1. Sweet And Slow
2. Bweebida Bobbida
3. Manoir De Mes Reves (Django's Castle)
4. You Took Advantage Of Me
5. Out Of This World
6. My Funny Valentine
7. Broadway
8. I'm Gonna Go Fishin'
9. I Know, Don't Know How (A)
10. Barbara's Theme (A)
11. Sweet And Slow (first version) (A)
12. Out Of This World (first version) (A)

9 - 12 Previously Unissued

1. Go Home
2. Barbara's Theme
3. Theme From "I Want To Live"
4. The Red Door
5. Come Rain Or Come Shine
6. Apple Core
7. Go Home
8. As Catch Can> - Previously Unissued
9. Young Blood
10. Blueport

1. Blueport
2. Body And Soul
3. Black Nightgown
4. Come Rain Or Come Shine
5. Lady Chatterley's Mother
6. Let My People Be
7. All About Rosie
8. Weep
9. I Know, Don't Know How
10. Chuggin'
11. Summer's Over
12. Israel

7 - 11 fromV6-8415 - Gerry Mulligan Presents a Concert in Jazz

1. Little Rock Getaway
2. Ballad
3. Big City Life
4. Big City Blues
5. My Kinda Love
6. Pretty Little Gypsy
7. Bridgehampton South
8. Bridgehampton Strut
9. Chant
10. Ballad (alt tk)
11. Bridgehampton South (alt tk)
12. Bridgehampton Strut (alt tk)

9 - 12 Previously Unissued

1 - 7 = Gene Allen, Wayne Andre, Bob Brookmeyer, Conte Candoli, Buddy Clark, Don Ferrara, Mel Lewis, Dick Meldonian, Gerry Mulligan, Gene Quill, Alan Raph, Zoot Sims, Nick Travis

July, 1960

8 = Gene Allen, Wayne Andre, Dave Bailey, Bob Brookmeyer, Don Ferrara, Dick Meldonian, Gerry Mulligan, Gene Quill, Alan Raph, Jim Reider, Phil Sunkel, Bill Takas

May, 1960

November, 1960

Sunday, December, 1960

V6-8415 - Gene Allen, Bob Brookmeyer, Bill Crow, Willie Dennis, Bob Donovan, Don Ferrara, Mel Lewis, Gerry Mulligan, Gene Quill, Alan Raph, Jim Reider, Doc Severinsen, Nick Travis

July 10 or 11, 1961

December 18,19, 20, or 21, 1962

 LINER NOTES

"It was the hottest band I ever played on."
- Bill Crow, bassist

The history of jazz is replete with memorable long-term partnerships: Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer, Red Nichols and Miff Mole, Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan, Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond, Cannonball and Nat Adderley, Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Rouse, Kenny Clarke and Francy Boland, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul, and Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays among them. Some of these were official collaborative ventures where co-leaders shared equal billing. But at other times, there was a leader/sideman relationship that became something much more.

Such was the long-term association between baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan (1927-1996) and valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer (b. 1929), which certainly ranks among jazz's most fruitful. The combination of the two was musically a natural. "They thought alike," observed jazz critic and historian Doug Ramsey. "They were both composers. But in their cases, it was the improvisation of composers who had very carefully thought out the way musical lines interrelated, and I thought their counterpoint worked beautifully."

Indeed it did - apparently, from their first encounters, which dated from 1953. At that time, Brookmeyer was a member of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz's quintet, which was playing an extended engagement in southern California. Getz and Brookmeyer discovered a startling new group: Mulligan's pianoless quartet with trumpeter Chet Baker. "We played Zardi's [with Getz] for 13 weeks, I think," recalled Brookmeyer, "and during that time we began to play after work with Chet and Gerry and Stanley and I, and they both said that it was the best band they'd ever played with and they would like to have this as a band. But then, of course, who's going to be the bandleader? Stanley already had his wings as a bandleader, and Gerry was just beginning to flex his."

