“When the seminal gatherings for the Miles Davis Orchestra first took place in 1947, Gil Evans was the old man at thirty-five; Miles Davis was twenty-one; and Gerry Mulligan was still only twenty years old.  He had already contributed excellent arrangements to the Elliot Lawrence and Gene Krupa bands, and, as has been mentioned earlier, one of his charts, "Disc Jockey Jump," had become a hit after having been recorded by the Gene Krupa Orchestra.  Even at that early age Mulligan was circulating among the best of the swing and modern musicians, including Charlie Parker.  Both his performing talent and his precocious genius were clearly recognized by his colleagues.

Mulligan, like Evans, gained his compositional skills and arranging craft not at a college or conservatory but on his own, for he left high school for the road. His performance abilities as the premiere baritone saxophone soloist are well known by most jazz fans, but it is a lesser known fact that he was also a truly versatile single-reed instrumentalist, playing other saxophones as well as the clarinet at a remarkably high professional level. ….

Of the twelve numbers recorded by the Miles Davis Orchestra for Capitol Records in 1949 and 1950, the largest number—six—were arranged by Mulligan, three were composed by him, and he also played on all the tracks. In addition, he composed and arranged another piece for the band, ")oost at the Roost." On the basis of these accomplishments, he must be credited as a major architect of the Miles Davis nonet and as a founding father of the style and movement called cool jazz. In the immediate period after these recordings, he, like Miles Davis, faced a difficult time artistically and financially, and in 1951 he hitchhiked from New York to California while seeking greater opportunities in jazz.  His chance soon came, just as did Davis's, but these two men, who remained friends over the years, followed dissimilar musical paths from this point on.”

• Frank Tirro, The Birth of the Cool of Miles Davis and His Associates [2009]

“The phrase ‘jazz repertory’ has many definitions and dimensions. Perhaps the most basic is: the study, preservation and performance of the many diverse musical styles in jazz. In recent years, the phrase most often applies to big bands and jazz ensembles performing classic and new music written for reeds, brass, and rhythm section in various sizes and combinations.” 

- Jeffrey Sultanoff, Bill Kirchner, ed., The Oxford Companion to Jazz [p.512]

“There has been some rewriting of the history books on behalf of Mulligan and pianist/arranger John Lewis vis-a-vis the original Birth Of The Cool. Mulligan is on record as feeling that the project was subsequently hijacked in Miles Davis's name. Though Miles 'cracked the whip', it was Lewis, Gil Evans and Mulligan who gave the music its distinctive profile. In 1991, Mulligan approached Miles regarding a plan to re-record the famous numbers, which were originally released as 78s and only afterwards given their famous title. Unfortunately, Miles died before the plan could be taken any further, and the eventual session featured regular stand-in Roney in the trumpet part. With Phil Woods in for Lee Konitz, the latter-day sessions have a crispness and boppish force that the original cuts rather lacked. Dave Grusin's and Larry Rosen's production is ultra-sharp  …. An interesting retake on a still-misunderstood experiment, Re-Birth sounds perfectly valid on its own terms.”

• Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.

Interestingly, the first decade of Gerry’s career ended with his major involvement in what collectively came to be famously known as The Birth of the Cool recordings. The last year of his career began with recordings that he labeled The Rebirth of the Cool. 

Whatever the back story or, if you will, motivation, Gerry’s enduring friendship with Dave Grusin, co-owner of GRP Records along with Larry Rosen, resulted in a four-decades-later make-over of the 1949 Birth of the Cool recordings with some additions and subtractions in both the compositions and the personnel.

As explained in the commentary that opens this piece, Gerry had approached Miles Davis about a reunion to produce a new and different version of the original recordings. Of course, we can only surmise how this revisit by two of the principals associated with the original recordings might have turned out, but in a way, Miles’ ultimate declination and subsequent death brought forth other possibilities.

As Richard Cook and Brian Morton note - “Phil Woods in for Lee Konitz, the latter-day sessions have a crispness and boppish force that the original cuts rather lacked. Dave Grusin's and Larry Rosen's production is ultra-sharp  …. An interesting retake on a still-misunderstood experiment, Re-Birth sounds perfectly valid on its own terms.”

And David Badham in the 1992 November edition of Jazz Journal was pleased to note “ … that this reprise of Miles Davis's landmark session was 38 percent longer than the original. Almost exactly 43 years after the original Move date for Capitol, these come up absolutely fresh and vital, and quite as good as anything produced since in this vein. Personally, I have always regarded the original sessions as Gerry Mulligan’s not Miles Davis’s since he arranged seven of the 12 numbers and was by far the most impressive solo voice! If anything he is even better now, so I wel­come this issue wholeheartedly.”

More information about how and why The Rebirth of the Cool came about is contained in these liner notes by Leonard Feather that accompanied the GRP CD [GRD-9679].

