1. Blueport - Village Vanguard
2. Body And Soul - Village Vanguard
3. Black Nightgown - Village Vanguard
4. Come Rain Or Come Shine - Village Vanguard
5. Lady Chatterley's Mother - Village Vanguard
6. Go Home - On Tour With Zoot Sims
7. Let My People Be - Village Vanguard

8. Barbara's Theme - On Tour With Zoot Sims
9. Theme From; "I Want To Live" - On Tour With Zoot Sims
10. Apple Core - On Tour With Zoot Sims
11. Go Home - Alternate take on "CJB Live" - On Tour With Sims
12. Come Rain Or Come Shine - Alternate take on "CJB Live"
13. The Red Door - Only on "CJB Live" - California Concerts

December, 1960

November, 1960

Late 1960

 LINER NOTES

Gerry's philosophy was to create a jazz band which played not for dancing but for listening, and which maintained the same clarity of sound and musical lines which hallmarked his earlier quartet and small group performances.

The first Concert Jazz band recordings, made less than two months after its formation, were undertaken in the New York studios. But it's the "live" recordings made during the band's first European tour during the autumn of the same year, and a separate series taped during a Sunday afternoon performance at the Village Vanguard club in December, which shows how quickly the band had developed into a cohesive and swinging unit, capable of producing some inspiring jazz and a set of performances which have stood the test of time.

As Mulligan remarked at the time "Working in front of an audience has a marked effect on a band. It can - as it has with us - result in a confidence as a unit that's marvel to see, hear and feel. All that we do is based on my conviction that music is to be enjoyed by the player as well as the listener."

The opening Blueport exemplifies this philosophy, with solos from trombonist Willie Dennis, tenor saxophonist Jim Reider and Bassist Bill Crow leading on to a cracking series of witty exchanges between Gerry and Clark Terry, which are spiked with quotations from an assortment of other tunes. It's an astonishing display of relaxed humour and quick-witted fingering which provides not only one of the highlights of this package, but also a fitting introduction to some of the most exhilarating and inventive big-band jazz of the past thirty years.

Keith Howell

From: "CJB LIVE"

It takes courage and a spirit of adventure, as well as hard cash, to launch a big band. To do so in 1960 when the big band era was long gone-required these characteristics in abundance. Gerry Mulligan's career up to that time had showed he had the necessary qualities, and the formation of the Concert Jazz Band was a logical development. In many ways it also represented the zenith of his career in Jazz. His associations with big bands had begun when, in 1947, at the age of nineteen, he wrote some arrangements for Gene Krupa. A year later, Mulligan was one of the leading lights; both as instrumentalist and arranger, of the highly influential Miles Davis nine-piece band. In 1953, he recreated the sound of that band in his Ten-tette recordings. In the early 1950's he also wrote for Elliot Lawrence and Claude Thornhill (both of whom recorded albums of his arrangements) and Stan Kenton.

Mulligan's adventurous spirit was further demonstrated in 1952, when he formed his pianoless quartet. His first front-line partner was Chet Baker; later replaced by Bob Brookmeyer, for whom the association was to last intermittently for more than a decade. Mulligan's quartet was characterised by the clean simplicity of its unison lines and attractive contrapuntal passages. By late 1954, Mulligan had enlarged to a Sextet, with Jon Eardley on trumpet, Zoot Sims on tenor, and both Mulligan and Brookmeyer playing occasional piano. After two years, Mulligan reverted to a quartet, until the formation of the Concert Jazz Band. In 1958, he appeared in the film I WANT TO LIVE with a jazz group. Johnny Mandel's score for the film remains one of the more enduring associations of jazz with the movies.

An interesting precursor to the Concert Jazz Band was a 1957 all-star big band recording date from which only, one item has ever appeared THRUWAY, and this was not released until several years later. In March 1960, Mulligan formed the Concert Jazz Band. The band made its first recordings two months later, and undertook a highly successful world tour in the latter part of the year. The band held the rapt attention of an enthusiastic audience at Newport, despite a torrential rainstorm during the concert. But before the end of 1962, Mulligan was forced to disband; and a fascinating experiment in big band jazz was no more. Even during its short life, the band had not worked regularly all the time. It was reunited in December 1962 for a final album.

