The "Return" of Pianist Jessica Williams

N.B.: Following a two-year convalescence from back surgery, pianist Jessica Williams has announced on her website that she will be performing on May 17, 2014 at a house concert in Seattle, Washington.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it would celebrate this forthcoming occasion by re-posting this piece that appear shortly before Jessica underwent her procedure and entered into the long period of recovery from its effects.

Welcome back, Jessica!

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

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles was prompted to put this piece together by the arrival of the correspondence that closes it [a notice to her fans that she required back surgery; removed for this re-posting].

I first “met” Jessica around 1980. This was back in the days when one could kill a few minutes waiting for a business appointment or a luncheon while perusing the local record store.

Usually privately-owned and operated, every community in southern California seem to have one and some of these Mom-and-Pop stores even had a Jazz section.

It was during one such diversions that I noticed an LP in the cut-out bin by Jessica Jennifer Williams entitled Orgonomic Music [Clean Cuts CC703]. On the back of the album sleeve was the following quotation by Wilhelm Reich:

"Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it.”

I didn’t know who Reich was, nor did I know anything about “Jessica Jennifer Williams” and the only musician in the sextet featured on the album that I was [barely] familiar with was trumpet player Eddie Henderson.

But what the heck, Philip Elwood of The San Francisco Examiner said of Jessica that she was a devotee of Reich’s whose sentiments I agreed with, the LP was only a buck, so I gave it a shot.

Boy, am I glad I did. I’ve been listening to everything I can get my hands on by Jessica ever since.

However, it wasn’t until 1992, thanks to a fortuitous business trip to San Francisco, that I had the opportunity to hear Jessica in person as a part of pianist Dick Whittington’s on-going Maybeck Recital Hall series.

I “stayed close” to Jessica’s music in the 1990’s thanks to my association with Philip Barker, the owner of Jazz Focus Records for whom Jessica made a number of recordings including her Arrival CD which has the distinction of being the very first disc issued by Philip’s label [JFCD001].

Thanks to a tip from Gene Lees in one of his JazzLetters, I was also able to score one of the limited edition [1,000] Joyful Sorrow compact discs that Blackhawk Records issued as her solo piano tribute to the late, Bill Evans.

It was recorded at The Jazz Station, Carmel, CA on September 15, 1996 on the 16^th anniversary of Bill’s death.

Sadly, too, The Jazz Station in Carmel is no more, but Joyful Sorrow endures as just about my all-time favorite Jessica recording.

Thankfully, Jessica has subsequently released quite a number of solo piano and trio Jazz recordings, many of which are available as audio CD’s and Mp3 downloads.

Jessica is a powerful and pulsating pianist.  He music literally “pops” out at the listener it’s so full of energy and enthusiasm.

She records many solo piano albums, a format which can sometimes be a recipe for self-indulgence and excessive displays of technique.  But Jessica’s music is always tasteful and informed. You can hear the influences from the Jazz tradition in her playing, but you also hear innovative probing and forays into her unique conception of what she is trying to say about herself and how she hears the music.

Her touch on the instrument is such that she makes the piano SOUND! It rings clear and resonates as it only can in the hands of a masterful pianist.

As Grover Sales, the distinguish author and lecturer on Jazz has commented:

“Jessica Williams belongs to that exclusive group Count Basie dubbed "the poets of the piano" that includes Roger Kellaway, Sir Roland Hanna, Ellis Larkins, Jaki Byard, Bill Mays, Alan Broadbent, Cedar Walton, the late Jimmy Rowles and of course, Bill Evans. All share in common a thorough working knowledge of classic piano literature from pre-Bach to contemporary avant garde as well as the classic jazz tradition from Scott Joplin to the present.

All developed an astonishing and seemingly effortless technique that enabled them to venture anywhere their fertile imaginations wished to take them. All take to heart the dictum of Jelly Roll Morton in his epic 1938 interview for the Library of Congress: ‘No pianist can play jazz unless they try to give the imitation of a band.’

 And for all of their varied influences from Earl Hines to Bill Evans and beyond, all are instantly identifiable—unique in the literal sense of this often misused word.”

Writing in the insert booklet to Jessica’s Maybeck Hall CD [Concord CCD-4525], Jeff Kaliss notes:

“It's all there in the first track. Within a few choruses, Jessica Williams shows her hand, or hands: the harmonies in seconds (hit way off to the side of the piano), the punchy attack, the dust-devils in the upper octaves, the nutty quotes. It's familiar Jessica, but she's got plenty up her sleeve for the rest of this remarkable entry in the Maybeck menagerie. …

She came to my awareness as a word-of-mouth legend, a Baltimore-bred genius whose history and personality were said to be as mysterious and unpredictable as her keyboard inventions. As soon as I got to hear her, I was into the reality of her spontaneous magic and not much concerned with the legend. …

[She] has remained a best-kept secret … commanding awe and quiet in the clubs she visited … [her playing] filled with energy and imagination.”

One gets more about her sense of “energy and imagination” when one reads the following notes that Jessica wrote about herself and her music for her Intuition CD [Jazz Focus JFCD 010]:

“I'm occasionally asked where I studied to learn to do what I do; who taught me, what "tricks" are involved, what secrets enable me, how does the process occur... how does one "distill magic out of the air?" The truth is that there are no practice techniques, no miracle drugs, no mantras, no short-cuts to creativity. I tell them that I've played piano since I was four, that I've played jazz since I was twelve, that I've never taken another job doing anything except what I've always known I should be doing in this life: playing music. And maybe that's a part of the answer, if indeed there is one. It's about Castenada's PATH, Campbell's BLISS; you follow it no matter where it leads, and over many years you learn to control it, channel it, allow it to happen.

You become the bow; the arrow is the gift. You never fully own it, just as you can never explore all of its depths, because it springs from the infinite possibilities within you. In this realm, your only ally, your only guide, is intuition. It is seeing instead of looking, knowing instead of believing, being instead of doing. It is Coltrane on the saxophone, Magic Johnson on the court, Alice Walker on the printed page; it is the primary intuition of "right-brained" activity, the birthing of idea into existence.

Perhaps it cannot be taught, but it certainly can be shared...and it is in the sharing that we all experience the best parts of ourselves. We instinctively intuit our organic truth; when we learn to live it, our planet could be paradise.

Your dreams are your sacred truth. …”

You can listen to Jessica’s quite stunning pianism on the audio track of the following video tribute to her on which she performs Alone Together from the Joyful Sorrow Bill Evans tribute CD.

