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Born in Wales in 1928, the esteemed British author and critic Alun Morgan [d. 2018] became a Jazz fan as a teenager and was an early devotee of the bebop movement. In the 1950s he began contributing articles to Melody Maker, Jazz Journal, Jazz Monthly, and Gramophone and for twenty years, beginning in 1969, he wrote a regular column for a local newspaper in Kent. From 1954 onward he contributed to BBC programs on Jazz, authored and co-authored books on modern Jazz and Jazz in England and wrote over 2,500 liner notes for Jazz recordings.
Alun was a gentle and genteel person with many significant achievements as a Jazz writer and critic during his long career. His writing style is succinct, accurate and easy to read and understand. Held in the highest regard by the British Jazz community, it’s an honor to have the writings of Alun Morgan featured once again on these pages.
Our thanks to Jordi Pujol, the owner-operator of Fresh Sound Records for the preview copy of The Fabulous Gerry Mulligan Sextet [Fresh Sound CD 418-419]. Founded in 1983 in Barcelona, Spain, the Fresh Sound catalogue has an exceptional selection of recordings from the Golden Age of Modern Jazz and you can visit the collection on offer by going here.
“The well-known author, lecturer and historian Bob Reisner began holding Sunday jam sessions at the Open Door in New York's Greenwich Village (at West Third Street and Washington Square South) on April 26, 1953. It soon became a focal point for jazz; Charlie Parker was a frequent visitor and participant. It was also a place where young, up-and-coming soloists could perform, one of whom was trumpeter Jon Eardley from Altoona, Pennsylvania. Years later Jon told Pat Sullivan in a Jazz Monthly magazine interview that "one night there were three trumpeters on the stand: Tony Fruscella, Don Joseph and me. Gerry Mulligan and his wife were in the audience. When we'd finished Gerry's wife, Arlyne, came over and asked me, 'how many white shirts do you have?' It was a way of inviting me to join the band. The following Friday, Gerry gave me about 16 LPs and a record player and I had to learn the lot by Monday when we opened in Baltimore." All this took place in the autumn of 1954 and Eardley was to work with the Mulligan Quartet and the later Sextet for nearly two years... with a few breaks in-between.
The formation of the Sextet came about originally as a one-off concert staged at Hoover High School in San Diego shortly before Christmas 1954. During October and November of that year, the Stan Getz Quintet plus the quartets of Mulligan and Dave Brubeck were part of a Norman Granz package titled Modern Jazz Concert, headed by Duke Ellington and his orchestra. The concert personnel appeared at fifteen locations across the United States, from Carnegie Hall in New York to the closing appearance at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Mulligan's quartet was completed by Jon Eardley, bass player Red Mitchell and drummer Frank Isola. The Getz Quintet contained valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, who had worked with Gerry in the early months of 1954. Although Getz returned to the east coast after the Modern Jazz Concert tour ended, Brookmeyer remained in Los Angeles and was available for the San Diego school musical event. It was an opportunity for Mulligan to write for, and play in, a six-piece band rather than the quartet lineups which had been his main force since August 1952 when he launched the foursome with Chet Baker. In some ways, the famous west coast Mulligan Quartet was something of a setback in his career. Although highly rewarding in terms of finances and personal publicity, it was not the direction Gerry wanted to take. Left to his own devices, he would have preferred to write for—and lead—a big band.
In Chet Baker he had an ideal frontline partner who had an intuitive grasp of what was required and could produce just the right musical lines which interlocked with, or complemented, those produced by Gerry. The original quartet was disbanded in June 1953 when Mulligan was found guilty of narcotics possession and given a custodial sentence. Released on Christmas Eve 1953, his immediate aim was to reform the quartet with Chet Baker, if only to give himself some breathing space and an income. But while Gerry had been serving his six months at the Peter Pitchess Honor Farm in Saugus (thirty miles north of Los Angeles), Baker had formed a quartet with pianist Russ Freeman which was a musical and financial success. Actually, they had recorded in April — two months before Gerry left the scene. The May 6 Down Beat carried a review of "The Lamp Is Low" and "Maid in Mexico." This session at Gold Star Studio is listed in all discographies as late July. The discrepancy can probably be traced to Dick Bock, who wasn't the most organized man when it came to hard facts about his sessions. When the two men met after Mulligan's release, Chet demanded a weekly salary of four hundred dollars to rejoin a reformed quartet. Gerry terminated the discussion at this point.