Ironically, in January of 1954, Brookmeyer succeeded Baker with the Mulligan quartet. As musically superb -and commercially successful - as the pairing of Mulligan and Baker had been, this new combination proved at least as spectacular, and much longer in duration. It yielded a number of memorable recordings, initially including GERRY MULLIGAN IN PARIS (Vogue, 1954) and GERRY MULLIGAN QUARTET AT STORYVILLE (Pacific Jazz, 1956). After introducing a four-horns-bass-and-drums sextet on CALIFORNIA CONCERTS (Pacific Jazz, 1954), Mulligan made this his working ensemble for most of 1955 and '56; the frontline included Brookmeyer, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims (1925-1985), and Jon Eardley or Don Ferrara (b. 1928) on trumpet. This too-short-lived ensemble made three sparkling albums for Mercury/EmArcy: PRESENTING THE GERRY MULLIGAN SEXTET, A PROFILE OF GERRY MULLIGAN, and MAINSTREAM OF JAZZ. The addition of two horns made the sextet a writer's showcase for Mulligan (mostly), Brookmeyer, and, in one instance (an arrangement of Claude Debussy's LA PLUS QUE LENTE), Gil Evans.

By 1957, Mulligan was a major jazz star: a poll-winning baritone saxophonist with a unique and popular group sound. But it was as a precocious composer-arranger that he had made his initial reputation. When drummer Gene Krupa's orchestra recorded Mulligan's advanced arrangement of HOW HIGH THE MOON in 1946, Mulligan was barely 19. In the next six years, Mulligan contributed more arrangements to the band libraries of Krupa, Claude Thornhill, Elliot Lawrence, and Stan Kenton. Two of his compositions recorded by Kenton, YOUNG BLOOD and SWING HOUSE, are widely regarded as among the finest and most innovative big-band writing of the era; the former can be heard on one of Kenton's best albums, NEW CONCEPTS OF ARTISTRY IN RHYTHM (Capitol, 1952). The contrapuntal concepts (i.e., use of simultaneous, independent lines) that Mulligan employed in these pieces - and soon afterward featured to acclaim in his small groups - made a deep impression on many jazz composer-arrangers, one of the most important of whom was a Kenton tenor saxophonist named Bill Holman (b. 1927).

However, it was as a driving force with trumpeter Miles Davis' 1948-50 BIRTH OF THE COOL nonet that Mulligan made his most important early contributions as a writer. Gil Evans and Mulligan had both written for Claude Thornhill, and they desired to get the sound of the Thornhill band (especially its rich French horn-and-tuba mellifluousness) with a smaller instrumentation. Thus emerged, under Davis' leadership, an ensemble that had a short existence and was a commercial failure; fortunately, it recorded a dozen pieces for Capitol that have become among the most influential in jazz history. Seven of these were composed and/or arranged by Mulligan: JERU, ROCKER, VENUS DE MILO, GODCHILD, DARN THAT DREAM, DECEPTION and BUDO. (Note: for decades, some of these have been frequently miscredited to other arrangers. These credits came from Mulligan himself.)

Also, as an aside, a little-known fact: both Mulligan and one of his future associates, Johnny Mandel (b. 1925), stated that Mandel was in line to be a charter member of the Davis nonet - as both a player (he played trombone and bass trumpet) and writer. Alas, when the nonet began its rehearsals in 1948, Mandel was living in Los Angeles, doing a six-month residency necessary to obtain a Local 47 musicians' union card.

When Mulligan moved to California in 1951, he brought with him the concepts he had used so successfully with the Davis nonet. In January of 1953, after he had become a virtual overnight star with his pianoless quartet, he recorded eight pieces for Capitol with his own "tentette" - a fusion of the BIRTH OF THE COOL concepts with those of the quartet. The legacy of both the nonet and tentette would far outlive their brief existences and show up later in Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band.

But there was an interim step. In April of 1957, Mulligan assembled an all-star New York City band for two days of recording for Columbia - for what was intended to be his first big-band album as a leader/composer/arranger. (Despite his identification with "West Coast jazz," Mulligan was a full-time California resident for only a handful of years.) The band was definitely an impressive one, with soloists including the leader, Brookmeyer, Zoot Sims, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, and trumpeters Don Ferrara, Don Joseph and Jerry Lloyd. From two days of recording, four pieces emerged: three Mulligan originals - THRUWAY, MOTEL and MULLENIUM -and his arrangement of ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE. The results (currently available on MULLENIUM, Columbia/Legacy) are distinctly Mulliganesque, highly listenable and at times brilliant, but in Mulligan's view, the light, dancing quality that he had come to value in his smaller groups was absent with the seven-brass-five-saxes-and-rhythm instrumentation. As Mulligan told Burt Korall in 1961, "The sound was too heavy and full. The flexibility I had been so happy with in the small band was missing."