Ricky Riccardi: An Interview with the Author of “What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years” [From The Archives]

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

“I loved and respected Louis Armstrong. He was born poor, died rich and never hurt anyone along the way.”

- Duke Ellington

When the world was young and college students read books, one of my professors assigned our class a series of period novels.

“How can you understand what the world was like then if you read about it in books written now?”

“Context is everything.”

“These novels will give you the ‘flavor of the times.’”

In addition to offering a detailed view of the stateside and overseas musical journeys of the last two decades of Louis Armstrong life, this is exactly what Ricky Riccardi succeeds in doing in his book - What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years.

He puts Louis’ life in the context in which he lived it: the US and the world as it existed in the 1950s and 60s. Equally as important, Ricky stresses the continuity of all aspects of Pops’ life as a musician and entertainer. One now understands Pops as a totality.

What emerges as a result is a fitting tribute to a man, who by any standard of judgment, was a creative genius and not the Jazz equivalent of Pagliacci, the [operatic] clown, an epithet hung on Pops during his later years by those who never fully understood him or appreciated him.

The magnitude of Louis Armstrong’s achievements during the last 20 years or so of his life and author Ricky Riccardi’s work in documenting them is underscored in the following quotation from Dan Morgenstern, Director of The Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University:

“This is not only a tale of interest to Jazz fans or academics but the climatic portion of the inspiring life story of a man who, against all odds, rose from extreme poverty and discrimination to become, indisputably, one of the stellar figures of the twentieth century…. We need this book.”

Or as, Terry Teachout, the esteemed writer about Jazz and American culture, states:

“The story of Louis Armstrong’s later years is the great untold tale of postwar Jazz. Now Ricky Riccardi has told it to perfection. What a Wonderful World is a unique and indispensable landmark in American scholarship, a weathervane that will point the way to all future writings on his life and work.”

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles is honored that Ricky Riccardi consented to the following interview. You can find out more about Ricky and his continuing activities on behalf of Pops and the Louis Armstrong House by visiting his website.

I would also like to thank Josefine Kals, Publicist at Pantheon and Shocken Books, for her consideration and for arranging the interview with Ricky.

01.  Many Jazz fans view Pops’ early career as separate and distinct from the popular figure he became in his later years. What gave you the idea to see the continuity between these two periods?

It was just from doing the listening.  Anyone can go out and get a “Best of the Hot Fives” disc, listen to only “West End Blues,” “Potato Head Blues” and “Cornet Chop Suey” and come away with the impression that Louis was a pioneering jazz trumpet player of the 1920s…and that’s about it. Though they did not change the course of jazz, I think it’s important to listen to and appreciate “Sunset Café Stomp,” “Irish Black Bottom,” “That’s When I’ll Come Back to You” and the other more humorous Hot Fives and Hot Sevens.

Second, I did a lot of work with Louis’s scrapbooks and reading about his day-to-day activities.  The Hot Fives and Sevens were blips on his radar; he didn’t think he was changing jazz history, he just wanted some quick money!  But when you read about him playing pop tunes nightly, singing, getting laughs, doing comedy routines, dancing, you realize that the trailblazing trumpet playing was only one aspect of a man who was a genius all the way around.  So, as I ask in the book, why not take all of him?

02.  How did you - someone born about a decade after Pops died - ever become interested in Pops’ music to the extent that you have?

I was born in 1980 and have enjoyed very little popular music created after 1980.  In elementary school, I was listening to Motown and 1950s rock and roll.  In middle school, I went backwards to Al Jolson and ragtime. Thus, I’ve always enjoyed old sounds and especially old movies.  When I was 15, I rented “The Glenn Miller Story” with Jimmy Stewart.  I knew nothing about Louis, but when he came on and did “Basin Street Blues,” it knocked me out.  I immediately asked my mother to take me to our local library and I checked out a cassette, “16 Most Requested Songs,” a compilation of Louis’s 1950s Columbia recordings.  Well, the rest is history….

03.  What is your background in music?

I’ll be 31 in September and I’ve been playing the piano since I was 7 or 8.  Just basic lessons and then I taught myself jazz and how to improvise when I was in high school.  I formed a trio in my senior year and though the personnel has changed, I’m still leading it out of Toms River, NJ.  I love playing but I’ve never taken it too seriously.  I’m not an innovator by any means; I just like playing songs I like and bringing the sounds of jazz to an area that really doesn’t know what it is (I once jokingly billed myself as “The Jazz King of Toms River” because I’m the entire Toms River jazz scene!).

04.  What was your purpose in writing this book?

I just wanted more people to respect the entirety of Louis Armstrong’s life and career.  This is one of our great geniuses; hundreds of years from now, he will be discussed like we talk about Bach and Beethoven.  Since he’s died, it’s become okay again to admire the Hot Fives and Sevens, but no one really feels the need to go any further.  Online jazz forums barely mention Louis; he might get one article a year in the major jazz magazines.  I think too many people take him for granted:  “Yeah, he was incredibly important in the 1920s but then he went all showbiz and I never bothered checking anything else out.”  Those people are missing out.

And then there’s the people who have problem’s with Louis’s persona and still think he was soft on racism.  By using so many of Louis’s private tapes, I’ve tried painting a full portrait of the man, someone who had very complex feelings about racism and a man who was a real Civil Rights pioneer.  It’s time he gets respected for that, too. 

05.  If the reader had to take away three main points about Pops after reading your book, what would these be?

1) Louis Armstrong was nobody’s Uncle Tom and took heroic stands for his race in the 1950s and 1960s.  2)  There’s no such thing as the two Armstrong’s:  the young genius and the old clown; it’s one man.  3)  Louis Armstrong made some of his greatest and most challenging works in those last 24 years of his life….get out and listen to them!

06.  Joe Glaser, the impresario, was a key figure throughout Pops’ career. How would you describe the relationship between he and Pops?

Complex.  Many people have painted Glaser as nothing but a slave driver, working Louis too hard and getting rich from it.  And yes, there’s an element of that.  But people don’t realize that Louis had a lot of control; he WANTED to work that hard and would get upset if Glaser gave him too many days off.  And Louis was not afraid to stand up for himself, threatening to retire if Glaser couldn’t make things happen for him.