“It all began in a basement room behind a Chinese laundry on West 55th Street in New York. Gil Evans, who lived there in the late 1940s, was a magnet for some of the forward-looking musicians of the day: Charlie Parker ("Bird"], the composers Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, George Russell and John Carisi, saxophonist Lee Konitz, and, of course, Miles Davis.

"Everyone seemed to gravitate to Gil's place," Gerry Mulligan recalls. "We all influenced one another, and Bird influenced us all."

Bebop had brought startling innovations to jazz. Gerry, Miles, Gil and others foresaw the possibility of a new dimension that would allow an orchestral vision integrating bop's characteristics with written elements.

As Gerry pointed out, "We wanted the arrangers to have useful orchestral colors to work with, at the same time retaining the lightness and freedom of a small band." After much deliberation, this is the instrumentation Gil and Gerry decided on.

"One of the things that made it practical to use instruments such as tuba and French horn in the ensemble was that there were players who were already trying to adapt their instruments to a new approach. When Gil first told me about Bill Barber, he said Bill liked to transcribe Lester Young solos for tuba!"

Much of the inspiration stemmed from the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, to whose library both Evans and Mulligan had contributed. In fact, it was Gil who brought the, then, 19 year old Mulligan into the Thornhill orbit.

But it was Miles Davis who, as Gerry explained it, "...put the theories to work, called the rehearsals, hired the halls, and generally cracked the whip."

Move, Jeru, Godchild and Budo were recorded January 21, 1949, and were released as two 78s. Venus de Milo, Boplicity, Israel and Rouge were cut three months later, and the final session in March of 1950 yielded Moon Dreams, Deception, Rocker and Darn That Dream. In 1954, eight of the tunes were released on a 10 inch LP. Three years later a 12 inch LP, with all 11 instrumentals (omitting the vocal Darn That Dream), appeared under the Birth of the Cool title by which the sessions have been known ever since.

In the summer of 1991, in Rotterdam, Gerry told Miles he was planning to play the music again. Miles, who was very enthusiastic about the concert at the Montreux Festival two weeks before, (where he had played many of the great works Gil Evans had written for him, with an orchestra assembled by Quincy Jones), said to let him know when it was going to be. and maybe he would do it. Sadly, it was not to be.

With Miles' death the decision to find a suitable trumpet for this demanding role resulted in the selection of Wallace Roney, whose career had reached a high point when he joined Miles in an historic duet at the Montreux concert. Thus he was a logical choice for the "Re-Birth" project.

Gerry says, "He really understands something about Miles' melodic sense. He did some astounding melodic things on this album."

Gerry and Bill Barber were on all three of the original sessions, and John Lewis was on the last two. Gerry recalls, "John was Ella Fitzgerald's accompanist and it was just our bad luck that Ella was scheduled to record the same day as our first session!"

Lee Konitz, who was on all the early sessions, was originally scheduled to join the "Re-Birth" recording, but due to previous commitments that had him on the other side of the globe, it was impossible to get everybody together at the same place at the same time. "When Lee asked me who was going to take his place on alto, and I told him Phil Woods would like to do it, Lee laughed and said, 'I think you just invented the 'Birth of the Hot!"'

Gerry went on to say, "Phil told me he'd always wanted to play this music, so it was like a dream come true for him. He plays some absolutely fantastic solos and adds a great spirit to the whole project!"

Rounding out the "Re-Birth" group are trombonist Dave Bargeron and French hornist Dave Clark, both of whom were associated with Gil Evans in later years.

Gerry called on old friend and colleague Mel Torme to sing Darn That Dream, the one vocal in the collection. "Mel was happy to do this," Gerry says. "He always loved this instrumentation, and later on, my Tentet. In fact, he made an album with a similar instrumentation and we've talked for years about doing an album together along similar lines, which we'll get  around to eventually. When I told him we were doing this, he was eager to take part."

As these notes go to press, Gerry is planning a tour of the summer festivals with his Tentet, the instrumentation presented here, plus the addition of another trumpet and a clarinet. "We're introducing the band at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago (where Gerry is currently Artistic Director of their "Jazz in June" series), at the Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, and Carnegie Hall in New York.

The Birth of the Cool concept (which, in fact, was by no means as cool as the name implied!) lives on, some 40 years after Miles and Gil and Gerry and their fellow dreamers put their innovative ideas on record. It might well be added that the cool was not reborn, since for anyone who recalls its pristine

glory, it never really went away!”

-Leonard Feather

And here is an in performance review of the music by John Pareles that appeared in the June 30, 1992 NY Times 

Review/Jazz Festival; From Gerry Mulligan, 'Rebirth of the Cool'

“Each jazz era finds its own ancestors. Now that many musicians and audiences are turning toward music that prizes structure as well as solos, it's appropriate that Gerry Mulligan has decided to revive the arrangements he wrote and played with the Miles Davis Nonet more than 40 years ago. The music was collected in 1957 on an album titled "Birth of the Cool," and on Friday night Mr. Mulligan and a "tentet" (the nonet's lineup plus an extra trumpeter and saxophonist) performed at Carnegie Hall for a JVC Jazz Festival concert called "Rebirth of the Cool."