The baritone saxist then telephoned Bob Brookmeyer in New York, asking him to fly out to Los Angeles with "a New York rhythm section." Bob arrived with bass player Bill Anthony and drummer Frank Isola, two men who had worked with Brookmeyer in the Stan Getz Quartet. Mulligan reformed the Tentette he had employed for recording purposes a year earlier and played one concert with the group at the Embassy Auditorium in Los Angeles. A few weeks later he flew back to New York. He then replaced Anthony with Red Mitchell and this was the quartet which remained in being until Gerry fulfilled his contract to play at the Third Salon du Jazz in Paris at the beginning of June 1954. However, the idea of a larger group was never very far from Gerry's thoughts. He must have looked back with pleasure on that evening in San Diego when he played alongside not only Jon Eardley, Bob Brookmeyer, Red Mitchell and Larry Bunker, but the sixth member of the group: the constantly-swinging Zoot Sims. At that time, Zoot was resident in Los Angeles, having left the Stan Kenton band in November 1953. Amazingly, this outstanding musician had difficulty in finding regular musical work and was forced to take any available employment. Ed Michel, an ex-bass player who lived in California during the early Fifties and later worked in the record industry, once told me Zoot was so frustrated at this time he was prepared to sit-in with any kind of band just to play. "I've seen him playing with a Latin-American band, his knuckles covered with green paint because he'd been painting fences that day in order to make some money."
The San Diego concert remains a highlight in the Mulligan discography. It was recorded direct to two-track by sound engineer Phil Turetsky, who had recorded the very first Mulligan-Baker Quartet recordings. "Bernie's Tune" and "Lullaby of the Leaves" were done on an Ampex tape recorder in August 1952 in his bungalow on Wonderland Park Avenue off Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the Hollywood hills. The transfers heard here present the best sound yet achieved and preserve the immediacy of the live recording. The Hoover High School concert commenced with five tunes played by a quartet (Mulligan, Eardley, Red Mitchell and Chico Hamilton) which have not been included here as this album concentrates on the Sextet's music.
The complete Sextet is heard on the following numbers: "Western Reunion,""I Know, Don't Know How" and the "Ellington Medley" which includes "Flamingo" on which Bob Brookmeyer switches to piano. There is an atmosphere of pure musical joy here, particularly on the saxophone duet of "The Red Door." Mulligan shows that the baritone saxophone need not be a cumbersome instrument as he treats "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" with loving care. I think we can assume that Gerry wrote "Western Reunion" specifically for the San Diego concert, and as a tribute to the meeting of Gerry and his old-time friend Zoot... probably a play on the telegraph company Western Union. If "I Know, Don't Know How" sounds familiar it is because Mulligan has done a little recycling. For the eight bar A section of this A-A-B-A construction tune, Gerry has used the middle-eight of his earlier composition "Line for Lyons." Perhaps the most stunning track is "I'll Remember April" which features Zoot Sims at his very best, superbly backed by a brilliant rhythm section with Larry Bunker proving that exciting and driving drumming need not necessarily be loud. Brookmeyer again plays piano and it should be pointed out his keyboard work is not simply a useful "double" on occasions. Bob once worked as a full-time pianist with the band of Tex Beneke, and in 1959 he and Bill Evans made a brilliant two-piano album (The Ivory Hunters) together. Brookmeyer had taken the place of Chet Baker in Gerry's new quartet at the beginning of 1954; he was never happy with the arrangement although he pointed out to author Gordon Jack in his Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective (Scarecrow Press, 2004), "this was the official start of Gerry as a well-dressed, successful bandleader.