In 1994, Mulligan went into further detail about this issue. "I really liked the sound of that band in '57. There were a couple of things that I wrote for that band that I got to sound more of the way I wanted a big ensemble to sound. I only ever heard a couple of other bands sound like that - or get that sound on my charts, too. What I hadn't really come to terms with was the rhythm section. In order for the rhythm section to do what I wanted them to be able to do, and why I left it as loose as I did, they would have to get to know the arrangements real well. And we never had that luxury of time. Certainly at that point I hadn't figured out how to write rhythm parts so that they flowed - how much do you indicate, how much do you write out. Nothing could be more boring than a totally written-out bass part. And if you write figures with the band, especially in the Fifties, it really takes a while for rhythm guys to make it sound like their own. It sounds like they're playing figures, it sounds stilted.

"So I kind of wrote myself into a blind alley with that, because it didn't ultimately jell. But I liked some of the stuff I wrote - there's an interesting arrangement of ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE, beautifully played. So we had our moments. But in the end, we might have gone back to it, because I had done a couple of dates, and George Avakian was producing the dates. I said, `Well, let's put it aside for a while,' and then George left Columbia and went someplace else, and it never got completed as a project."

While the Columbia dates were less than totally successful, they seem to have given Mulligan some clear ideas of what the instrumentation of his future Concert Jazz Band would be. Meanwhile, Brookmeyer left the Mulligan quartet in August of 1957 to pursue an increasingly busy freelance career in New York (as well as a memorable 1958 membership in the Jimmy Giuffre 3 with the clarinetist/saxophonist and guitarist Jim Hall). In April of 1958, Mulligan put together another outstanding quartet with trumpeter Art Farmer, Henry Grimes or later Bill Crow on bass, and drummer Dave Bailey; it lasted for a little more than a year. During this period, Mulligan also was involved as a minor actor (and sometimes as a musical performer as well) in several films: I Want to Live, The Rat Race, The Subterraneans, and Bells Are Ringing.

It's been reported by several sources, including Leonard Feather, that the money from Mulligan's film work was his basis for bankrolling the Concert Jazz Band. Mulligan later denied this: "I didn't do that much. I acted in a couple of things, but it didn't pay that much better than working [in] clubs." But he undeniably was one of the best-paid and most successful leaders in jazz. Feather reported that "in England, where even in 1957 he was able to command $3,500 a week, every London show was a sellout, and Gerry registered more poll victories than probably any jazzman since Armstrong." So as of 1960, when Mulligan started the Concert Jazz Band, "Whatever money I made I was sinking back into the band." (The name of the ensemble signaled Mulligan's intent to have, as he told Feather, "a real out-and-out jazz band," not a dance band. As Mulligan observed, most bands that have been put together lately have been trying to reach a happy medium, and this doesn't exist; they spoil the possibilities in both directions.")

In any case, the CJB's beginnings were less than momentous, according to Brookmeyer. "In January of 1960, Gerry called and said, could he come by my apartment; he had a week in Basin Street East [in New York] and wanted to put together a big band for it. He wanted me to write an arrangement of BWEEBIDA BOBBIDA. I don't think that any massive decision had been made to have a [permanent] big band. That was the start, and we started rehearsing. There must have been some more jobs after that until the summer when we went to California, and that's when we changed some personnel. "The first six months were sometimes spent on keeping Gerry on track (laughs); I could see the potential. Gerrywa nted to build out from the quartet. He wanted not a Stan Kenton or a `big band,' so the quartet was the base of everything we built up from that. I was sort of the house arranger, I and I was, especially the first year, the hirer and firer, and straw boss and whatever else. Because it was the first time in my life I'd ever had a chance to be physically and musically and personally involved with something like this, where I could help something go forward."

(Doug Ramsey confirmed Brookmeyer's account: "I'm not ruling out Gerry's role in this, but Brookmeyer really did do, as I understand it from Mulligan and others, a lot of the work of keeping the band level and focused. And I think he did a marvelous job of that, while writing great stuff himself and playing his behind off.")

As one would expect, the band's instrumentation, as determined by Mulligan and Brookmeyer, was other than conventional. There were six brass: three trumpets, Brookmeyer's valve trombone, a slide trombone and a bass trombone. Apart from Mulligan's solo baritone, there were four reeds: clarinet (with some alto saxophone), alto (with occasional flute), tenor and a second baritone doubling bass clarinet. (The clarinet lead in the reeds was not tended to be a Glenn Miller- or Ellington-style sound, but rather reflected Mulligan's and Brookmeyer's fondness for the way that the Claude Thornhill band - of which 6 men were alumni - used the instrument.) True to Mulligan's small-group model, the rhythm section conined only bass and drums; when piano was (infrequently) used, it was played by either Mulligan or Brookmeyer. Overall, the idea was to have enough horns to provide punch and a variety of tone colors, but to have an ensemble that was lighter on its feet than a typical big band.