          So for all of Glaser’s faults, he gave Louis a stress-free life for the last 36 years of Louis’s life: he never had to worry about money, about taxes, about hiring and firing musicians, about getting gigs, nothing.  All he had to do was show up and play and I think a lot of musicians would have killed for a deal like that.

07.  It’s not uncommon for fans of an earlier era of a musician’s career to dislike the music of these musicians as their careers progress: Miles Davis comes to mind with his transition from hard bop to fusion & rock; Stan Kenton’s playing of the music of the Beetles during his orchestra’s last decade in the 1970s; Pops’ move to popular songs such as Hello, Dolly, Mack the Knife and What a Wonderful World. Why do you think that this is so?

Ah, I think sometimes an artist is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.  If Louis went around playing in Hot Five settings from 1925 to 1971, people would have wrote him off as someone simply repeating himself and never offering anything new.  Louis changed with the times but never compromised his art; he still sounded like Louis Armstrong, whether it was “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” on Decca, “Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy” on Columbia, singing the Great American Songbook on Verve or doing “Hello, Dolly.” Louis loved ALL kinds of music and always said that where he came from, a real musician was taught to play different kinds of music, not just one style. 

So people and critics might grab on to one part of a musician’s career—the Hot Fives and Sevens make up about three total hours of Louis’s life in the 1920s—and bemoan everything else as this great change, but they don’t realize that artists change themselves.  Lester Young got it in the 1940s and 1950s because he wasn’t the swashbuckling playing of “Shoe Shine Boy.”  So what?  He was Lester Young and he had a story to tell and you should listen to it.  Same with Louis; he matured over the years and learned how to say more with less.  In 1956, he was claiming he was playing better trumpet than ever before in his life, but it’s like people expected him to say, “Boy, I’m not playing like I used to in the 1920s, I might as well keep making commercial songs.”  No, Louis was still doing great things and he knew it.  I quote a lengthy conversation Louis had with a disc jockey who described one of Louis’s Decca pop records, “I Laughed at Love,” as a “commercial” number. Louis scolded the D.J. and said there was “nothing that can outswing it.”  There’s this thing where people feel, “Well, I don’t like it so the artist must not have liked it either.”  Not true. So you have to stop listening with preconceived notions and appreciate who the artist was in those moments, not who he or she wasn’t.

08.  Over the years, Pops played with many musicians. Who among them were his favorites and why?

He seemed to have a thing for trombonists:  he absolutely adored Trummy Young, Jack Teagarden and Tyree Glenn and they all became his closest friends when each was an All Star.  He was often hard on his drummers, though, and really did not get along with Earl Hines during his tenure with the All Stars.  But those trombonists, they were super close with Louis.

09.  In coming to know Pops as you have through your research, what were you say were some of his strong points both as a person and as a musician; what were his weak points?

Got time for another book?  There’s too many strong points to list but I’ll make a go of it.  As a person, he was just an incredible human being.  He treated fans like he had known them for years.  He was incredibly generous.  He demanded respect—and if you didn’t give it to him, watch out for his temper!.  He decried social injustice and had no tolerance for violence of any kind.  He put his audiences first and lived to make them happy.  He was a complete professional who worked strenuously to make sure his live performances were top notch, giving 110% even if there were a handful of people in the room.  And as a musician, I don’t think there’ll ever be another who had such an impact as a trumpeter AND as a singer. 

But of course, he was no saint.  He smoked marijuana religiously, he cheated on his wives at pretty much every chance he got.  He could be stubborn.  And perhaps he didn’t speak up enough for certain things he believed in, such as some ideas that George Avakian had for Louis to record at Columbia, but Joe Glaser killed them without a fight for Louis.  I write about Louis singing the word “darkies” as late as 1951 and that’s nothing to be proud of.  So the man did have his faults and I’m not afraid to call out a recording that I find so-so.  But the good far outweighs the bad.

10.  In your book, you identify Pops’ May 17, 1947 concert at Town Hall in NYC as a sort of a turning point in terms of what was to follow later in his career. Why this performance and not a different one?

Town Hall is where the writing on the wall really became apparent.  Louis had success with Edmond Hall’s sextet at Carnegie Hall in February, but his big band shared the bill on that one.  And he played with small groups on a “This is Jazz” radio broadcast, and another broadcast with Jack Teagarden, on the same day in April 1947.  But Town Hall was an entire evening devoted to small group performances.  It surrounded Louis with some of the finest musicians then on the scene.  The concert sold out immediately and was a hit with critics.  The big band era was dying out and that one evening at Town Hall made it abundantly clear that this was the way to go.

11.  Although Jazz critics viewed them as “commercial,” why was Pops’ so comfortable with A Kiss to Build A Dream On, Lucky Old Sun, Blueberry Hill, Mack the Knife, Hello, Dolly, and, What a Wonderful World.

Because these were songs where he could “see the life of them,” as he put it.  Louis, as I mentioned, believed in playing all kinds of music.  He didn’t think he just had to play straight jazz or standards.  He loved sentimental songs and novelties.  So he never prejudged a tune.  When he was handed “Blueberry Hill,” he thought about “some chick” he once knew.  When he was handed “Mack the Knife,” he thought of some characters out of New Orleans.  When he was handed “What a Wonderful World,” he thought of the kids he watched grow up on his block in Corona, Queens.  So he never complained, “Oh no, what is this, I should be recording nothing but instrumental hot jazz!”  He found something to relate to in every song he performed, which is why when you listen to Louis in such settings, he always sounds completely connected to the tune and never like he’s just slumming.

12.  When they were appearing together in the 1953 movie, The Glenn Miller Story, the legendary actor, Jimmy Stewart, said of Pops: “That man really is Jazz personified.” What did Jimmy Stewart mean by that remark?

To probably the great majority of inhabitants of the planet earth in 1953, that if you heard the word jazz, you thought of Louis Armstrong.  And it’s true.  Think of that whole package, the trumpet playing, the high notes, the solos, the improvisations, the compositions, the singing, the scatting, the repertoire, the man WAS jazz.  And obviously, I still feel that way though I think that to the majority of people who hear the word “jazz” today, they’ll think of Miles or Monk or Coltrane.  Louis has kind of been put on the back burner a little bit and that shouldn’t be.  Why?  Because he was funny and recorded pop songs?  He was just as serious about his music as the rest of them.

13.  What brought about Pops’ 1954-55 “Columbia [Records] Masterpieces;” which recordings are included and why are they deemed so?