When he first arrived in California, he just wanted to play and write, but when he went on the road with the quartet he became a bandleader." Bob's problems with the Mulligan Quartet were musical ones. "I knew how good the group had sounded with Chet Baker, and I thought it really needed a trumpet, not a trombone. In other words, somebody higher up because Gerry and I were so close in sound."
Things came to a head at the Paris Salon du Jazz (also known as the Salle Pleyel Concert) at the beginning of June 1954. Even to we outside observers, it was sometimes obvious that Bob and Gerry were frequently at musical loggerheads and it was no surprise to learn Brookmeyer had given his notice and left the quartet after the Salon du Jazz. He returned to the United States, recorded an album for Dick Bock's Pacific Jazz label in Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio with pianist John Williams and his ex-Mulligan colleagues. Red Mitchell and Frank Isola, then flew west to work (briefly) at The Haig club in a band he formed with Zoot Sims. As for Gerry, he continued with the quartet which now had trumpeter Jon Eardley as a replacement for Brookmeyer. Jon never tried to sound like Chet Baker; his tone was hotter and he could dig back into the Swing Era for ideas when the music called for it.
This quartet lasted until the end of 1954. Pacific Jazz taped the unit at two concerts, the first at Stockton High School; then a month later came the San Diego appearance by the group plus Brookmeyer and Sims. After that, Gerry disbanded and returned to New York to write some new music. The first half of 1955 found him appearing on the Steve Allen Show and various other gigs, often accompanied by Jon Eardley. In July 1955 he played at the Newport Jazz Festival where he appeared as a guest with both the Chet Baker and Dave Brubeck quartets as well playing with a pick-up group containing Miles Davis, Zoot Sims and Thelonius Monk. By August of that year he was ready to form his new sextet and had secured a contract with EmArcy, the newly formed jazz subsidiary of Mercury Records, headed by Bob Shad and Jack Tracy.
After a series of rehearsals, Gerry's sextet went on tour, opening at Cleveland's Loop Lounge on August 29. then proceeded with a one-week engagement at Boston's Storyville that lasted until September 18. Then, back to New York to record the September 21-22 sessions, and after a successful engagement at Basin Street, the group continued on the road, hitting the East and Midwest circuit, stopping only to record the October 31 session. The tour ended after a week at the Rouge, a night club in River Rouge, Michigan, on December 11.
The majority of the music on the enclosed Compact Discs comes from this most productive period and is played by one of the finest small groups ever to be formed and led by Mulligan. It benefited from its exemplary personnel (which remained virtually the same throughout the eighteen months of it’s existence), Gerry's impeccable leadership plus his understanding as composer and arranger. It gave him the sound palette he needed with a range from the top notes on the trumpet plunging more than three octaves to the lowest notes on baritone and valve trombone. Of equal importance was how the skillful writing often made the band sound bigger than it really was. Mulligan told Ira Gitler, "with the four horns we did a lot of clubs, a lot of concerts. It was a nice, hot band for playing theaters. We'd start with the four horns grouped around the microphone and by the time we were into the show we'd be all the way across the stage. I'd be at one end, then Bobby and Zoot, and the trumpet just spread all the way across. Really a ball."
The albums Jack Tracy supervised for EmArcy made use of some pre-existing pieces rearranged for the Sextet such as "The Lady Is a Tramp,""Bernie's Tune," and "Makin’ Whoopee" as well as material recently written by Mulligan for the new group. The impact of his music on both audiences and record buyers was the same, and in 1957 Ralph J. Gleason, reviewing the Sextet's first album for Down Beat magazine, awarded it the maximum of five stars. He drew attention to "the times, usually as an interlude towards the end of a number, when (Gerry) is able to direct the horns into a boiling and bubbling stew which can raise me right off the floor. I have heard no one else but Dizzy Gillespie do this particular thing successfully." Mulligan could take full credit for such matters. As Zoot Sims told Ira Gitler, "Mulligan doesn't do anything unless it's set, rehearsed. You know, it's all that playing together. Gerry's very well organized. He won't go on the road or in a club until it's set. That's the way I like it." Gleason continued his review. "As further evidence of his structural proficiency, his second chorus on piano in 'Blues' seems to be an almost classic example of construction, moving, as it does, from simplicity to full complexity without once losing definition. You will not want to miss this LP."
