Listening to Prestige Records Part 48: Gerry Mulligan New Stars

What do you do when it's 1951, and you've already made the most important record of the decade, but no one knows it yet, and in fact you made it last decade with a group that's since been disbanded, and no one paid it much attention at the time?

For some of the key members of the Birth of the Cool nonet, it seems to have meant taking a step backward, and that's not meant as a criticism.

An important part of the impetus to forming the nonet was a dissatisfaction, especially on the part of Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan, to the overemphasis on the flamboyant virtuoso soloist that was bebop. They came from big bands, particularly the Claude Thornhill band, which played dance music but encouraged some experimentation, and brought from some important jazz musicians...and arrangers.

And in fact the Miles Davis nonet, in its historic Royal Roost engagement, included its arrangers on the marquee -- Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis. Mulligan and Lewis were also featured musicians, but giving marquee prominence to Evans may have been a first -- and was certainly deserved.

So what do you do? Lewis would move in a new direction with the Modern Jazz Quartet, but not for a couple of years. During this period, he continued to work as a sideman with boppers. Davis was to retrench, sort of, in his Prestige and Columbia albums of the 50s, playing bebop with a difference, creating the style called hard bop that became the most significant jazz style of the 50s. Konitz stayed out in left field, but then he really had no mainstream to go back to -- he'd come from left field, with Tristano.

Mulligan, in this session for Prestige, goes a certain way toward the bebop mainstream -- there are some powerful improvisatory and virtuoso solos -- but his retrenchment is more in a Thornhill direction, with some big band arrangements and full sound that touches back to swing in the way Thornhill and Herman did, while still staying decidedly modern.

Mulligan's New Stars didn't quite manage to become stars. Allan Eager and George Wallington are the only two whose names have remained with some resonance in jazz history.

I found this mention of two of Mulligan's men in an online essay called "Names of the Forgotten":

Where are Jerry' Lloyd, George Syran, and Phil Raphael and Phil Leshin? Jerry Lloyd was around in the 1940s and 1950s and recorded with Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, and George Wallington, though he never became well-known and worked as a cab-driver even when he was featured on records with such artists... [Phil Leshin] worked with Red Rodney in 1951, but what else?

Nick Travis, according to this essay, played on 350 jazz recording sessions, so if he never quite broke through to serious name recognition, he clearly made a name as a guy you could count on. Here's Hal McKusick on Travis:

"Nick was a great player and a great  guy. He was so busy in the 1950s. He'd get done with work at 2 a.m., head off to his home in New Jersey and be back the next day in a New York studio at 8 a.m. Zoot told me a funny story. Nick was so tired one day that he slept in. His phone rang early that morning. Nick sleepily answered: "Hello?" "Hi Nick, it's Zoot." Nick paused and said, groggily, "Zoot who?"
"I remember Nick as being quiet and intelligent. He spent a lot of time with his instrument. When you’re working the way we did, you didn't have a lot of time to practice, so work was practice. He was a great lead horn player and quite a soloist. Nick was always there on a date in every way. Efficient, on time and he never hit a bad note.
"Ultimately, Nick probably had too much work. We all did. Nick was in such great demand by so many different orchestrators and contractors at the time that he probably had a hard time handling the stress internally. He kept a lot of it bottled up, I guess. I didn't realize he had passed from ulcer troubles.
"As sounds go, Nick's was down the middle. You'd hear his horn and if you didn't know who was playing you'd say, 'Wow, who is that? That sure sounds good.' He caught your attention. Nick also was a wonderful reader, which was why he was in such demand. Nick played caringly."

There's less on Ollie Wilson and Mac McElroy. Wilson was in Woody Herman's Second Herd, and highly regarded. Mulligan used McElroy on at least one other recording.

I found this on Gail Madden, from a reminiscence by Bill Crow in a book called Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective by Jack Gordon.

I began by asking him if he knew a lady named Gail Madden, who had been a pianist and a model in California before becoming active in New York jazz circles in the early fifties. She appeared on Mulligan’s first album as a leader in September 1951, playing maracas on some numbers, and Gerry has credited her with suggesting the idea of a pianoless rhythm section to him before they left New York for California later that year.  When they arrived in Los Angeles, it was thanks to Gail and her previous relationship with Bob Graettinger that Mulligan was introduced to Stan Kenton, who very soon bought some of Gerry’s arrangements. She also suggested hiring Chico Hamilton for Mulligan’s first quartet, so Gail Madden was clearly a significant, if unseen, influence on his early career.