The band's instrumentation is unusual in having only three trumpets and no regular pianist. The explanation lies in his arranging policy. "I wanted the same clarity of sound and interplay of lines l had in the smaller groups," he told Leonard Feather. "We have a clarinet in the reed section, not primarily for a clarinet-lead effect but for a sound contributing to the ensemble in general."

His overall concept of the band was, he explained to Nat Hentoff: ". . as a framework for soloists and as a vehicle for writers, but not `far out' writers. So far as my own contribution is concerned, my stamp is on the band I'm the featured soloist, but up to now I've been more of a supervisor of the writing than a very active contributor." On this album, Mulligan was responsible only for COME RAIN OR COME SHINE, the other arrangements being by Johnny Mandel (BLACK NIGHTGOWN, BARBARA'S THEME and THEME FROM "I WANT TO LIVE"); Al Cohn (BLUEPORT, LADY CHATTERLEY'S MOTHER); Bill Holman (GO HOME, APPLE CORE); and Bob Brookmeyer (BODY AND SOUL, LET MY PEOPLE BE). So clear is Mulligan's concept of how the band should sound, that all these different arrangers succeed in providing a unified and uniquepersonality for it.

The performances in this album were all taped `live' late in 1960. Those on the first record are all from a single Sunday afternoon at the Village Vanguard, whilst those on the other record are from concerts in Berlin, Milan and Santa Monica. The personnels differ slightly in that CIark Terry is on the first record only, with Zoot Sims featured as guest soloist on the second.

The Village Vanguard set opens with BLUEPORT, which is particularly, notable for Mulligan's gruffly swinging solo, and a crackling series of exchanges between him and CIarkTerry. Mulligan takes four-bar breaks with eight-bar replies from Terry, and the sequence is then reversed. Mulligan's and Brookmeyer's ballad styles are well captured in BONY AND SOUL, where the ensemble writing brings to mind the Ten-tette.The voicings used in BLACK NIGHTGOWN (from I WANT TO LIVE), on the other hand; come closer to those of conventional big band jazz.

Mulligan, Brookmeyer and Terry are the soloists.The sensitivity both in Mulligan's playing and writing on COME RAIN OR COME SHINE make one wish he had made more contributions to the book. This version makes an interesting contrast to the one from Santa Monica, where Zoot Sims is the soloist. LADY CHATTERLEY'S MOTHER is a straight-ahead swinger. Note particularly Clark Terry's contribution, with its dramatic entrance. LET MY PEOPLE BE settles into a comfortable medium groove, Mulligan's "arranger's piano" solo preceding that by Bob Brookmeyer. Jim Reider's work is also very impressive on this, but it is CiarkTerry who really raises the temperature as he starts preaching, with Mel Lewis driving behind him, and the saxes riffing.

The second record contains two more pieces from the score of I WANT To LIVE. BARBARA'S THEME features trumpeter Don Ferrara, whilst the film's theme has a delightful solo in slow tempo from Mulligan, set against single note trombone punctuations. The tempo then doubles, and Brookmeyer comes in shouting. Mulligan returns at the original tempo to duet with Buddy Clark, and takes the theme out with some sinuous bass-clarinet in the background. The band lays out onTHE RED DOOR, a Zoot Sims riff tune featured by the Mulligan Sextet. The quartet of Sims, Mulligan, Brookmeyer (on piano), Clark and Lewis cook powerfully, living up to the tune's alternative title THE SWINING DOOR. The full band returns for another ex-Mulligan Sextet tune, APPLE CORE, a thinly disguised LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME. Zoot really wails on this one. Sandwiched between these two is the aforementioned second version of COME RAIN OR COME SHINE. Zoot is equally convincing on the ballad. The record opens and closes with two different versions of Go HOME, a classic Ben Webster blues line (recorded by him and Gerry the previous year).The version from Milan is taken at a slightly slower tempo and is the funkier of the two. The Santa Monica take has something of an R&B feel to it, with a gutsy Brookmeyer solo being added to those of Mulligan and Sims, who both solo on the mIlan version as well.

The very different versions of GO HOME and COME RAIN OR COME SHINE bear out Mel Lewis' observation that: "Everytime we play something it's different from the last time. That's the way it's supposed to be. This is a real jazz band."

Michael Shera