In later years, Bob Brookmeyer stated that the Sextet was Gerry's favorite group, even more satisfying than the quartet with Chet Baker or the various editions of his magnificent Concert Jazz Band. This six piece band comprised the most suitable group of players and had rare flexibility enabling it to tackle music from a range of eras and sources. For example, the highly successful "Ain't It the Truth" is Mulligan's interpretation of a number dating back to July 1942 when composed and arranged by Laverne "Buster" Harding for the Count Basie orchestra. It turned out to be the Count's last official recording session for twenty-nine months. (The AFM imposed a record ban which came into effect four days after "Ain't It the Truth" and six other titles were recorded.)
At the other end of the scale Mulligan's Sextet used pieces seldom played by jazz units. A prime example is "La plus que lente" first recorded by the Sextet in October 1955; and again the following September with trumpeter Don Ferrara replacing Jon Eardley. (This later recording was the only occasion Ferrara worked with the group.) The title translates as "Slower than Slow" and is based on something Gil Evans transcribed from music written by the French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy. It is largely an ensemble piece, beautifully played by the Sextet which maintains the almost ethereal mood of the music. It bears out the assertion of critic and musicologist Max Harrison in 1959 that "the real nature of (Mulligan's) subsequent achievement was hinted at early in his career by his facility in arranging and his concern with unity. In addition to the personal expression of his solos, what Mulligan has given jazz is a fresh ensemble style. Whereas men like Armstrong and Parker, in forging a new mode of solo utterance, give us primarily themselves. Mulligan like Gil Evans has given his fellow musicians a new way of thinking about playing together, a new approach to the jazz ensemble" (from These Jazzmen of Our Time, Victor Gollancz, 1959).
The Sextet was a success wherever it played in the United States; then in the spring of 1956, the six musicians embarked for Europe aboard the Italian passenger liner Andrea Doria to play dates in France, Germany, Italy, et al. While in Paris, Gerry bought a soprano sax and Zoot an alto at the Selmer factory.
On some dates they came across Chet Baker, who was also touring Europe at the time and there is at least one recorded German transcription (from Landstuhl) of Baker sitting in with the Sextet. When the band returned to the United States, Jon Eardley left and the last studio records by the group in September had Don Ferrara on his only appearance with the Sextet. The final date was at the Preview Lounge in Chicago by which time Oliver Beener had the trumpet role. Zoot Sims left to freelance in New York before teaming up with Al Cohn while Mulligan reverted to the quartet format, partnered by Bob Brookmeyer.
Although the life of the Mulligan Sextet was comparatively short, it was a most important phase in Gerry's musical development. In April 1957, he was commissioned by Columbia Records to assemble a big band and provide original arrangements for a recording session. For some reason, most products of the session were not released for twenty years by which time Mulligan's own Concert Jazz Band had performed widely in both the United States and Europe. In almost every manifestation of the CJB, the triumvirate of Mulligan, Brookmeyer and Sims was present indicating the importance of the personnel chosen for the Sextet.
Of paramount importance to the Sextet was that original concert held at San Diego's Hoover High School. More than half a century after the event. Bob Brookmeyer confirmed that rehearsals indeed did take place in Los Angeles before the group traveled the one hundred and twenty-five miles south for the event. And he recalled that the poster in front of the auditorium simply stated, "Gerry Mulligan and His Band," giving no mention of precisely what the audience might expect to see and hear that evening. After the opening numbers by the quartet, the appearance of Bob and Zoot for the remainder of the concert was a well-orchestrated surprise. As may be heard here, the music was a revelation and is now enhanced by improvements made in the remastering for this Fresh Sound release. It can be said that this collection is a fitting tribute to the undoubted genius that was Gerald Joseph Mulligan.”
— Alun Morgan May 2006