"I met Gail before I knew Gerry very well, thanks to a drummer friend of mine by the name of Buzzy Bridgford. He introduced us at an apartment in Greenwich Village owned by a lady named Margo, who was apparently a $100 a night hooker and was bankrolling Gail, who wanted to be a therapist and save all the junky jazz musicians in New York. Charlie Parker had agreed to go along with all this and was first on her list. Gail’s plan was that, with Margo’s money, she would buy a brownstone and start a clinic and all the guys would come and live there so she could straighten them out and get them off junk. Buzzy, who knew all the inside jazz gossip, claimed that Joe Albany, Serge Chaloff, J. J. Johnson, Stan Levey, and Gerry were also going to be involved, but unfortunately for Gail, she had an argument with Margo over money and the whole idea collapsed. Soon after, she and Gerry became a “couple,” so we figured that if she couldn’t save everyone on her list, she would concentrate on him. She started turning up on his gigs out at Queens, playing maracas, and I remember her being there when Gerry was rehearsing a band in Central Park on the shore of the 72nd Street lake. Around that time they both disappeared from the New York scene, and the next thing we heard was that they were on the road, hitching to California, and we all laughed because that was exactly the sort of wild thing they would do. They made it, all right, and then those wonderful records that Gerry made with Chet Baker started coming out."  

So this was Mulligan's first session as a leader. One other interesting thing about this recording

session, The first six songs are standard song length, about three minutes, and all of them were released on 78 and 45 -- "Mullenium" is pushing it at 4:05, but they managed to get it onto one side of a single. "Mulligan's Too" is over 17 and a half minutes long -- who recorded anything that long in those days? And it's Mulligan's first session as a leader, but he was able to talk Weinstock into it. It became a 10-inch LP, which you can now buy on eBay for $250.

Listening to Prestige Records, part 24: Chubby Jackson

The most recent rerelease of this 1950 Prestige session is on an Original Jazz Classics CD (Concord's reissue label - they currently own the Prestige catalog) along with some of the classic Gerry Mulligan/Chet Baker quartet recordings. Most of the consumer reviews on Amazon praise the quartet sessions, understandably, but then they tend to say some variation of "oh, and there's also some stuff by a big band."

I wonder if it had been called the Gerry Mulligan Big Band, would that have earned it more respect? But this is a terrific band, a terrific group of songs.

Arranged by Mulligan? Probably. Maybe. There's no arranger credit for the session, but at this stage of his career Mulligan was better known as an arranger than as a saxophone player, and it's likely that if he was on the session, he'd also have been hired to arrange. Some of the tunes certainly sound like Mulligan arrangements, some not so much. We know that Al Cohn did some arranging for the 1949 version of the Chubby Jackson Big Band, and Tiny Kahn was its chief arranger, so one or both of them may have had a hand, although neither played on this date.

Big band bebop is almost an oxymoron. Bebop was a product of the breakup of the big bands, a style that favored listening over dancing, extended virtuoso solos over ensemble section play. But it was always part of the scene. The Billy Eckstine band hired Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker; also a Miles Davis, Fats Navarro and Dexter Gordon. Gillespie had his own big band. The Woody Herman Herd, where Chubby Jackson got his start, wasn't exactly bebop, but it wasn't exactly the swing of the Thirties, either.

And this band of Jackson's is as good as a bebop big band gets. It has swinging but ambitious ensemble parts, lots of room for experimental solos.

Chubby Jackson himself had a checkered career (note to self: when you make an accidental bad pun, for God's sake take it out in the second draft! Reply from self: What second draft?) -- anyone who has performed with both Louis Armstong and Lennie Tristano has run a fairly complete gamut, and let's not forget his twist album. And he's probably the only serious jazz musician who was also a TV kiddie show host (Chubby Jackson's Little Rascals).  

I listened to these sides a couple of times before I really looked at the lineup of musicians. I'd noticed that Mulligan and Zoot Sims were included, hadn't paid close attention to the others. So when I found myself particularly taken by the piano solos, I went back to see which of the bebop legends Jackson had recruited for this date, I was surprised to find a name I'd never heard: Tony Aless. But Aless did some impressive work, going back to Bunny Berrigan in the Thirties, and including sessions with Woody Herman, Stan Getz and Charlie Parker.

Peter Jones, who knows more about jazz than I do, was familiar with Aless, but asked, "who is Charlie Kennedy on alto-- he sounds a lot like Lee Konitz?"

So many great jazzmen who didn't break through to create major names for themselves. Charlie Kennedy started with Louis Prima, went on to become a soloist with Gene Krupa's big band. His last major gig was with Terry Gibbs' Dream Band, before he retired from music in the early 60s.

The rest of the band is a dream band, and they play like it.

