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As regular visitors to the blog are aware, since 2009 this page has often featured selected writings, critiques and interviews about Gerry Mulligan in an effort to provide a more detailed and nuanced overview of his career and his approach to music.
I had high hopes of collecting this material and having it published as an anthology or companion of selected writings on Jeru [Mulligan’s nickname] and recently approached a number of publishers about their interest in such a project.
In place of a single point-of-view, a commercially published and distributed Reader would have brought Gerry and his music into view from a collective perspective, but alas, for a variety of reasons, all of the publishers I solicited turned down the project
However, I’m in the process of formatting for the blog a Prologue, Introduction and Table of Contents which I developed for the proposed Gerry Mulligan Reader: Writings on a Jazz Original and I will post these shortly and follow with a number of writings from the Table of Contents for which I have received prior copyright permission from the author/publisher.
By way of background, I’ve always found the career of Gerry Mulligan amazing both in terms of its scope and its content. Everything he did in Jazz in whatever the setting was done to the highest musical standards. Not surprisingly, when Jeru was inducted into the Down Beat's Hall of Fame in 1994, Michael Seidel highlighted his, "More than four decades at the forefront of jazz".
While by no means an exhaustive “research of the literature,” the blog archive does contain writings about Gerry and his music by such distinguished Jazz authors as Bill Crow, Nat Hentoff, Gene Lees, Gordon Jack, Doug Ramsey, Ted Gioia, Bill Kirchner, Ira Gitler, Bob Gordon, Gunther Schuller, Burt Korall, George T. Simon, Michael Cuscuna, Gary Giddins, Leonard Feather, Fred M. Hall, Whitney Balliett, Martin Williams, Jeff Sultanof, Jerome Klinkowitz, and Charles Fox [BBC].
These brilliant authors, critics and essayists who wrote about Mulligan and his music during the course of his fifty year career are a big reason for the forthcoming posted compilation. Their insightful, cogent and coherent articles and writings would help give the reader a fuller appreciation of Jeru's music and what made it so distinctive.
Also, what did musicians like Miles Davis, Oscar Pettiford, Larry Bunker, Carson Smith, Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers, Bill Crow, Bill Kirchner, Clark Terry, Stan Getz, Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn, Johnny Mandel, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Carmen McRae, Maria Schneider, etc. have to say about Gerry as a baritone sax player, composer and arranger?
When all of this commentary is taken into consideration, one realizes that the footprint Mulligan left on the Jazz world is huge and deserving of a wider appreciation.
“Gerry Mulligan lived through almost the entire history of jazz. It is against that background that he should be understood.” -Gene Lees, Jazzletter
Gerry’s contribution to that history included stylistic innovations in arranging with linear lines and inner voicings that contributed to light and airy sound of the Birth of the Cool recordings his own arrangements for the Kenton band and his influence on some of the other arrangers for that band including Bill Holman, Marty Paich and Lennie Niehaus.
That approach to arranging plus the pianoless quartet he formed in 1952 with trumpeter Chet Baker had a major impact on Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre and the other proponents of the West Coast “cool school” in the 1950s.
The piano-less quartet was also reformed with Bob Brookmeyer, Art Farmer and Jon Eardley and expanded into a piano-less sextet with Bob, Jon and Gerry along with tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims.
Interspersed throughout the 1950s were a number of recordings with other major Jazz artists such as Stan Getz, Ben Webster, Paul Desmond,Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Witherspoon and Thelonious Monk.
There were also a number of movie appearances: Jazz on a Summer’s Day, I Want to Live, The Rat Race, The Subterraneans and Bells Are Ringing, the latter involves part of a lengthy relationship that Gerry had with Judy Holliday.
The formation of Concert Jazz Band in 1960, one of the most unique big bands in the history of Jazz with a legacy that includes the Thad Jones - Mel Lewis orchestra and continues today with the Vanguard Orchestra. Launching the CJB’s first album on Verve, Norman Granz authorized an advertising campaign stating: “1960 belongs to Gerry Mulligan.”
The five year association with Dave Brubeck, the Age of Steam period with its inclusion of electronic instruments, elements of Fusion and a percussion ensemble to embellish the rhythm and a 1974 reunion concert with Chet Baker are just some examples of his continuing, artistic vitality.
A symphonic Mulligan emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, which included appearances with Zubin Mehta and Erich Kunzel, along with a reimagined CJB as did new quartets, this time with pianists Bill Mays, Bill Charlap and Ted Rosenthal.
All these milestones, including Mulligan's 42 consecutive wins in Down Beat's baritone category, point to a musician who continued to grow and develop through his almost 50 year career and one who had a major impact on the history of Jazz in the second half of the twentieth century. In Metronome’s 1959 reader’s poll to find the Most Popular Jazz Musician Of All Time, Mulligan finished third behind Miles Davis and the winner, Charlie Parker.
Mulligan’s enduring popularity is also highlighted in four books that have been published about him, two by Raymond Horricks and one each by Jerome Klinkowitz and Sanford Jospehson, and his commercial recordings have been the subject of comprehensive discographies by Arne Astrup, Tom Lord and Alain Tercinet. There’s even a discography of Mulligan’s unissued public performances as compiled by Gordon Jack.
Hopefully, when compiled and collected, the posted pieces of the Gerry Mulligan JazzProfiles Reader will take their place among the narratives and documentation devoted to one of the greatest Jazz musicians of the second half of the 20th century. Stay tuned.