1. Blues Going Up
2. Little Girl Blue
3. Piano Blues
4. Yardbird Suite
5. Blues For Tiny
6. Soft Shoe
7. Makin' Whoopee
8. Darn That Dream
9. Ontet
10. A Bark For Barksdale

1. Blues Going Up (1)
2. Little Girl Blue (1)
3. Piano Blues (1)
4. Yardbird Suite (1)
5. Utter Chaos (November 12, 1954)
6. Western Reunion (2)
7. I Know, Don't Know How (2)
8. Red Door (2)

1. Makin' Whoopee
2. Nights At The Turntable
3. Blues For Tiny
4. Frenesi
5. Limelite
6. People Will Say we're In Love
7. Western Union
8. I Know, Don't Know Why
9. Red Door
10. Polka Dots And Moon Beams
11. I'll Remember April - Choice
12. There Will Never Be Another You
    - Choice
13. It Don't Mean A Thing
14. Ellington Medley - Choice

ALL = Jon Eardley, Red Mitchell, Gerry Mulligan,
1 - 5 =  Chico Hamilton
6 - 8 =   Bob Brookmeyer, Larry Bunker, Zoot Sims

December 3, 1954

ALL = Jon Eardley, Red Mitchell, Gerry Mulligan,

1 - 5    =  Chico Hamilton - December 3, 1954
6 - 14  =   Bob Brookmeyer, Larry Bunker , Zoot Sims

December 14, 1954

 LINER NOTES

This concert is our first appearance in San Diego, and marked the last appearance of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet for some time to come. The Quartet has been disbanded for a period of six months for me to go home to New York to concentrate on new music and to formulate plans for new recordings and other musical undertakings.

The Quartet, with the same personnel as in Stockton, played the first half of the concert. After intermission, Larry Bunker took Chico Hamilton's place at the drums. We were joined on stage by Zoot Sims and Bob Brookmeyer.

Western Reunion is so titled in honor of Zoot Sims, an old friend and musical compatriot of mine. It has been many years since Zoo and I have had an opportunity to blow together" so, for both of us this was and auspicious and happy occasion. I Know, Don't Know Why is a new original being presented for the first time here, and I hope you will enjoy it. The Red Door is a delightful tune composed by Zoot Sims. In New York in the late '40's, Zoot and I and our friends used to play at a studio called Don Jose's. This studio was located in an old building with a rather bleak front and distinguished by a bright red door, for which this tune is named. We play The Red Door as a duet for tenor and baritone, and are joined by Bobby Brookmeyer at the piano. This brings our San Diego concert to a close, and completes the album.

- Gerry Mulligan

VOLUMES 1 & 2

When the original Gerry Mulligan quartet broke up, Chet Baker forged his own career with another great quartet that featured Russ Freeman. Mulligan, who had become very attached to the pianoless group idea, put together another quartet with valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, which continued intermittently until the early sixties. This seemed an ideal combination since both Mulligan and Brookmeyer were good pianists. This format gave each of them the opportunity to play the instrument, thereby creating two more instrument configurations for the band. By not using a trumpet player, Mulligan also avoided comparisons with his original quartet with Baker.

He did however try the original instrumentation on two occasions. In late 1954, he briefly led a quartet with Jon Eardley and in 1958, he led another with Art Farmer.

The first volume of California Concerts is greatly expanded from the first side of the original Pacific Jazz album and features the quartet of Mulligan, Eardley, Red Mitchell and original quartet drummer Chico Hamilton. The occasion was a concert on November 12, 1954 at Stockton High School in Stockton, California. The merits of the rhythm section are quite evident. Jon Eardley is a wonderful surprise for those not familiar with him or those who have not listened to his work with Mulligan in years. A well-rounded and distinctive player, he has a great sense of swing and is a thoughtful, fresh improviser.

The ten tunes in this lengthy CD include all of the releasable material from that concert. The first four tunes were issued on the original album. Three others appeared soon thereafter on various Pacific Jazz anthologies. "Makin' Whoopee" "Darn That Dream" and Muligan's "Ontet" which he originally wrote for his tentette, are previously unissued.

Volume two comes from a concert at Hoover High School in San Diego on December 14, 1954. The concert started off with the same quartet. All six pieces by them are previously unissued and presented here for the first time. The remaining nine pieces feature the first appearance of Mulligan's sextet. Larry Bunker, the second drummer from the original quartet, is on drums and Zoot Sims and Bob Brookmeyer are added. Although Mulligan took six months off from touring and leading a band soon after this concert, he must have liked the results of this evening very much. When he reformed his group in mid 1955, it was a sextet with the same front fine. The sextet made several albums for Mercury and lasted until the end of 1956.

Three tunes from this concert were originally on the California Concerts album, while another was on a Mulligan anthology. "I'll Remember April" and "Flamingo" from the Ellington Medley appeared on a Zoot Sims album. "People Will Say We're In Love," "There Will Never Be Another You,""It Don't Mean A Thing" and the full version of the Ellington medley are previously unreleased. Unfortunately, the tape ran out on the very ending of the Ellington Medley, which is why the performance is faded as delicately as possible as Brookmeyer finishes his beautiful reading of "Moon Mist"

Both of these concerts find Mulligan not only in interesting company, but ready to play with verve and imagination.

Thanks to the extended format of the CD, the complete performances of these nights are now finally gathered together in one place so that the listener can have the full impact of those concerts.