Mulligan intended that the bulk of the solo work would be handled by himself, Brookmeyer, tenor and one trumpet. As he told Feather, "I've seen a lot of bands fall into a trap of spreading the solos around so everybody can play. Now these are known as musicians' bands, and one of the reasons they can never establish themselves with an audience is that the audience takes time to be able to understand the playing of each man, and so many players go by that they never really have a chance to hear anybody, so nothing really sticks in their minds." Mulligan's attitude about this matter seems to have relaxed somewhat as the band evolved. But regardless of who was soloing, his philosophy was to allow for as much spontaneity - with open solo sections and "head" backgrounds made up on the spot - as possible.

Bill Crow (b. 1927), who along with trumpeter Clark Terry (b. 1920) joined the CJB late in 1960, talked about how this worked. "The thing that I really liked about that band was that we had a good riff-maker in each section: Clark and Bob and Gerry. We would play the written chart through whatever ensemble kicked off the next soloist, and then we didn't count measures; we waited until Gerry gave us the signal, 'cause he liked to let the soloists stretch out. And then he would start playing the backgrounds that he liked to play with the quartet behind the soloist on his second or third chorus. And the rest of the saxophone section would chime in - harmonize what Gerry was doing. And then Brookmeyer would think of a nice counterline, and Clark would think of a nice hot little lick to stick in there. And pretty soon we had a whole new head arrangement for that section. After we'd used that up, Gerry would give us a signal, either musical or a hand signal, to go on to the next written section. It would really expand the charts and make them so interesting; we never recorded much of that."

Mulligan and Brookmeyer put together the band with an inevitable amount of trial and error, making replacements when necessary. "The thing that nobody knows," explained Brookmeyer, "is that Gerry and I really tried to make it not a `white band.' At early rehearsals, we had Charlie Rouse, [trumpeter] Blue Mitchell - three or four gentlemen of color were invited to be part of the band, because we did not want a white band.' (In fact, Mulligan had employed a number of black musicians during the Fifties: Rouse, guitarist Freddie Green, bassists Peck Morrison, Joe Benjamin, Henry Grimes and Leroy Vinnegar, drummers Chico Hamilton, Dave Bailey and Gus Johnson, and trumpeters Art Farmer and Oliver Beener. Bailey became the CJB's first drummer, and Johnson played on its last album. And as noted, Clark Terry eventually joined and became one of the band's sparkplugs; in later years, Thad Jones and Snooky Young also were often in the trumpet section at various times.)

In addition to Brookmeyer (who wrote the largest number of the CJB's arrangements) and Mulligan (who wrote surprisingly few), Al Cohn (1925-1988), Bill Holman and Johnny Mandel contributed vitally to the band's library. Mulligan went so far as to fly Holman from California to work in New York for three months. "I'd known Gerry since the early Fifties," Holman related, "when he brought in those charts for Kenton, and we'd see each other periodically. In the late Fifties he started spending more time out in L.A., so we hung out some. He knew that I had the same kind of approach to writing - probably a lot of it was gained from playing his music. I think he thought he could trust me. [Author's note: Mulligan had already trusted Holman with writing arrangements for THE GERRY MULLIGAN SONG BOOK, recorded in December of 1957 for Pacific Jazz. The album featured an all-star saxophone section - Lee Konitz, Allen Eager, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and Mulligan - with a rhythm section of Freddie Green, Henry Grimes and Dave Bailey.]

"One night at one of Terry Gibbs' gigs in '59, Gerry asked me if I'd be able to come back to New York for a few months and help him. I jumped at it; I came in March or April of 1960. He put me on salary for a few months, and he put me up in [actress-singer] Judy Holliday's mother's apartment; she was living with Judy at that time, so the apartment was empty. My particular gig, I found out when I got there, was to arrange a lot of his quartet hits for big band. Brookmeyer and Cohn and all those guys were getting to write pretty much what they wanted (laughs), and I had to rewrite Gerry's hits. Which was fine - it was good music, and within the concept of the band I had quite a lot of freedom."

Later on, other distinguished composer-arrangers became important contributors to the CJB book: Johnny Carisi (1922-1992), George Russell (b. 1923) and a newcomer named Gary McFarland (1933-1971). And furthermore, there were a few charts from Bill Finegan, Thad Jones, Wayne Shorter, Sy Johnson and others.

