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“Gene was a lovely man. I always had been kind of impressed that all the leaders I worked for were such good people. Gene was a sweetheart. Elliot was great, and Thornhill was unique. And Stan Kenton was remarkable in his own way. You know, basically a very nice man.”
“What I wanted to do was to make a band move in a way that didn't get in the way of the little band. That was pretty easy to do with Gene Krupa because he liked that, man. He liked a band that was sleek, that was up on top of the beat and none of this laying back and having the rhythm section keep time for you. He came from Benny Goodman's band, and Benny used to love to rehearse the band without the rhythm section. He'd do whole sections of rehearsals without the drummers. You know the band has got to swing by itself; it's not the drums swinging the band. A band swings, and the drums are part of the whole instrument. You know, it's another kettle of fish.”
- Gerry Mulligan in Being Gerry Mulligan: My Life in Music with Ken Poston [2023]
As you read through writings about Gerry, words like “lightness,” “clarity,” “space,” “linear,” “fluidity” et al will often be associated with his approach to music. And as you can see from reading the following notes on Gerry’s first professional association with Gene Krupa, their use in describing his style began very early in his career.
Gerry’s preference for fleetness and expansiveness was in some measure influenced by the smaller big bands of the Swing Era which he grew up listening to and which he references in the following piece.
This is an ironic turn of events because Gerry was about to enter the Jazz world during a time when bigger, brassier and more bombastic big bands were coming of age in the 1950s.
It is ironic, too, because big bands of whatever size and scope would not be the source for Mulligan’s initial fame which would come to him via a pianoless quartet he led with trumpeter Chet Baker in 1952.
Gerry experienced his childhood during the first quartet century of Jazz’s existence. He would grow up to be a major force shaping the next half century of the music’s development.
Peter Clayton, Insert Notes to Gene Krupa Plays Gerry Mulligan Arrangements [Verve MGVS 6008] and [World Record Club LP release [TP 351]
“Gerry Mulligan joined the Gene Krupa band in February, 1946, and remained for about a year. He arranged for the band all that time, played alto for a couple of months and tenor for two more. The arrangements he did during that year - when he was 19 - are both interesting in themselves and illuminating in the context of the way his writing has developed since. He did about 24 altogether.
At the age of 17, Mulligan had already started arranging professionally - for Johnny Warrington’s band at the Philadelphia radio station WCAU; for Tommy Tucker on Gerry’s first road trip; and then for Elliot Lawrence, who had taken over the WCAU orchestra.
“The Krupa band, however,” Mulligan recalls, “was the most professional band I ever wrote for. They were so professional that they sometimes scared the hell out of me. They had no trouble playing anything I wrote. Having that skilled a unit to write for was a new and challenging experience.”
Before he heard these versions [recorded on October 20, 21, 22, 1958 at Fine Studio, New York City by an all-star band of NY studio musicians] of the arrangements he’d done for Krupa, Mulligan had feared that twelve years would make the sound much too dated for comfort, but he was heartingly surprised to hear that they still stand up. “There were a lot of things,” he said, “I thought I hadn’t tried until I started writing for Claude Thornhill -circa 1948], but now I hear that I already had been doing them with Gene’s Band.”
In these arrangements can be heard Mulligan’s characteristic concern for linear clarity and his overall functional approach to writing. In the years after, Mulligan - through his arranging for big bands and his own quartet - did a great deal to let more air into contemporary jazz scoring. He did not allow himself to be impressed with sound effects - however massed and screaming - for their own sake, but preferred instead to make a large band flow and swing lightly, but firmly with plenty of space for the men, in sections as well as in solos, to breathe.
In some places here, you may be reminded of elements of the Jimmie Lunceford book, not only the rhythmic feel at times, but also the humor. Wit, sometimes sardonic, is another characteristic of Mulligan and it also was one of the invigorating aspects of the Lunceford band. “Actually,” Mulligan explains, “guys at that time asked me if I’d heard Lunceford, and I hadn’t. But I had heard several of the white bands who had been influenced by Lunceford.”
Bird House is thus called because it’s based on several Charlie Parker ideas, but it is also not unconnected with Neal Hefti’s The Good Earth for inspiration. Gerry had left Mulligan Stew untitled, and the title it finally received made him vow that would be the last time he wouldn’t title a song himself. Gerry wrote The Way of All Flesh after reading the novel, but doesn’t think there are any correspondences between Samuel Butler’s plot and the score.
Disc Jockey Jump, which turned out to be a Krupa hit, was written by Mulligan in the early months of his association with the band, but it wasn’t put into the books until Gerry had left. Mulligan’s only retrospective comment on the number is, “It came before Four Brothers.”
Mulligan feels he learned a great deal from his year with Krupa, not only about writing and playing, but about people. The band traveled throughout the country, and the experience broadened Gerry considerably. He was also fond of Gene personally, and appreciated the fact that Gene let him write as much as he did - and used most of it. Krupa, in turn, like Mulligan because he always stood up for what he believed, and knew what he wanted to do.
Adding this album to your Mulligan-Krupa collection should prove to be an instructive pleasure. It gives - in high fidelity - a cross-section of an important year in Mulligan’s history; and it also indicates that Krupa had the prescience to keep the 19-year old with the band, and - up to a point - give him his head.”
Peter James Clayton (25 June 1927 – 10 August 1991)was an English jazz presenter on BBC Radio, jazz critic, and author. From October 1968 until his death in August 1991, Clayton presented jazz recordings, interviews, studio performances, and live performances on BBC Radio 1, 2, and 3, as well as the BBC World Service. He co-authored several books about music and jazz with Peter Gammond and was a frequent contributor to jazz magazines.