© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
This article with its later-in-life interview is very revealing for the comments Gerry shares with Mitchell about how his approach to playing the baritone saxophone evolved over time as he searched equipment and techniques to get the sonority he wanted out of the instrument.
It’s also quite startling to hear his assessment of his composing and arranging skill described as coming from a “musical illiterate” who “picks up the knowledge I need as I go along.”
But perhaps most startling of all is the medical explanation he provides for the causes of the bouts of irritability and short-temperedness that accompanied him throughout his career.
Sadly, three years after his 1993 induction into the Down Beat Hall of Fame, Gerry would be dead at the age of 69.
© Copyright ® Down Beat and Mitchell Seidel, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
58th Annual Down Beat Readers Poll
[Having joined the 58th Annual Readers Poll proper in 1952, the Readers Poll Hall of Fame is now in its 42nd year.]
January 1994 issue
“It comes as no surprise that after more than four decades at the forefront of jazz that Gerry Mulligan has been voted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame. The only surprise is why it took so long. The readers of Down Beat magazine corrected the oversight by electing Mulligan in the 58th Annual Poll. And, deservedly so.
Mulligan has played alongside some of the best in the music, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Billie Holliday, Wynton Marsalis, and Stan Getz. Born in New York in 1927, Mulliganfirst earned fame as an arranger for Gene Krupa at the age of 19. He then joined Miles Davis' groundbreaking Birth of the Cool band, a collection of musicians that radically changed the direction of postwar jazz.
Moving to California in the early 1950s, Mulligan continued this work with his own 10-piece group while forming a quartet with trumpeter Chet Baker and drummer Chico Hamilton. In the late '50s, he formed another influential pianoless quartet with trumpeter Art Farmer, bassist Bill Crow, and drummer Dave Bailey. In 1960, the 13-piece Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band was created, a pianoless big band that set the tone for big-band jazz into the '60s and continues to be an influence today.
Initially known as an arranger, Mulligan soon proved he was equally skilled as a player, taking the baritone saxophone in a different direction than had been heard in both swing and bebop contexts and helping to create what became known as the "West Coast" jazz sound. The public and critics concurred on his talent, and Mulligan went on to top the DB polls through some four decades. In the mid-'70s, he picked up the soprano saxophone, and he has played clarinet in dixieland settings as well.
While conceding that the soprano "is a bastard" to master, Mulligan is quick to point out that the baritone is not difficult in the same ways that the soprano is. "The difficulty for the baritone," Mulligan pointed out, "is to be able to make a sound on the thing that will project. It's an instrument that when people try to get volume out of it.. they get a lot of noise.”
"I came to the baritone with an idea of what I wanted to sound like,' and then proceeded to try to do it. It meant experimentation until I found a mouthpiece that would do what I want. Once I found that, I was on my way to being able to get out of the horn what I wanted."
Mulligan couldn't have picked a more unusual time to develop a melodic sound on the saxophone. The bebop revolution placed a premium on the speed with which ideas could come from a horn, and his style was to head away from the hard-edged bop techniques expounded by baritone players like Serge Chaloff.
"I always thought of it as a melody instrument. There are two totally different approaches, and Serge and I represent those approaches," he said.
"Adrian Rollini played bass saxophone and had a very melodic approach. It was actually long after I had begun to play baritone that I heard records of Adrian Rollini playing. And he had the kind of approach that was the direction I had gone in. It's quite possible that as a kid I heard Adrian Rollini, anyway [on radio]. It's also quite possible that that influence was stuck in my memory banks even though I wasn't aware of what or who it was.
"If I, as a kid, had my choice of stringed instruments to play, instead of picking the violin, I probably would have picked the cello. In this instance, instead of picking the alto sax, I picked the baritone. It was in a similar register. Why the lower register appeals to one kid over another, who knows the answer to that? Ever ask somebody why they play tuba or bass fiddle? We all have our peculiarities.
"A lot of that thing of playing the baritone as a melodic instrument, it's creating an illusion that I'm actually playing higher than I am. In order to do that, it has to be very melodic. Then, people are not aware of the register so much."
These days, Mulligan and his wife, Franca, make their home in suburban Connecticut close enough to New York for work and far enough away for comfort. He continues to work in a variety of contexts. Along with the Concert Jazz Band, which was revived in the 70s and again in the late '80s, he toured in 1992 with a tentette that paid tribute to his collaborations with Miles Davis as the Re-Birth of the Cool band, and currently works with. a quartet that includes Ron Vincent on drums, Ted Rosenthal on piano, and Dean Johnson on bass. He also has made some forays into chamber orchestra music and teaching, having been honored by the Andre and Clara Mertens Contemporary Composer Festival at the University of Bridgeport, only the second jazz composer (the other being Dave Brubeck) so honored in its 22-year history.
An article in The New York Times quoted Dr. Karl Kramer, chairman of the school's music department, as saying that Mulligan was chosen for the honor because "the . faculty felt he was the dean of American jazz composition."
