GM Quartet On The Road - Live in California

Disc One
  1. Line For Lyons
  2. Carioca
  3. My Funny Valentine
  4. Bark For Barksdale
  5. Utter Chaos
  6. Aren't You Glad You're You
  7. Get Happy notes
  8. Ponciana
  9. Godchild
  10. Too Marvellous For Words
  11. Lover Man
  12. I'll Remember April
  13. These Foolish Things
  14. All The Things You Are
  15. Bernie's Tune
  16. Five Brothers
  17. I Can't Get Started
  18. Ide's Side
  19. Funhouse
  20. My Funny Valentine
Disc Two
  1. Blues Going Up
  2. Little Girl Blue
  3. Piano Blues
  4. Yardbird Suite
  5. Blues For Tiny notes
  6. Soft Shoe
  7. Makin' Whoopee
  8. Darn That Dream
  9. Ontet
  10. Bark For Barksdale
  11. Makin' Whoopee
  12. Nights At The Turntable
  13. Blues For Tiny
  14. Ferensi
  15. Limelite
 calif_live
Disc One
1 - 5 = "Fantasy 3-6" : Chet Baker, Chico Hamilton, Gerry Mulligan, Carson Smith

September 2, 1952

6 - 9 = "Pacific Jazz": Chet Baker, Chico Hamilton, Gerry Mulligan, Carson Smith
January, 1953
10 - 15 = "Pacific Jazz": Chet Baker, Chico Hamilton, Gerry Mulligan, Carson Smith
January 23, 1953
16 - 20 = "Pacific Jazz": Chet Baker, Larry Bunker, Chico Hamilton, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, Carson Smith

May 20, 1953

Disc Two
1 - 10 = "California Concert": Joe Eardley, Chico Hamilton, Red Mitchell, Gerry Mulligan

November 12, 1954

11 - 15 = "California Concert": Joe Eardley, Chico Hamilton, Red Mitchell, Gerry Mulligan,

December 14, 1954

 LINER NOTES

"San Francisco - For the first week of September, San Francisco was the modern musical center of the country. The Gerry Mulligan Quartet, certainly the freshest and most interesting sound to come out of jazz in some time, was holding forth at the Blackhawk and the joint was loaded night after night with every musician in town digging the group and shaking his head in wonder." (Downbeat, October 22nd 1952).

Fresh, natural, delicate, seductive,.. here was something innovative, now that the provocative bebop tornado was beginning to tire. And by rehabilitating collective improvisation, the music of these four companions did no damage to the ears of fans more used to habits dating back to the bands in New Orleans. Gerry showed genius when he hired Chef Baker, As human beings, there was absolutely no affinity whatever between their two profoundly dissimilar personalities: in the end they played with their backs turned to one another, but musically their entente was perfect. Mulligan used to say that sometimes they could play a whole evening without once consulting each other between tunes. The quartet was completed by drummer Chico Hamilton, an ex-accompanist of Lena Horne, and bassist Bob Whitlock, whose presence suffered periodically from eclipses brought on by religious callings that were difficult to suppress. They had no piano! This was (in appearance) a revolution.

The quartet's frst record, Bernie's Tune coupled with Lullaby of the Leaves, was a huge success. The lean years were coming to an end for Mulligan who, at the age of twenty-five, already had some eight years' experience behind him. In Gil Evans' company, he had presided over the birth of Miles Davis' Nonet, for which he composed Jeru and Rocker, among others. Mulligan had also exercised his talents as an arranger and soloist in the company of tenor saxophonist Brew Moore, trombonist Kai Winding and George Wallington, formerly the pianist with Dizzy Gillespie's first bop quintet. Together they practised a kind of up-to-date swing music, illustrated by Gold Rush, Broadway or Bop City, Mullenium and Bweebida Bobbida, taken from Gerry's first session as a leader, also belong to the same vein. So What, which was renamed Apple Core, deserves a special mention: recorded with a studio group led by Chubby Jackson, it marks the very first recorded encounter between Mulligan and the musician who was to gradually become one of his privileged partners, Zoot Sims.

Despite his constant presence on the New York scene, Gerry's financial resources were smaller than his ambitions; he had dreams of leading a full orchestra but, unable to pay for a studio, he rehearsed his band in Central Park, which was not to the taste of the local police. Disgusted, Mulligan took his baritone and bicycle and moved to California. It was a wise decision.

Alain Tercinet