By the time the CJB played at Basin Street East in April of 1960 (after a warm-up weekend at the Red Hill Inn near Camden, New Jersey), its personnel was, as reported by Feather: Danny Stiles, Phil Sunkel, Don Ferrara, trumpets; Bob Brookmeyer, Wayne Andre, Alan Raph, trombones; Eddie Wasserman, Dick Meldonian, Bill Holman, Gene Allen, reeds; Bill Takas, bass; Dave Bailey, drums; and Mulligan, baritone and piano. According to Feather, "Holman played only the first week at Basin Street, then withdrew to concentrate on writing, and was replaced by Zoot Sims." (At Basin Street, the CJB shared the bill with singer Sarah Vaughan and a clarinetist named Mike Gold.)

Early in the band's existence, Mulligan acquired a vitally important financial backer: Norman Granz, head of Verve Records and mastermind of the hugely successful Jazz at the Philharmonic tours of the postwar era. Bill Crow explained: "[Drummer] Mel Lewis told me Norman had presented this deal to Gerry that he would be Gerry's partner. Norman could have the band for European tours and recording where he could make some money, and [in return] he would make up the difference between the losses that Gerry took booking the band into clubs over here. Evidently Gerry told each guy, `I need everybody to tell me what's the absolute lowest salary that you can survive on for this band to work.' So the guys that had families asked for a little more, the single guys took a little less, and everybody was happy about it because it was such a good band."

The CJB continued to work in the New York area, including a May booking at the Village Vanguard, and in late May-early June, it made its first recordings. Personnel changes continued, including Gene Quill (1927-1988) for Wasserman and Jim Reider (1931-1968) for Sims. Sims, however, would return later.

In mid-June, the CJB made its first trip to California to play a one-nighter, a jazz festival at the Hollywood Bowl. At this point, Brookmeyer made an important decision. As he told it: "I was staying with Mel [Lewis], and I went with Mel to a rehearsal of Terry Gibbs' band; the band was fantastic. And I thought, `Jesus, we sound like fucking amateurs - this is a band!' So I don't recall whether I even asked Gerry or not, but I hired Mel and [bassist] Buddy Clark and [trumpeter] Conte [Candoli]. Then we made some other changes when we came back. But getting Mel, of course, was the key."

And it was. Without slighting the ability of Dave Bailey (b. 1926), a most capable small-group drummer and a Mulligan stalwart, the addition of Lewis (1929-1990), one of the finest big-band drummers of all time, proved a crucial step forward. Lewis continued to live in California until 1963, but he commuted regularly between Los Angeles and New York for Mulligan and other work - a rather extraordinary display of commitment.

Back on the East- Coast, the CJB made a Newport Jazz Festival appearance on July 1. Of that occasion, Gene Lees wrote a vivid account: "It was pouring rain that night. I was back in the band tent when they went on. Voice of America was videotaping the show. I slipped into the control room, which was at the front of the stage. The stage was at chest height, and, under the roof of that improvised control booth, I had the perfect vantage point. I could see not only what was happening on stage but the TV monitors showing what the cameramen were picking up. The band began to play Bob Brookmeyer's chart on Django Reinhardt's MANOIR DE MES REVES, an exquisite thing. I watched a monitor as a camera panned across a sea of black umbrellas in the rain and then picked up a great puddle onstage in which was reflected the image of Gerry Mulligan, upside down, as he started his solo. The raindrops fell into this puddle, making the image tremble, like the music. The memory is indelible."

At the end of July, the CJB returned to Plaza Sound in New York. After more key personnel changes (including Zoot Sims returning on tenor), the band redid and completed its first album. Lead trumpeter Danny Stiles was replaced by Nick Travis (1925-1964). Along with Brookmeyer and Lewis, Travis became one of the CJB's pivotal members. As Mulligan attested, "I had a lot of pressure (laughs) from Nick Travis and Brookmeyer and Mel Lewis to put that band together. They were always on my case. It never would have become a band without their collaboration, pushing me to do it."

Norman Granz hastened the release of the first album, THE CONCERT JAZZ BAND, to coincide with the CJB's fall tours. Typical of the critical response was John S. Wilson's October 30 review in The New York Times: "On the basis of its first disk, THE CONCERT JAZZ BAND ...is the most promising big band organized in the last 15 years."