"It feels a little exaggerated to me, because I feel fairly much like a musical illiterate," Mulligan laughed. "I try my best to pick up the knowledge I need as I go along. Everything I set out to write, especially if I start writing for the [chamber] orchestra, I have to figure out my method as I go along, because I have no training in the field. My concern is always for music and musicality, so that's what I aim for.
"It feels like just a little bit of hyperbole, to call me the dean of American jazz composition," he continued, chuckling. "But I love hearing it. I'm extremely flattered."
At the other end of the spectrum, Mulligan's re-examination of the 40-year-old Birth Of The Cool material left him with mixed feelings. He concedes that 1992's "Re-Birth" excursions weren't everything he had expected, but added two concerts in Brazil last year were much more satisfying.
"It was interesting. The reason I did it was to see how it felt to use that stuff [again], how it felt to play it, how differently younger players might approach the thing and what might have been done in any way of expansion. I learned a lot from it; had a good time."
A request from a Brazilian promoter had Mulligan put the band together again for concerts in Rio and Sao Paulo. "I'm glad I did, because the band really sounded great. It felt great. It felt the way I'd hoped it had felt last year, but it never really jelled.
"Whatever it was [in Brazil], there was a tremendous ensemble feeling to it. It was a much lighter feeling," he said, adding that he ranks the Brazilian concerts with his tentette as some of the personal musical highlights of the past year.
"There are three or four things that have happened that I really wished were on tape, because I would love to know if it was just my imagination or it was really as good as I thought it was," he laughed. "People record things all over the place, and just about everything else is taped, except these three nights.
"Two of them were when Wynton Marsalis and I played together. Once at Town Hall [in New York], and once in Chicago [at Ravinia]. And the other time was in Sao Paulo with the tentette. It was just my bad luck that it wasn't recorded. Especially the things with Wynton, because he and I were talking about doing some recording together for years, and this would have given it some direction.
Playing duets with Marsalis, Mulligan said the counterpoint and interplay “worked so well. It worked better with him than anybody since Chet.
“Wynton approaches things with such a cooperative attitude. When you're doing counterpoint, that's what you're doing. He and I together were listening, and able to adjust to each other. For whatever reason, we found ourselves going in directions together, it was so easy. The lines just jelled and weaved in and out as if we'd been doing it all our lives. It was exciting, and I'd love to do more of it."
Of all the music Mulligan has made, one style that escaped his attention until now is Brazilian. That has been remedied with a new album with singer Jane Duboc called Paraiso. The collaboration dates back a decade, when the two met on tour and Mulligan expressed interest in recording a Brazilian album.
Over the years, Mulligan developed a reputation, somewhat earned, of being a difficult person at times, a tad demanding of both others and of himself. Bandstand admonishments to audiences are delivered on occasion with some self-deprecating sarcasm. But Mulligan acknowledges that the years have taken the edge off his demeanor.
"It's a long process. I feel I had a long adolescence," he chuckled. In fact, a two- part article in Down Beat some 34 years ago was interesting in its exploration of Mulligan's character, quoting musicians he had worked with over the past decade about how he had matured as a musician and as an individual.
"It was nice to read all that. I recall that. It feels good when the guys say that. I've always felt like I'm sitting on a keg of dynamite. I've been like that all my life. Part of that is my nervous system and metabolism. I've got a short fuse, and trying to get control of it is a job of dealing with your mind," he said. "In recent years, I discovered I had hypoglycemia. It's like the opposite to diabetes. If you take sugar or anything like sugar into the system, the body produces this surge of insulin. And as a consequence, I finally realized this had a big effect on how quickly my moods would change, because the blood sugar would go up and down like a yo-yo.
"A doctor friend of mine who was examining me said when it went down, it was a wonder that I could drag myself around, because I have low blood pressure, anyway. That, combined with low blood sugar, was just! devastating. He said it causes tremendous mood swings. With all those things together it's not been easy."
With such a varied career, it is difficult, if not impossible, for Mulligan to pin down career highlights. One could point to a time he went on stage with Charlie Parker or playing at last year's inaugural celebration for President Bill Clinton, or collaborating with Miles Davis, Paul Desmond, Bob
Brookmeyer, or Thelonious Monk. Then there were the times just hanging out and talking with Bird, or Mulligan's treasured hours spent talking with Duke Ellington and Harry Carney.
"I've had lots of highlights. There have been moments of satisfaction with just about every band that I've had. Usually, my satisfactions are based on what happens in my relationships with other musicians and other people," he said.
"That's one of those apples-and-orange questions. The early days with Chet and Chico were one thing, and then later on with Brookmeyer was another, and then with Brookmeyer and Zoot it was something else, and with [Art] Farmer it was something. I've had all these great associations, and each one of those things musically was different from the other, and each one of them gave me different kinds of experiences and have their own special meanings.
"In a lot of ways, I've been very fortunate. As I was saying earlier, physically, it's not been an easy life. But the rewards have been tremendous in so many other ways." DB