- Michael Cuscuna

Choice

During the summer of 1953, the Woody Herman band played a dance-concert in Ventura, California. The additional attractions were June Christy, Maynard Ferguson and, recently returned from a European tour with Stan Kenton, Zoot Sims. Each of the attractions had their own music which was passed among the members of the Herman band. There was much to be said of this excellent band but one of their virtues was not sight reading special material. Christy and Ferguson, both showmen of a high type, struggled valiantly through their performances showing no outward signs of stress. When the time came for Zoot to play, his music was distributed to the uneasy musicians. He was to do three tunes, the first of which was a chart written for him, while he was on the Kenton band, by Bill Holman. It was, and is, a heck of an arrangement and one of the best in the Kenton book of that period. But it was not the sort of thing that you would ordinarily place cold before any band and expect instant results. It ran around three minutes, and needless to say, the band's performance was less than an inspired one. At its conclusion, Zoot half-turned his head and, almost unnoticed, muttered sotto-voce to the beleaguered musicians, "blues in B-flat." What followed was one of the most exciting ten or twelve minutes of stompin' swingin' straight-forward jazz I have been privileged to witness.

The band, now on firm ground, lay down a pulsating framework - hesitant at first and underplayed. The rhythm section found a format drawn from the lines of the improvising Sims. A chorus or two of this with the sections trying a tentative riff under the chorus endings and the band began to take an aggressive single-minded shape. Section leaders held brief conferences with their fellow players, decisions were made, heads nodded in understanding, and the band, as if in full agreement, broke unerringly into a full-throated shout. And up front in full control of the onrushing vehicle stood Zoot Sims, head down, horn out-thrust, massive brow a tangle of distended arteries, wailing chorus after incredible chorus. Tumult! Sheer physical joy!

Many times since that night, I've seen how Zoot is able to produce these results at will. And each time I wonder how it is that a musician capable of such enormous communicative powers has not become the biggest sensation in jazz. I am still wondering! What has happened through the last five years, is a creeping awareness among critics and fans, that Zoot Sims is truly "somethin' else." Even the young musicians, who traditionally reject the older guys (he's 35) are discovering him. Even though it's been attended by no fan-fares, it must be a wonderful victory for Zoot - finding that after nearly twenty years he is not fading, but in fact is dug more than before. And what is important is that this growing acceptance has been achieved without compromise - he has always played the way he plays now. Very early in his career he sounded a bit like his earliest idol, Georgie Auld, but, from his earliest period of true originality (about 1946) he has played within the same basic context. The critics who earlier dismissed Zoot, as another Lester Young imitator, missed something very significant about his playing: the others sounded like Young, some of them more like Young than Young himself, but Zoot thinks like Young. Zoot's tone is fuller and his style more aggressive, but it is this musical mental process that distinguishes him and produces a logical extension of. Lester Young rather than an artificial likeness.

Sticking to your guns in the face of changing trends indicates a certain kind of integrity, particularly when it relates to eating regularly. When Zoot was living in Southern California about five years ago, things weren't going very well for him. The musicians loved him, of course, but idolation never paid the room rent. To make ends meet, Zoot was working during the days painting houses. This was very depressing for me to see because I regarded him, as I do still, as one of the great jazz musicians. I never saw any evidence that it ever bothered Zoot and I never heard him complain. He must have known that he was the best tenor player in Los Angeles at the time, but he never said an unkind word. His nights were spent, playing wherever he could, his knuckles still stained with paint. Zoot is the rarest kind of jazz musician; one who is not bugged when surrounded by ordinary or even inferior musicians. If they are trying, he plays as earnestly as if they were the best. As a matter of fact, some of the best "live" Zoot I've heard were on occasions when he was playing with downright run-of-the-mill musicians. He encourages everyone around him and because of the vitality which he generates, and his humility, he causes everyone to play over their heads. He is the catalyst; the sparkplug; his presence alone is usually enough to elevate an otherwise ordinary assemblage of musicians to an unusually high level of performance. When he was scuffling around L.A. and good sessions were rare, he began sitting-in with a few burlesque bands for lack of anything more challenging. One burlesque house on San Fernando Road in Pacoima (about 10 miles from Holywod) became a regular affair. A few of the kipper jazz fans, and most of the musicians, got wind of it and began showing up (presumably to hear Zoot). The concensus of opinion was that the girls performed incredible feats under the influence of Zoot's heady tenor.

The anecdotes I tell of Zoot here, cover a very short period of his life; less than two years. However, it was the period in which I knew him best, and to have known him at all is to have had some of him rub off. When Zoot finally decided to return to New York in the Summer of 1955, it was like seeing a member of the family off. He didn't want to go at first. Los Angeles was his home. This is where he was born and this is where his family was. But, all of us who knew Zoot, and were concerned for him, knew that his existence of house painting and occasional playing jobs was getting him nowhere. We knew that if he were to put his great talent to full use he must return to New York where he had many admirers among musicians and friends who could do more than we. Dick Bock was in New York on business, saw Gerry Mulligan, who was then forming his now famous sextet, and fell to discussing Zoot - out of which came Gerry's offer to have Zoot join the sextet.

It was a Sunday afternoon. Less than an hour before his plane was to leave the Burbank Air Terminal, Zoot arrived at my front door to be taken to the airport. He was to have had dinner with us, but now it was too late for that. As we went out the door, he turned to my mother-in-law, whom he liked very much, and said "When I come back I'll be driving a Cad, and I'm going to take you for a ride." To date, neither the Cad nor the ride have materialized, but what he really meant was "I'm going to take care of business now." And this he has done.

W.W.