"I May Be Wrong," which Mulligan was later to recreate as a cool, wryly romantic ballad with his quartet, is given as a joyous romp here - with Mulligan's fingerprints on it. "Sax Appeal" has some particularly appealing work between ensemble and soloists.

And what's this number called "So What"? It appears to be a Mulligan composition. Surely it's a Mulligan arrangement. The notes say it is not the composition of the same name by Miles Davis for the "Kind of Blue" album, and certainly there's a world of difference between the hip, cool modality of the Miles Davis number and this piece of beboppery. You could say that the Davis piece makes the Jackson band's piece sound old-fashioned, except it doesn't -- bebop still has the freshness and power to excite, and so does Mulligan at every phase of his career.

Here's "So What," from a new site to me, but it looks like a good one, called Jukebo. I can't seem to get their embed code to work, so I'm just providing a link. In this version, the song has a subtitle, "Hoo Hah," which I suspect is to differentiate it from the Davis number.

Prestige issued these as 78s on both Prestige and New Jazz, with records credited variously to Jackson, Mulligan and Zoot Sims, then on 45 RPM EPs and a 10-inch LP, and finally as part of a 7000-series LP called Chubby Jackson Sextet and Big Band -- nice of them to give the credit to Jackson, as Mulligan by then was by far the bigger star.

Listening to Prestige Records - Part 14: Kai Winding

Some jazz musicians object to the word "jazz" as a name for their music, arguing that its origins as a slang word for sex trivialize the music it's attached to.  But that same delicate sensibility doesn't seem to have extended to beboppers, if their propensity for making "bop" puns is any indication. 
 
Take this Kai Winding session, for example, and "A Night on Bop Mountain." I'm not complaining, you understand. I love all these bad bop puns, and the bad puns on the names of the performers. And I love this boppified version of "A Night on Bald Mountain."

File this under Stuff I've never heard before. I really only knew Kai Winding from the J.J. and Kai recordings, so this is a chance to catch up on him earlier in his career. And file this under I Thought I Was Getting Away From Scandinavians For a While: Winding was Danish. Family emigrated to America when he was 12.

As noted before, this is a music lover blog, not a music critic blog and certainly not a music educator blog, but I'm always willing to learn something new, so here, from Barbara (BJBear) Major's Kai Winding site, a little music education:

Kai was an "upstream" player and a form of Type IV in the Pivot System (mouthpiece low on the embouchure and airstream directed upwards into the mouthpiece). This produces a totally different tonal quality on the instrument than someone who is a "downstream" player.

 The group here is the Kai Winding Sextette, featuring Brew Moore (ts), Gerry Mulligan (bs), George Wallington (p),Curly Russell (b), Max Roach (d), and the recording date is August 23, 1949. They may not have made a lot of waves - most Winding bios seem to skip over this part of his career, mentioning his work with big bands and then jumping to the J.J. and Kai group, but they made some impressive music.
 
In 1949, Gerry Mulligan had yet to lead his own group, and he was better known as an arranger, but this session doesn't sound Mulligan-arranged. It's a little harsher than I'd expect from Mulligan arrangements.
 
And this is interesting: a Gerry Mulligan discography  lists a few 1949 sessions led by. Kai Winding and featuring Mulligan. One in April, which featured the same front line of Winding, Moore and Mulligan, and two thirds of the same rhythm section* -- Wallington and Russell, but with Kenny Clarke on drums, lists Mulligan as both baritone sax and arranger.The April recordings included "Godchild," later to be a part of the iconic Miles Davis Birth of the Cool sessions, also featuring Winding on trombone and Mulligan's arrangements.

However, the August recording lists him only as baritone sax player. His playing has a little harsher tone than the mellow sound he developed -- almost Lester Young on the baritone sax, which sounds pretty close to impossible when you say it, but because of Mulligan we take it for granted that a baritone sax can do that. On this set, in some places, his sax sounds more like the rhythm instrument that a baritone sax had mostly been -- and brilliant even at that -- but in a few solos he really stretches out.

Mulligan is certainly in the Jazz Hall of Fame. Kai Winding is probably in the fall of Jazz Lovers Know Who He Is, and Brew Moore in the hall of Really Serious Jazz Lovers Know Who He Is, but they all complement each other on these recordings.

"Sid's Bounce" and "A Night on Bop Mountain" were one New Jazz 78; "Broadway" and "Waterworks" were the other. Alternate takes of  Broadway" and "Waterworks" made it onto the 45 RPM EP of the session, and onto PRLP 109, which brought Winding and J. J. Johnson together but separate.




* These guys seem to have played together a lot in 1949. Essentially  the same group also recorded as the George Wallington Septet and the Brew Moore Septet.