It’s more of a “who” brought them about:  it was the legendary producer George Avakian, still going strong at 92.  George had ideas to have Louis and his working group, the All Stars record material by great composers such as W. C. Handy and Fats Waller, stuff that wasn’t in Decca’s plans for Louis.  After some wrangling with Joe Glaser, Avakian was allowed to make two albums, “Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy” and “Satch Plays Fats,” two of the greatest albums Louis ever made and really, two albums that belong in the pantheon of great jazz works created in the 50s.  Both albums were critically lauded and sold well so Glaser let Avakian record Louis exclusively for almost a full year, starting in September 1955.  Avakian came up with a hit record when he had Louis record “Mack the Knife,” then followed it with the turbo-charged album, “Ambassador Satch,” capturing my favorite edition of the All Stars at their peak on a variety of live and studio performances.  But just as Avakian was getting rolling, Louis’s popular started climbing into the stratosphere.  In the book, I detail how Glaser strung Avakian along for a while but refused to sign an exclusive contract, knowing that there was more money to be made by using Louis as a free agent, available to only the highest bidders.  So the Columbia era ended too soon—it lasted from 1954 to 1956—but the material Louis turned out in those years can stand alongside the best of his 1920s and 1930s works.

14.  Besides the obvious monetary relationship, what do you think accounts for Joe Glaser’s unflagging support of Pops’ during the “[racial] showdown of 1957”?

I think Glaser truly admired Louis and you can even say he loved him.  That didn’t stop him from taking advantage of him and stuff like that but I think he admired Louis’s courage in taking that stance against Eisenhower and the government.  Others, such as Louis’s road manager, a cronie of Glaser’s named Pierre “Frenchy” Tallerie, tried to downplay Louis’s words to the press but Glaser never budged and was quoted in newspapers and magazines such as “Jet” saying how proud he was of Louis for saying this.  I’m sure deep down, he was having a heart attack over it, but he knew he wasn’t going to change Louis’s mind so he did the next best thing and stood behind his prized client during a pretty tenuous situation.

15.  “Entertaining” and “show business” were always a big part of Pops’ life. How would you describe Pops’ philosophy of entertaining and why was it so important to him?

Louis was a natural “ham actor,” as he once put it.  Even in his early days, when he was supposed to be such a “serious” artist, he was known just as much for his onstage antics as he was for his trumpet playing.  He was a true entertainer and saw no problem with mixing music and showmanship….especially because he took his music so seriously.  As he once told an interviewer, getting applause for showmanship and jokes is nice, but it doesn’t matter if you’re not playing the notes correctly.

And remember, yes, Louis was heavily influenced by musicians like King Oliver but he also never got tired of talking about his love of vaudeville entertainers such as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Bert Williams. Some people try making it a “minstrel” thing but Louis just loved comedians.  His personal record collection was filled with albums by Redd Foxx, Moms Mabely and Pigmeat Markham.  And his private tapes are filled with hours and hours of Louis and friends telling jokes offstage…always with Louis telling them the best and laughing the loudest.  He even typed about his favorite jokes in a 100+ page manuscript that is absolutely fascinating (and available to researchers visiting the Louis Armstrong House Museum’s Archives at Queens College, where I’m the Archivist).  Sometimes nailing a punchline  with perfect timing is harder than hitting a high C and Louis was great at doing both.

16.  Why was Pops’ performance in Dave and Iola Brubeck’s The Real Ambassadors such a moving and meaningful experience for him? Does this project have a special significance in Pops’ life beyond the music itself?

I think it does.  First, there was the challenge of learning an entire score of new material, something he really had never done before.  Even on Verve albums with Ella such as “Porgy and Bess,” I’m sure he was at least familiar with some of those great songs.  But the Brubecks wrote all these new songs with Louis in mind and Louis rose to the challenge by nailing it.  Also, there was the subject matter, songs about race, politics, religious, etc.  This was deep stuff and Louis responded with more seriousness and sensitivity than even Brubeck imagined bringing tears to those who heard Louis in the studio or those who witnessed the only live performance of “The Real Ambassaors” at Monterey in 1962.  I really think he considered it one of the highlights of his life (he dubbed it many, many times on his private tapes, right up to the end of this life) and proudly told reporters that Brubeck had written him “an opera.”

17.  To elaborate further on a portion of an earlier question, what were the factors that made Hello, Dolly such a wildly unexpectant hit for Pops?

It’s one of life’s great mysteries but the simple explanation is that it’s a fun, catchy, swinging Louis Armstrong record.  No one knew the song; the play wasn’t even open when Louis recorded it.  The Beatles were all over the place, not small-group Dixieland complete with banjo.  And Louis hadn’t even stepped foot in a recording studio in two years so it wasn’t like his records were exactly hot commodities.  But the stars really aligned for that record.  Some people bought it as soon as they heard Louis’s personal touch, “This is Louis, Dolly.”  Those in his band said Louis wasn’t a big fan of the song but again, he gave it his all, played some fine trumpet and when all was said and done, he had the biggest hit of his lifetime, at 63-years-old.  It’s quite stunning but if you just taken it for granted, give “Hello, Dolly” a fresh listen and I guarantee you’ll find it pretty irresistible.

18.  Why did Patrick Scott’s 1965 Toronto Globe Mail article and Richard Meryman’s 1966 Life Magazine profile have such a huge impact on Pops’ later life?

Those articles didn’t have as much of an impact on Louis’s later life as they reflected Louis’s mental state in what was a pretty rough time for him.  He had major dental work in the spring of 1965 and when he got back to playing, things weren’t exactly the same.  He still sounded great but he could no longer execute his solos and ideas 100% as he had just a few months earlier.  He was in his mid-60s and tired and needed more rest.  But at the same time, because of “Hello, Dolly,” he was more popular and more in demand than ever before so he kept pushing himself, even though internally, he was getting more depressed.

The Scott and Meryman articles are important because they caught Louis with his guard partially down and Louis’s depressed state comes through loud and clear.  The Scott article recounted events from the summer of 1965, while the “Life” piece, though not published until April 1966, was also done around September 1965.  And in both pieces, Louis wonders if he should have stayed in New Orleans and never become famous.  He hints at retiring but tells Scott that he was afraid to talk to Joe Glaser about it.  He wants to just be a civilian and doesn’t want to be Satchmo anymore.  It’s real depressing stuff but honestly, it didn’t have much of an impact publicly speaking.  It didn’t cause headlines.  No other writer or jazz magazine picked up on Scott’s writings, which have remained pretty much ignored for over 45 years.