In mid-September, the CJB flew to California and beginning with the Monterey Jazz Festival, executed by bus and plane a West Coast and, then, cross-country tour of the United States. (This included five nights in the Sutherland Lounge in Chicago, October 19-23.) After the album had been made, there were three other personnel changes: Dick Meldonian, who had recently become a father and didn't want to go on the road, was replaced by Bob Donovan; Wayne Andre left to become a CBS staff musician and was succeeded by Willie Dennis; and Jim Reider returned as section tenor, allowing Zoot Sims, who didn't want to play in the section, to travel that fall with the CJB as "guest soloist."

"By that time we'd really solidified," Brookmeyer recalled. "Two weeks in the [Village] Vanguard [author's note: actually four - two in July and two in September] had given us a good spirit, and we really felt that we were a good band. I remember the first night at the Vanguard with Mel, I just looked across and thought, `My God, this feels so good!'

"[On tour] we rode in a bus. Nick Travis and Mel and I were sort of the cadre - I was first and Mel was second and Nick was in there somewhere. So we sort of ran the band away from the stand - probably on the stand a little bit, too. The bus was a zoo - screaming and yelling, everybody got nicknames, a lot of drinking. Mulligan was flying back to New York after every concert to be with Judy [Holliday]. [Author's note: in the late Fifties and early Sixties, Mulligan was involved in a serious relationship with Holliday. The actress at that time was ill with the early stages of the cancer that would kill her in 1965.] He made one trip with us, and couldn't believe it. He said, `I'll never do that again - you guys are crazy!'

"And we were! In Europe I called us `the basketball team,' careening around. But there was a lot of esprit in the band, and we really enjoyed playing, and we were, I think, proud of the band, too."

Upon completing its sweep of the U.S., the CJB flew off to western Europe for a three-week concert tour of major cities, including Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Genoa, Gothenberg, Milan, Paris, Stockholm and Zurich. A few items from the Berlin and Milan concerts - as well as from an October 1 appearance in Santa Monica, California - were later released on the CJB's ON TOUR album. Recordings of its Paris and Zurich concerts - alas, not owned by Verve - were released on CD in the 1990s. Mulligan also mentioned in 1994 that a tape of the Gothenberg concert was mislaid and found years later by Granz. (It's now owned by Fantasy.) By all accounts, the European sojourn was highly successful in every respect; unfortunately, it was the CJB's only trip overseas.

Back in New York, the CJB began a two-week engagement at the Village Vanguard on November 29 - "all three previous stints [at the Vanguard] having been standing room only smashes," according to a press release. Buddy Clark and Conte Candoli had returned to California after the tour, replaced by Bill Crow and Clark Terry, and Zoot Sims departed for good. The hiring of Terry, who was recommended by Nick Travis, evidently compensated for the loss of Sims. "Clark just really turned the whole band on," declared Crow. "The right addition to that band - he had such a big bag of really extraordinary things that he could do on a big band."

Crow and Lewis quickly became an exemplary rhythm team that functioned for most of the remainder of the CJB's existence. "Mel was interesting," said Crow. "When I first heard him, I was at the Hickory House with [drummer] Joe Morello and [pianist] Marian [McPartland]. Guys would come in to sit in, including Mel, and he didn't sound like anything special to me. I was so used to Joe's control when he played with the trio, and I felt that Mel was playing a little heavy for that, but he seemed like a good player.

"Then he went to California, and my suspicion is that he fell under the influence of [drummer] Shelly Manne, because the next time I heard him play, he was doing all those subtle, interesting things that I had heard Shelly do, and I had never heard Mel play like that before. I had heard him with Kenton, but not the way he had it down a year or so later. All of a sudden he had control of his cymbal sound, and he wasn't cutting the brass section as much as he was setting them up. And he would switch over to that kind of a dead sizzle cymbal he found that had a crack in it - it had such a wonderful sound behind the sax section.

"Mel's tendency was always to settle. I never heard him rush in my life; if he ever made a mistake, it was to slow down. So I used to just play on the front end of that beat, and it seemed to really match what he was doing, and I could feel like I was putting some life into it. I just loved playing with him. I could trust where he was going to be, and really enjoyed the decoration that he brought. He told me one time, `I don't believe in kicking the brass section anymore; those guys get lazy and they lay behind the beat, and if you don't kick 'em, they have to get up on time and swing themselves. And they've got enough accents in the sound of the brass that the drummer doesn't have to be adding to that.' He said, `I'd rather play the saxophone parts, and then set the brass section up.' He was just brilliant in figuring out how to get a good beat going that would excite the band, and not ever feel like he was pushing." The vibrancy of the Crow/Lewis team can be heard on the CJB's AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD album, recorded on a single Sunday afternoon. (Material recorded at other times during the two-week run has not been locatable in the current Verve vaults.) The band as a whole sounds relaxed and thoroughly seasoned by this time, with countless possibilities ahead.

