided to revive the arrangements he wrote and played with the Miles Davis Nonet more than 40 years ago. The music was collected in 1957 on an album titled "Birth of the Cool," and on Friday night Mr. Mulligan and a "tentet" (the nonet's lineup plus an extra trumpeter and saxophonist) performed at Carnegie Hall for a JVC Jazz Festival concert called "Rebirth of the Cool."

At the end of the 1940's, Davis, Gil Evans, Mr. Mulligan and other musicians were looking for a next step after be-bop, which had depended on small groups and extensive solos. They wanted to create ensemble arrangements that would reflect the convoluted harmonies and whiplash rhythms that be-bop had wrought. With Davis as leader, they assembled a nine-piece group that played a few club dates between 1948 and 1950, to a largely indifferent response among nonmusicians. But the recordings, made in 1949 and 1950, have endured. Musicians including Mr. Mulligan and another member of both the original nonet and the current tentet, the alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, have both worked with similar groups in the intervening decades. The tentet also included Bill Barber, another nonet member, on tuba.

For "Rebirth of the Cool," which preceded a European tour by the tentet, Mr. Mulligan followed an established jazz-repertory approach. He used the original arrangements and tempos while adding new solos, some of them variants on the recorded ones.

The two sets covered half the "Birth of the Cool" album, including Johnny Carisi's modal blues "Israel," Mr. Mulligan's arrangements of George Wallington's "Godchild" and his own "Jeru," Evans's arrangements of Chubby MacGregor's and Johnny Mercer's "Moon Dreams" and Davis's "Boplicity," and John Lewis's arrangements of Bud Powell's and Miles Davis's "Budo" and Denzil Best's "Move." The concert also included pieces from Mr. Mulligan's own repertory, among them "Blueport" by Art Farmer, the tentet trumpeter who had the unenviable task of taking on Mr. Davis's solos.

Jazz repertory can bring to life compositions that were muffled by the limitations of early recording. But the "Birth of the Cool" recordings are relatively recent, and the tentet had Carnegie Hall's acoustics to contend with. The hall makes trouble for amplified music, even at the relatively restrained volume of the tentet. Compared with the intimate recordings, much of the detail of the arrangements was smudged.

Even so, a new chance to hear the music was welcome. Mr. Mulligan and Mr. Konitz were both in fine form, Mr. Mulligan gruff and swaggering on baritone saxophone, Mr. Konitz leisurely and oblique on alto. And even after 42 years, the arrangements remain enigmatic, a corrective to the brassy extroversion of the big-band era. They use saw-toothed lines and close, dense harmonies, often played by instruments clustered in the low and middle registers (and thickened with French horn and tuba); they mull over the tunes, occasionally opening up to let a soloist step forward. The Evans arrangements are oddest of all, wrapping gauzy timbres around dissonances few other arrangers would even try, much less get away with.

For an encore, the tentet played "Satin Doll," and its relaxed symmetry was a reminder of all that the "Birth of the Cool" had willfully and gracefully sidestepped. The tentet also included Rob McConnell on valve trombone, Mike Mossman (who took some pointed solos) on trumpet, Ken Soderblum on saxophone and clarinet, Bob Routch on French horn, Ted Rosenthal on piano, Dean Johnson on bass and Ron Vincent on drums.”

Finally, the following was from a time when Jazz, if it got mentioned at all in a major newspaper, got mentioned briefly. Hats off to Zan Stewart for trying.

Pop, Jazz Reviews : Mulligan Breathes Life Into Old Work at Ford

BY ZAN STEWART

JUNE 22, 1992 LA Times

“Gerry Mulligan’s performance with an 11-piece band before a sell-out crowd at the John Anson Ford Theatre on Saturday proved once again that a contemporary airing can breathe an amazing amount of life into a work composed long ago.

The renowned baritone saxophonist and composer went back 40 years, reviving selections transcribed from the memorable 1949 and 1950 “Birth of the Cool” sessions led by Miles Davis, and which Mulligan recently re-recorded. On those sessions, Davis, along with Mulligan and others, examined be-bop-based material with a fresh sound, pitting the higher timbres of trumpet and alto sax against such low brass as trombone, French horn and tuba.

Mulligan’s aggregation, which included such esteemed jazzmen as trumpeter Art Farmer and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, duplicated the instrumentation of the originals, except for the addition of an extra trumpet and a tenor sax-clarinet part. The band’s vibrant renditions of such well-preserved items as “Godchild,” “Boplicity” and “Moon Dreams” clearly demonstrated that these are not simply museum pieces, that they indeed have lasting power.

“Jeru” was distinctive for its dynamic climax, where the brass and reed sections tossed snappy lines back and forth. “Israel” began with the melody rendered by the low brass, then came the piercing brightness of trumpet and alto sax. Gil Evans’ dramatic arrangement of the oozingly slow “Moon Dreams” ended with a wall of soft sound, where instruments darted in and out, changing the work’s timbral color. The soloists were first-rate. Farmer’s ingenuity was quietly breathtaking as he took a series of brief phrases and strung them together into complex wholes. Konitz applied his one-of-a-kind sound, seemingly flat but really full of juice, to stretched-out notes and relaxed phrases that ran counter to the bubbling rhythm of a tune such as “Israel.” Mulligan swung with vitality and accessibility.”