But I do think it must have gotten back to Glaser.  Because in 1966, you start seeing more days off in between tours of one-nighters and in one remarkable stretch, Louis had a steady gig at Jones Beach in Long Island between June and September 1966, getting to stay at his home every night for four months.  So I do think Glaser made an effort to give Louis a little more breathing room but there were still plenty of grueling tours left.  Two All Stars, Billy Kyle and Buster Bailey, even died in 1966 and 1967 respectively.

The postscript to it all is Louis finally got his wish in 1968 when ill health forced him to pretty much retire for two years.  He made TV appearances and the occasional record but really just lived at home, practiced a bit of trumpet and worked on his hobbies.  But once doctors gave him clearance to play with his All Stars again, he came to life and even though those few engagements probably contributed to his death, he was back onstage and for all the depressing thoughts he told Scott and Meryman, he lived to be on that stage, entertaining his fans.

19.  If the general public associates Pops’ with one, particular tune, it may be What a Wonderful World. How did this recording come about?

The producer Bob Thiele took credit for it.  After “Dolly,” Louis began making a series of erratic recordings for Mercury and Brunswick, the great majority of which were complete rip-offs of the “Dolly” formula.  Thiele thought Louis should go in a different direction:  a ballad, but not just any ballad, a message song backed by strings and a choir.  Apparently, Louis’s first reaction wasn’t too enthusiastic but when he spent more time with the lyrics, he began associating it with his neighborhood in Corona, Queens and grew to love the tune. However, the president of ABC records thought it was suicide and didn’t want to release it.  He eventually did but gave it zero promotion in the United   States and the record barely sold here.  But he didn’t think about the rest of the world and it became a huge international hit!  Louis performed it every night until he died but still, the song was fairly little known in the U. S. until it was used in [the film] “Good Morning Vietnam.”

20.  On page 277 of you book you state: “Before singing What a Wonderful World on the 1970 David Frost Show, Armstrong said about the lyrics, ‘They mean so much.’ Is Pops’ comment an appropriate summation for the main theme of your work: “The Magical World of Louis Armstrong?” Put another way, did Pops’ view his life as a “magical world?”

I think he did and he didn’t.  In many ways, he downplayed a lot of what he did, referring to himself as a “salary man,” living in a modest home, wanting to be treated as any ordinary working citizen.  He felt he got as far as he did through hard work and by not being lazy and in that sense, he probably didn’t see any “magic” in it.  But at other times, he did look at his life and express some amazement at where he came from and what he became.  When asked about being called an “Ambassador of Goodwill,” he once replied, “It’s nice because, I mean, the kid has come a long way.”  And he knew the effect he had on his fans around the world. It truly was magical.  “A note’s a note in any language” he was fond of saying.  He could go behind the Iron Curtain, where you couldn’t find a single Louis Armstrong record, and end up a hero, winning standing ovations and being mobbed for his music.  He stopped a Civil War in the Congo in 1960. He took mediocre songs and made timeless music with them.  He changed the world.  And all with a dirt poor background and fourth grade education.  If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

Reprising Cool Concepts Cars and Cool Jazz – “Two of a Mind”

There are three reasons for reprising this feature on these pages: [1] Gerry Mulligan; [2] Paul Desmond; [3] the cool concept cars that populate the video that concludes this feature.

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

I’m sure that everyone from movie action heroes to deep, philosophical thinkers have used the phrase – “there are no coincidences” and whether it can be proved as a truism or not, I’ve always believe that this was the case.

So when one of my Jazz buddies sent me via e-mail attachment, a collection of photographs of concepts cars developed in the 1950s by the big three US automakers which I happen to open while listening to the Paul Desmond – Gerry Mulligan Quartet album Two of A Mind [RCA/Bluebird 0654-2-RB], I decided to go with it.

The result of this “coincidence” is the piece that you are now reading and the video montage of these concepts cars set to Paul’s and Jeru’s music that closes it.

I’ll always been indebted to Will Thornbury for making possible one of my most favorites Jazz recordings, Erroll Garner’s Concerts By The Sea [Columbia/Sony Entertainment], one of the best selling Jazz albums of all time.

As Will Friedwald explains:

“On Sept. 19, 1955, Garner … performed at Fort Ord, an army base near Carmel, Calif., at the behest of disc jockey and impresario Jimmy Lyons. Martha Glaser, who served as Garner's personal manager for nearly his entire career, happened to be backstage when she noticed a tape recorder running.

As she recalled for the Wall Street Journal last week, it turned out that the show was being taped -- without Garner's knowledge -- by a jazz fan and scholar named Will Thornbury, strictly for the enjoyment of himself and his fellow servicemen. Ms. Glaser told him, "I'll give you copies of every record Erroll ever made, but I can't let you keep that tape." She took it back to New York (carrying it on her lap), where she assembled it into album form, titled it "Concert by the Sea," and then played it for George Avakian, who ran the jazz department at Columbia Records. Garner had actually left Columbia three years earlier, but, as Mr. Avakian recently told the Journal: "I totally flipped over it! I knew that we had to put it out right away."

When Columbia released "Concert by the Sea" a few months later, this early live 12-inch LP was a runaway sensation. It became the No. 1 record of Garner's 30-year career and one of the most popular jazz albums of all time. It's not hard to hear why: From the first notes onward, Garner plays like a man inspired -- on fire, even. He always played with a combination of wit, imagination, amazing technical skill and sheer joy far beyond nearly all of his fellow pianists, but on this particular night he reached a level exceeding his usual Olympian standard.”

Enter Will Thornberry again, this time as the writer of the insert notes to the Paul Desmond – Gerry Mulligan Quartet album Two of A Mind.

Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan made two albums together just as their popularity as Jazz artists was beginning to surge; one in 1957 for Verve [314 519 850-2] simply titled Blues in Time: The Gerry Mulligan-Paul Desmond Quartet and the other being to the Paul Desmond – Gerry Mulligan Quartet album Two of A Mind, which was recorded in 1962.

Will went on to become a successful record producer in his own right as well as an excellent writer on the subject of Jazz.

Nat Hentoff, one of the most esteemed of all Jazz authors, wrote the liner notes for the original Verve LP and Harvey Pekar penned the insert notes for the 1993 reissue as a Verve CD.

Taken in combination, Messer’s Thornbury, Hentoff and Pekar, may very well represent the most comprehensive telling of the story of how these two Jazz originals came to record together.