But because of an unexpected development, only some of those possibilities were ever realized. In January of 1961, Norman Granz sold Verve to MGM for $2.5 million. The financial support that had enabled the CJB to exist as a full-time working band abruptly disappeared, and Mulligan was unable to carry the band on salary on his own So Mulligan reverted to his quartet (now with Brookmeyer, Crow and Lewis, Gus Johnson, or Dave Bailey) as his principal working group, and the CJB became a part-time band that worked mainly in the New York City area. As Crow noted in his book From Birdland to Broadway, "...the spirit wasn't the same. We weren't the family we had been; we had lost the continuity and the feeling of commitment. Gigs with the Concert Jazz Band were still fun, but the band wasn't the center of our lives anymore."

All was not lost, however. The CJB still had two remarkable albums ahead: A CONCERT IN JAZZ and GERRY MULLIGAN '63. (In addition, in April of 1961, an augmented edition of the band recorded a vocal album supporting Judy Holliday; it was released by DRG as HOLLIDAY WITH MULLIGAN in 1980.) And it still played in public with a frequency that most parttime big bands today would envy. Crow's gig diary for 1964, for example, notes the following CJB bookings: four weeks in Birdland for January, another four weeks in Birdland during March and April, a Carnegie Hall concert in November, and finally, three weeks in Birdland in December. At that point, with the closing of Birdland, the band simply ceased working, though it never seems to have come to an official end.

In a glowing Down Beat review of two January '64 nights by the CJB in Birdland, Ira Gitler wrote: "...if this band cannot work when it wants to, there is something very wrong with the state of music in the United States." (The band on those two nights included a trumpet section of Travis, Terry and Thad Jones, as well as Richie Kamuca and Al Cohn alternating on tenor, and Phil Woods subbing for Quill.) But possibly the CJB had simply run its course. In a 1970 Down Beat interview, Mel Lewis revealed that "Gerry's always had a stopping point. I guess we were actually starting to take over and he'd feel that. He didn't resent it, but he couldn't let it go beyond a certain point." Thad Jones added, "It'd be going like a sonofabitch, and all of a sudden it would hit a brick wall. Not a brick wall, but a velvet wall." For that matter, Brookmeyer also has spoken of having wanted to take the CJB musically further out than Mulligan was comfortable in going.

So in a very real sense, the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis orchestra, which began late in 1965, picked up where the CJB left off. Not coincidentally, one of its key charter members, as both player and composer-arranger, was Brookmeyer. (Also, between 1961 and '67, the trombonist co-led a unique quintet with Clark Terry - a fellow Sagittarian.)

Mulligan continued to have a distinguished career for another three decades, though in retrospect, the decade following the demise of the CJB seems to have been rather anti-climactic for him, compared with his monumental accomplishments of the preceding two decades. (Perhaps the title of a 1965 Mulligan album of pop/rock tunes tells part of the story: IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM.) In the late 1970s, he put together a slightly larger, more conventional big band that worked off and on for several years, and in the Eighties and Nineties, he toured actively with his quartet, now using a piano-bass-and-drums rhythm section. (In 1992, Mulligan even rerecorded the Miles Davis BIRTH of THE COOL material with a nonet.) By the time of his death, Mulligan had become a jazz elder statesman.

Not long before Mulligan died of cancer on January 19, 1996, he, Phil Woods and others performed on an ocean liner jazz cruise. "On that last gig," Woods reported, "Gerry played so deeply and honestly with his quartet that all of us (Johnny Mandel, Gene Lees and [Woods' wife] Jill and I) cried like babies. It was some of the most beautiful music I ever heard in my life."

Brookmeyer, too, has become a jazz elder statesman. After leaving the Jones-Lewis orchestra in 1968, he moved to Los Angeles and spent the next decade in artistic limbo. But in 1978, he returned to the East Coast and resumed an active career in jazz. His playing, always personal, has become even richer and more venturesome, and his compositions for large ensembles now comprise one of the most impressive bodies of writing in jazz history.