At the end of the 1940's, Davis, Gil Evans, Mr. Mulligan and other musicians were looking for a next step after be-bop, which had depended on small groups and extensive solos. They wanted to create ensemble arrangements that would reflect the convoluted harmonies and whiplash rhythms that be-bop had wrought. With Davis as leader, they assembled a nine-piece group that played a few club dates between 1948 and 1950, to a largely indifferent response among nonmusicians. But the recordings, made in 1949 and 1950, have endured. Musicians including Mr. Mulligan and another member of both the original nonet and the current tentet, the alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, have both worked with similar groups in the intervening decades. The tentet also included Bill Barber, another nonet member, on tuba.

For "Rebirth of the Cool," which preceded a European tour by the tentet, Mr. Mulligan followed an established jazz-repertory approach. He used the original arrangements and tempos while adding new solos, some of them variants on the recorded ones.

The two sets covered half the "Birth of the Cool" album, including Johnny Carisi's modal blues "Israel," Mr. Mulligan's arrangements of George Wallington's "Godchild" and his own "Jeru," Evans's arrangements of Chubby MacGregor's and Johnny Mercer's "Moon Dreams" and Davis's "Boplicity," and John Lewis's arrangements of Bud Powell's and Miles Davis's "Budo" and Denzil Best's "Move." The concert also included pieces from Mr. Mulligan's own repertory, among them "Blueport" by Art Farmer, the tentet trumpeter who had the unenviable task of taking on Mr. Davis's solos.

Jazz repertory can bring to life compositions that were muffled by the limitations of early recording. But the "Birth of the Cool" recordings are relatively recent, and the tentet had Carnegie Hall's acoustics to contend with. The hall makes trouble for amplified music, even at the relatively restrained volume of the tentet. Compared with the intimate recordings, much of the detail of the arrangements was smudged.

Even so, a new chance to hear the music was welcome. Mr. Mulligan and Mr. Konitz were both in fine form, Mr. Mulligan gruff and swaggering on baritone saxophone, Mr. Konitz leisurely and oblique on alto. And even after 42 years, the arrangements remain enigmatic, a corrective to the brassy extroversion of the big-band era. They use saw-toothed lines and close, dense harmonies, often played by instruments clustered in the low and middle registers (and thickened with French horn and tuba); they mull over the tunes, occasionally opening up to let a soloist step forward. The Evans arrangements are oddest of all, wrapping gauzy timbres around dissonances few other arrangers would even try, much less get away with.

For an encore, the tentet played "Satin Doll," and its relaxed symmetry was a reminder of all that the "Birth of the Cool" had willfully and gracefully sidestepped. The tentet also included Rob McConnell on valve trombone, Mike Mossman (who took some pointed solos) on trumpet, Ken Soderblum on saxophone and clarinet, Bob Routch on French horn, Ted Rosenthal on piano, Dean Johnson on bass and Ron Vincent on drums.”

Finally, the following was from a time when Jazz, if it got mentioned at all in a major newspaper, got mentioned briefly. Hats off to Zan Stewart for trying.

Pop, Jazz Reviews : Mulligan Breathes Life Into Old Work at Ford

BY ZAN STEWART

JUNE 22, 1992 LA Times

“Gerry Mulligan’s performance with an 11-piece band before a sell-out crowd at the John Anson Ford Theatre on Saturday proved once again that a contemporary airing can breathe an amazing amount of life into a work composed long ago.

The renowned baritone saxophonist and composer went back 40 years, reviving selections transcribed from the memorable 1949 and 1950 “Birth of the Cool” sessions led by Miles Davis, and which Mulligan recently re-recorded. On those sessions, Davis, along with Mulligan and others, examined be-bop-based material with a fresh sound, pitting the higher timbres of trumpet and alto sax against such low brass as trombone, French horn and tuba.

Mulligan’s aggregation, which included such esteemed jazzmen as trumpeter Art Farmer and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, duplicated the instrumentation of the originals, except for the addition of an extra trumpet and a tenor sax-clarinet part. The band’s vibrant renditions of such well-preserved items as “Godchild,” “Boplicity” and “Moon Dreams” clearly demonstrated that these are not simply museum pieces, that they indeed have lasting power.

“Jeru” was distinctive for its dynamic climax, where the brass and reed sections tossed snappy lines back and forth. “Israel” began with the melody rendered by the low brass, then came the piercing brightness of trumpet and alto sax. Gil Evans’ dramatic arrangement of the oozingly slow “Moon Dreams” ended with a wall of soft sound, where instruments darted in and out, changing the work’s timbral color. The soloists were first-rate. Farmer’s ingenuity was quietly breathtaking as he took a series of brief phrases and strung them together into complex wholes. Konitz applied his one-of-a-kind sound, seemingly flat but really full of juice, to stretched-out notes and relaxed phrases that ran counter to the bubbling rhythm of a tune such as “Israel.” Mulligan swung with vitality and accessibility.”