[Just to keep the record straight, there is a 3^rd recording involving Mulligan and Desmond which they made in 1972 with Dave Brubeck entitled – We’re All Together Again for the First Time. It was issued on the Atlantic label and I have not read it’s liner notes.]

Since there is some repetitive background information in the notes that Will, Nat and Harvey wrote, I have edited excerpts together that I hope are not too redundant.

Let’s start with the senior statesman of the group, Nat Hentoff, explaining how the original Blues in Time Mulligan-Desmond recording came about.

© -Nat Hentoff, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Blues in Time:  Gerry Mulligan Meets Paul Desmond [Verve MGV-8246]

“The idea for this multi-linear playground has been bottled, like an amiably desperate jinni, in Paul Desmond's mind since 1954 when Gerry Mulligan sat in with the Dave Brubeck quartet at Carnegie Hall, and a Tea for Two resulted that convinced both Desmond and Mulligan that their ways of speaking music had what Gerry terms "a natural affinity."

Nothing and no one happened by to release the jinni until the summer of 1957 and the American Jazz Festival at New­port. During a quiet time at those assizes, Desmond again suggested the idea of a record date to Mulligan. There still seemed to be too many obstacles for liberation day to be in sight. There was, for one thorn, the matter of which record label would preserve the union. Desmond was affianced, so to speak, to one company and Mulligan preferred others. There were other problems too, and the conversation appar­ently headed towards inaction.

Norman Granz, who has a collection of bottles from which he has released jinn of this kind (one of them named Ella Fitzgerald) had been a listening bystander at the Desmond-Mulligan colloquy; and a few hours later, offered to do the date himself. He would make a trade with Desmond's com­pany to indemnify them for the loan of Paul (it is increasingly hard in present-day jazz recording to obtain the loan of a player; it is sometimes easier to borrow Kim Novak); and in general, Granz promised to untangle any other difficulties, present and possible.

In August of 1957, the bottle was opened. Mulligan had flown to California with his quartet to play a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. He had also recorded a jam session album for Granz with Stan Getz, Harry Edison, Louis Bellson, and the Oscar Peterson Trio; and at 2 A.M., after this record date, Mulligan and Desmond met for their first session. ‘About all we came in with that was planned,’ notes Desmond, ‘was a list of typewritten tunes. There were some obvious unison things written, one-chorus lines on two short tunes Gerry wrote, but everything else, including the counterpoint was off-the-cuff.’

Desmond and Mulligan are both dour self-critics, and are especially severe on their recorded work. Both, however, are quite pleased with this session. Desmond's explanation of his enjoyment in working with Mulligan is succinctly clear: "He just does all the right things."

‘I'm very proud of several things we did on the date,’ adds Mulligan, ‘like sometimes we're blowing passages in thirds, and they come off. It's a little alarming. And there are also places where Paul comes through very strongly, much more aggressively than he usually plays with Dave. He gets to swing pretty hard at times here in some contrast to the more flowing and lyrical work he does with Dave.’”

Here are some excerpts from Harvey Pekar’s notes to the reissue.

© -Harvey Pekar  copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Reissuing the Gerry Mulligan-Paul Desmond Quartet [Verve 314 519 850-2]

When Mulligan established himself in the L.A. area [in the early 1950’s] he formed a very popular piano-less quartet with trumpeter Chet Baker, bass, and drums. He employs the same format here, with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond substituting for Baker.

Desmond, star soloist of the Brubeck quartet for many years, is a difficult musician to evaluate. His was a fragile but considerable talent that might have been more fully realized outside the context of Brubeck's group. His main influences were Lee Konitz, Lester Young, and possibly Stan Getz. He had a small, pretty, vibrato-less tone; an excellent upper register; and at his best an inventive, lyrical, improvisatory instinct. When not in good form, however, his playing could be cloying and insipid. Mulligan seems to inspire Desmond here; in any event some of Paul's best recorded work is on this disk.

Gerry is inspired as well. He too has been influenced by Lester Young, though he is a more extroverted player than Desmond. His work can be predictable rhythmically and his choice of notes is by modern jazz standards conservative; but melodically he's ceaselessly inventive and he resolves his ideas very well, playing the kind of lines you can memorize and sing. In fact, in listening to this album again, I was surprised and delighted to find how much of it I had memorized. …

Mulligan's playing is so buoyant and infectious — you just know he's having a good time, that everything's working for him. On the slower tunes, …,  he plays with a full-bodied warmth that's hard to resist. Desmond swings harder and plays with more continuity than he usually did with Brubeck. When he uses motivic variation he does it creatively rather than by descending to coyness. The improvised counterpoint here works out very well. Each man listens to the other and reacts, seemingly effortlessly, with appropriate responses.

Kudos also go to Dave Bailey and Joe Benjamin. Their quiet but steady and resilient time-keeping gives Mulligan and Desmond just the kind of accompaniment they need, as the high quality of the saxophonists' work demonstrates.

These musicians were made for each other. July, 1993”

When the 1962 recording Two of A Mind: The Paul Desmond-Gerry Mulligan Quartet [RCA/Bluebird 9654-2 RB] was reissued on CD in 1989, Will Thornberry provided these comprehensive insert notes.

© -Will Thornbury, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The Cocoanut Grove is part of the Ambassador Hotel. Freddy Martin used to lead the band there. The hotel grounds are vast; tall palm trees stand like sentries at its edge. Across the street, in 1952, was a bungalow bar called the Haig, where Gerry Mulligan played with his quartet and where Time magazine gave him the most important review of his young career:

...in Los Angeles...a gaunt, hungry-looking young fellow named Gerry Mulligan plays the baritone saxophone....His jazz is rich and even orderly. ..sometimes the polyphony is reminiscent of tailgate blues, sometimes it comes tumbling with bell-over-mouthpiece impromptu.... He has a sleepy face and on the bandstand he keeps

his watery green eyes closed even when listen ing to Trumpeter Chet Baker, opens them only occasionally to glower at customers who are boorish enough to talk against the music....Next Mulligan objective: an enlarged band and a nationwide tour. "I've got to keep moving. I've got to grow."1

Mulligan was hired by the Haig's publicist, Richard Bock, a student attending college on the G. I. Bill.