Birth of the Cool: Deception

Birth of the Cool, track 6. "Deception" was written by Miles, and the arrangement for the Birth of the Cool nonet was Gerry Mulligan's. You can hear the musicianship of both of them at their best here, working in counterpoint to each other, Mulligan's ensemble voicings making a nest for Miles to soar out of.

It came from the last recording session for the album, in March of 1950.


I didn't know if I was going to find another recording of deception, and when I did, it blew me away. Clifford Brown and Eric Dolphy? I would never have thought of them as contemporaneous. But Clifford died in 1956 -- if you'd asked me to guess, I would have said around 1952 -- and Dolphy was just starting out, playing with local bands in LA. His father -- talk about supportive! -- built him a studio in the back yard, and friends -- like Clifford Brown -- would come by and jam. This is from one of those sessions:

Birth of the Cool: Budo

Birth of the Cool, track Five: Budo. For many years, looking at the album cover, and playing the tracks on it, I pronounced this in my head with a long U. But it turns out to be Bud-oh, a composition credited to Bud Powell and Miles Davis -- arranged by John Lewis for the Birth of the Cool sessions -- but based on an earlier Bud Powell composition, "Hallucinations." Here's the Powell original:

And from Birth of the Cool:



Budo is one of the most widely covered of the Birth of the Cool originals, but strangely, a lot of those versions of this classic have not made it onto YouTube or Spotify -- including versions by Red Norvo/Charles Mingus/Tal Farlow (who also covered "Move" and "Godchild" on the same session), Lee Morgan Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd and Horace Silver, Joe Lovano and Hank Jones. Versions by Miles and Chet Baker, Miles and Charlie Parker, Miles and Diz also can't be found on YouTube, although there is one by Miles and Trane. Here's a nice version by Bud with Stan Getz:



Bobby McFerrin has a very interesting solo version of "Hallucinations," also not on YouTube, but you can find it on Spotify. And here's a great version of "Hallucinations" by Keith Jarrett:

Birth of the Cool: Venus de Milo

Birth of the Cool, track Four: "Venus de Milo" is a Gerry Mulligan composition, and again, it's been rarely covered, not even by Mulligan except on his "Rebirth of the Cool" album, which was basically a mistake. There's a version by Tito Puente and Maynard Ferguson which is good, and you can find it on Spotify, but if you look for it on YouTube, you get, curiously, directed to a whole string of Audiobooks and episodes of The Great Gildersleeve. And there's a lovely version of it by Jimmy Rowles, which you can find on YouTube with some difficulty, and if you keep digging, you'll discover that it comes from a trio album with Rufus Reid and Mickey Roker, on which they performed four Birth of the Cool numbers -- the others being "Jeru," "Godchild" and "Darn that Dream."



Here's the Jimmy Rowles version of "Venus" -- beautiful. I wish I could find the other three "Birth" interpretations, but no luck on either YouTube or Spotify.



And here's the only other version I could find on YouTube (not counting the song by Prince). This one a bit of an oddity, by the US Army Blues Band. Really not bad -- nice Mulligan-like arrangement.



The entire "Birth of the Cool" sessions have recently been recreated by a Dutch tribute orchestra named Cool Dawn -- you can find them on Spotify, if you're looking for a tribute band. Also on an album of Mulligan compositions (including "Boplicity" from Birth of the Cool) by a group called the Latino Blanco band, also findable on Spotify.

Birth of the Cool - Jeru

Birth of the Cool, track 2

"Jeru" is a beautiful melody by Gerry Mulligan that almost no one seems to have covered. Allmusic.com lists mostly versions by Mulligan, Miles, and a few other Birth of the Cool alumni like Lee Konitz. Allmusic lists a version by Oscar Peterson (on a Live in Paris album according to Allmusic), but I can't find either one on YouTube or Spotify. LastFM acknowledges that it exists, but they don't have it. Allmusic also lists one by Stanley Clarke and Patrice Rushen, which I was finally able to find on YouTube, but as "Jazz Straight Up - Jeru." Here it is:

 


I also found a version by the Clare Fischer clarinet choir, which can't be heard in its entirety on any Internet site that I've found, although you can hear the first 30 seconds on allmusic and other sites. And -- I suppose this is why I pursue stuff like this -- found out a lot about Clare Fischer, whom I had never heard of, and who died a year ago almost to the day. Check out his Wiki page -- fascinating guy. He won a Grammy in 1981.

Spotify has a vocalese version by Mel Torme, with Mulligan and Shearing backing him up, but it doesn't do much more than point up Torme's limitations as a jazz singer.

Jazz portraits

A few more:

Ben Webster

James Moody

Gerry Mulligan