"I conned the owner...into letting me put in a jam session on the off night," Bock said. "I met Mulligan and hired him as a soloist, then he became the leader of a regular thing. Chet Baker wandered over one night after his gig with Charlie Parker and sat in with Gerry. They hit it off. A few weeks later Red Norvo's trio, the one with Mingus and Tal Farlow, was booked for a month to play five nights a week. Red said 'I don't want the piano on the stand—we don't use piano.' The owner stored the piano in his apartment and we said 'What are you going to do, Mulligan?—you don't have a piano.' And he said 'Well, we can play without one.' He didn't want to lose the gig—at that point he was really scuffling. And so it turned out to be a piano-less quartet."

"After the third week it was magic," Bock continued. "It...gave Chet a freedom that he never would have had... he was able to play almost anything that he thought of and it didn't clash with the piano...he could really go on real flights of imagination.... With Gerry, Chet was forced to be inventive; he was forced to come up with contrapuntal lines—they had that marvelous ability to chase each other and to play what was almost Dixieland or two-part inventions."

"And it went on for months, you know," Bock concluded. "It was the biggest thing that happened on the West Coast at that time. Time magazine covered it and it became a real experience."

"I was overlooked," Paul Desmond was fond of saying, "long before anyone knew who I was." By 1953 Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond were attracting the same kind of attention as Mulligan and Baker. Brubeck had noticed earlier, while on the road, that stuck between the jazz clubs of the country were colleges. He began to contact some of them for concert bookings and developed an itinerary. The move was an important move for the group: it gave Brubeck the means to develop a generation of listeners and it gave Desmond a chance to meet girls.

Paul Emil Breitenfeld — Desmond came later, the name picked from a phone book—was born in San Francisco in 1924. His father was a theater organist and arranger who talked twelve-year-old Paul into returning the violin that he had brought home from music class at San Francisco Polytechnic High School in favor of a clarinet. Desmond played in the Polytechnic band and edited the school paper. He went into the army in 1943, switched from clarinet to alto, and spent the duration of WW II at the Presidio of San Francisco in the 253rd AGF Band. Dave Brubeck passed through town on his way overseas. "We went out to the band room for a quick session," Desmond said to Nat Hentoff, "[and] started to play the blues in B flat, and the first chord he played was a G major. Knowing absolutely nothing at the time about polytonality I thought he was stark raving mad." Not without reason, Desmond added—Brubeck was "wild haired, ferocious looking, with a pile-driver approach to the piano, and an expression of a surly Sioux. It took...several more listenings before I began to understand what he was up to."

After the war Desmond ran into Brubeck and formed a quartet. "We were making about $50 a night," Desmond told Marian McPartland. "I was splitting it with the guys and paying for the gas, too. That's when I decided I really didn't want to be a leader." Brubeck took over the quartet. Brubeck was studying with Darius Milhaud; he formed an octet comprised of other Milhaud students and Desmond, who was majoring in literature at San Francisco State. In the first six months of 1950, Desmond's only jobs were "two concerts with the octet and a Mexican wedding." Desmond joined the Jack Fina band. Fina, a pianist, had once been with Freddy Martin's orchestra; highlights of his career with Martin had been an adaptation of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto, called Tonight We Love, and a boogie-woogie rendition of The Flight of the Bumble Bee. Desmond reached New York City with the band, entertaining thoughts of settling there, but found that "all the guys I talked to wanted my job with Fina." Discouraged, Desmond returned to San Francisco. Brubeck's trio had achieved recognition beyond San Francisco and he decided to form a quartet. He hired Desmond and they never looked back. During 1953the quartet recorded albums at two colleges, Oberlin and College of the Pacific. Record producer George Avakian signed them to a contract at Columbia Records. Their first release for Columbia was another set of campus recordings, Jazz Goes to College. The album was an immediate success. On November 8, 1954, Dave Brubeck appeared on the cover of Time.

A month before Time's cover story ("Desmond's eyes close, his long fingers glide over his alto's mother-of-pearl keys..."),2 Desmond recorded his first solo album. "It is my custom when listening to playbacks," Desmond wrote, "to cough loudly whenever I hear something coming that I played and don't like, and altho things have improved since the early days —  'Whispering Desmond' they used to call me, up at Sound Recorders — most editing sessions leave me a bit hoarse."3 The album had Desmond's most inspired title, Baroque... But Happy, and "a fond tribute to Gerry Mulligan," called Jeruvian.

"You remember that one," I said.

"Sure," replied Mulligan smiling. "We used to hang out together at all the festivals, hangout a lot — which was not wonderful for my liver. In fact that's how we ended up recording together. Norman Granz was always around and he'd overhear us talking about doing something. Paul would say he'd really like to do a thing with my quartet, only have it be an alto instead of a trumpet, and I'd say 'Sure, that's a great idea.' And then we'd go to another festival and say the same thing. Well, after a few years of that Granz finally said 'Would you stop that? You're driving me crazy! If you're serious about this and l set up a date will you do it?' We said 'Sure. 'So he did and we did."

The record was called Blues in Time.

"Pronounced aahn-teem, I suppose."

"Sure," said Mulligan, "we both like to fool around with words."

Desmond was epigrammatic and pun-loving, Mulligan is a master at anagrams, a composer I re-arranger: viz., "I worked out something recently for Duke, except it doesn't work with 'Duke’ -I have to use 'Edward,' Duke's real name. What do you think 'E. Ellington' works out to be?"

"I don't know."

"Gentle Lion."

His masterpiece is his anagram for Gil Evans: Svengali.

Gerald Joseph Mulligan was born in April 1927, in Queens Village, Long Island. His father was a management engineer; Mulligan was the youngest of four brothers and the only one not to enter their father's profession. The family traveled extensively during Mulligan's childhood, living in Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. He showed an early aptitude for music, starting clarinet and turning out his first arrangement at age ten, organizing his first combo in high school, then expanding it into a big band and writing arrangements. When he was fourteen the family moved to Philadelphia: Mulligan switched from clarinet to tenor, and put together another high school dance band. He sold his first professional arrangement to the WCAU Radio house band while still in high school; by the beginning of his senior year he had worked professionally with two local bands, had toured with Tommy Tucker's band as an arranger, had joined WCAU as staff arranger for the Elliot Lawrence Band, and had met and befriended Charlie Parker. Mulligan moved to New York in 1946 and was hired as an arranger by Gene Krupa, for whom he wrote Disk Jockey Jump. The following year he joined Claude Thornhill's band, involving himself in the development of ideas with Thornhill's chief arranger, Gil Evans, that would result in the birth of the classic Miles Davis Nonet, for which he arranged George Wallington's Godchild, and the Mulligan compositions Rocker, Jeru, Venus de Milo, and the much-later released Darn That Dream. By 1951, twenty-four-year-old Mulligan had produced memorable, and in several instances historic, compositions and arrangements. He had also abandoned the clarinet, tenor, and alto in favor of the baritone. Work was scarce that summer, money elusive.

About the time Paul Desmond left Jack Fina, Gerry Mulligan hitchhiked to L.A.

"Most of the albums Paul did apart from Dave were piano-less," I said, "but with a different conception than yours."

"Early on, I was amazed to find out that different horn players listen to different guys in the rhythm section," Mulligan said. "Some guys listen to drummers, some to piano players, but not too many listen to bass players. I always, always listened to the bass line. So when I played with a bass player who was shucking it, it really threw me a curve because I didn't hear anything. But, conversely, when I played with good players — guys with good time but also good melodic sense of the bass line — it would inspire me to better things."

Mulligan's liner notes for his first album for Dick Bock weren't exactly a Manifesto, but they contained concepts that would be discussed throughout the decade:

‘I consider the string bass to be the basis of the sound of the group; the foundation on which the soloist builds his line, the main thread around which the two horns weave their contrapuntal interplay. It is possible with two voices to imply the sound of or impart the feeling of any chord or series of chords. When a piano is used in a group it necessarily plays the dominant role; the horns and bass must tune to it as it cannot tune to them, making it the dominant tonality. The piano's accepted function of constantly stating the chords of the progression makes the solo horn a slave to the whims of the piano player. The soloist is forced to adapt his line to the changes and alterations made by the pianist in the chords of the progression. It is obvious that the bass does not possess as wide a range of volume and dynamic possibilities as the drums or horns. It is therefore necessary to keep the overall volume in proportion to that of the bass in order to achieve an integrated group sound.’

The decade of the 1950s in Los Angeles would begin and end with

quartets, Mulligan's and Ornette Coleman's, and the path from one to the

other was straight and short.

Desmond listened to piano. He spent seventeen years with Dave Brubeck. "When Dave is playing at his best," he told Hentoff in that 1952 interview, "it's completely live, free improvisation in which you can find all the qualities of the music I love....This sort of playing doesn't happen every night and hasn't happened yet on a record session. Maybe it never will, but it's worth waiting for. When I heard it happening the first time, all the other jazz I had heard and played then seemed pale and trivial by comparison." A few years later, responding to those who suggested the contrary, he said "I never would have made it without Dave. He's amazing harmonically, and he can be a fantastic accompanist. You can play the wrongest note possible in a chord and he can make it sound like the only right one." Away from Brubeck he usually worked with Jim Hall, or later Ed Bickert. He liked the guitar—the instrument once described as a piano you hold in your lap.

Mulligan and Desmond made only three records together: Blues in Time (Verve) in 1957; We’re All Together Again for the First Time, with Dave Brubeck (Atlantic) in 1972; and Two of a Mind, recorded in three sessions during the summer of 1962, exactly ten years to the season from Mulligan's original quartet sessions. "The dates," wrote George Avakian, who co-produced the album with Bob Prince, "always seemed to take place as one principal was unpacking a suitcase and the other was about to catch a plane." Much was expected of the album — "a classic-to-be collaboration by two of the greatest saxophonist of modern jazz," read the original back cover — and musically the expectations were realized.

But summer of 1962 was the season of the Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd recordings of Desafinado and One Note Samba. The Bossa Nova Craze had arrived; record companies, distributors, and promoters thought of little else, and Two of a Mind drowned in the Wave from Brazil.5

"We liked the record," Mulligan said. "We put in a lot of thought to the kind of tunes that would lend themselves to Paul and me playing together — things that would lend themselves to counterpoint playing. We came prepared for more than we thought we'd need. In a studio you never know what's going to work and what isn't."

Stardust evokes Brubeck and Desmond at Oberlin the decade before, when Brubeck and Desmond used as their opening the same descending three-note motif used by Paul and Gerry here 6 ("...prom perennial Stardust is popular with Brubeck and Desmond," wrote Time, "because its stately harmonic progressions flow as smoothly as the Mississippi..."). Desmond overdubbed an additional saxophone line on the last two choruses of The Way You Look Tonight; it and All the Things You Are are classic Jerome Kern, and Two of a Mind comes close. The song was titled by George Avakian as he drove through Central Park. Avakian also likes to fool around with words, has a good memory, and probably an umbrella.

"Judy Holliday walked in during a play back of that part where Paul and I are working through the counterpoint," Mulligan said. "She gave us one of those looks, you know, and said That sounds like the "Blight of the Fumble Bee".'" He laughed. "So that's how that got titled."

"Anything more about Paul?" I asked.

"There always is something to say about him," said Mulligan, "but I miss him, almost more than anything. It's really hard not having someone to talk to. He used to say that. Desmond and I were kids together and it gets to be important to have somebody to talk to you don't have to explain anything to. My wife said it the other day — she said that what finally hit her about this life — for all musicians — it's lonely out there, man! It's lonely out there on the road! Your friends start dying off, you're left bereft. You loose your youthful friends...bereft. He's your childhood friend — that's it! You're alone." Mulligan paused for a moment. "Anyway," he said. "My wife's calling me. We're going to go eat lunch."

The Haig has been gone for years. The Ambassador Hotel with its vast lawn and tall palm trees that stand like sentries and its Cocoanut Grove where Freddy Martin conducted while Jack Fina played Tonight We Love and the boogie-woogie rendition of The Flight of the Bumble Bee has been sold. The new owners recently laid off the staff and shut down the hotel. They plan to tear it down.”

- WILL THORNBURY

Notes and Sources

1. Time, 2/8/53, p. 67.

2. Time, 11/8/53, p. 36.

3. The Paul Desmond Quintet, Fantasy 8082

4.  The Gerry Mulligan Quartet, Pacific Jazz PJLP 1

5. Never at a loss for irony, Desmond and Mulligan persevered. Desmond's next album for RCA was Take Ten, with Jim Hall, and featured four bossa(s)? novas, "which by now," Desmond noted, "I should call bossa antiqua." When Mulligan met Antonio Carlos Jobim, composer of Desafinado and One Note Samba, Jobim told him that the Mulligan quartet had been a prime influence on him and other young Brazilian composers.

6. Jazz at Oberlin, Fantasy 3245