For a few years in the early 1960s, the Concert Jazz Band was the center of Mulligan's and Brookmeyers artistic lives. Bill Crow insightfully summed up the relationship between the two men. "Bobby had a musical integrity that was so powerful that he became the sounding board for the band, like `Are we playing well?' Not Gerry. And it was an interesting combination, because Gerry was taking care of the star appeal and the direction of the band in terms of presenting it to the public, and it was certainly Gerry's musicality that was shaping the band. But if we wanted to know whether we were really where we belonged to be as a unit, we always had our feelers out to Bobby. And I think as a result of that, Gerry had a stronger musical core than he knew.

"Bob had his own musicianship and musicality that were so strong and radiated such a no-nonsense, `let's get right into the core of this,' that you couldn't be superficial on that band. Even the drunks and the weirdos (laughs) would get sucked into that thing, and it was so strong. I don't think Gerry would have been able to create that kind of a thing by himself, because he had too much ego. Bobby didn't have any ego, except musically. Bob had a great sense of humor, and it made it impossible for Gerry to get into his ego thing; it pulled him back into his music thing where he was strongest, and I think without Bobby, that it might not have gone exactly that way.

"So I really valued him as the straw boss on that band. He brought a demand for musical integrity that everybody followed, and it really, brought the best out of that band. He could do it in a way that Gerry never felt threatened - Gerry just felt the support of having him."

Thus happened one of the most impressive jazz orchestras of the postwar era. But let's allow Brookmeyer the last word: "One of my classic stories happened in Berlin. Nick and Mel and I were having a beer out on the terrace. Zoot and Quill roomed together - my God, imagine that! -and they come mopin' out. `Where are you going?' `We're goin' to the laundry.' So we're still there about two hours later, and they come mopin' back. `What happened?'

"`They turned us down."'

DISC ONE: (A & B) MAY-JULY 1960

Otherwise, the focus is on Mulligan and Brookmeyer, the CJB's most frequently featured soloists. There's a nice bit of stop-time underneath Mulligan's solo, followed by a snappy double-time feel in an ensemble passage, then a brief, vocalized turn by Brookmeyer before the final theme statement.

BWEEBIDA BOBBIDA had been a staple in Mulligan's repertoire for a decade, so not surprisingly, it was the first tune that Mulligan asked Brookmeyer to arrange for the CJB. It's I GOT RHYTHM changes in Bflat- about as basic as it gets harmonically in jazz, except for the blues. This piece brings to mind Mulligan's comment that the CJB "had to be a blowing band." This is mostly a chart for blowing - by Mulligan, Brookmeyer and Zoot Sims - with some tasty backgrounds, ensemble punches and a bit of improvised counterpoint from baritone and valve trombone. That closing cluster voicing portends the harmonic crunches that became characteristic of Brookmeyer's writing in later years.

Brookmeyer's arrangement of guitarist Django Reinhardt's MANOIR DE MES REVES (literally translated "castle of my dreams") is widely cited as one of the CJB's signature pieces, and deservedly so. Reinhardt's original 1943 recording was done with two clarinets, two guitars, bass and drums, and the tune was an ideal choice for the band and soloist Mulligan, all of whom hit a rapturous mood from the first note and never let go until the end.

"We opened [at] the Vanguard after about a month and a half, I think," said Brookmeyer, "and I'd had that record with Django and the clarinet player hanging around the house - I loved the tune. So years ago when I was a kid, I heard Elliot Lawrence's band play in Kansas City, and they opened the evening with a ballad, and Elliot stood there dreamily conducting the band. [I thought] `Wouldn't that be a nice way to start?' So I went up to the office we had with Emile [Charlap] and Billy Byers, and I wrote the arrangement on Monday night, before the opening on Tuesday. And copied it Tuesday morning and brought it to rehearsal Tuesday afternoon, and we opened our first night with MANOIR. So I got a dream come true."

Mulligan begins Rodgers and Hart's YOU TOOK ADVANTAGE OF ME unaccompanied for eight bars, then the ensemble jumps in for a stomping medium-tempo rendition.

Brookmeyer's arrangement - sort of updated Benny Goodman with some Mulligan quartet touches of interplay - brings to mind a comment by Mulligan in 1994: "Benny's band of the late Thirties had a lightness to it that really swung, and the saxophones could play rhythmically; when it got to be five-man saxophone sections, they started getting heavier and heavier and heavier, and couldn't do those time things that had the charm and vitality that Benny's bands could generate." There's plenty of charm and vitality here, and Brookmeyer's solo in particular is one of his best with the CJB; check out the bluesy minor third he "lays" on in the second eight bars of it, and the vocalizations he uses. Marvelous! There are three key changes, by the way - the chart begins in F, modulates to Ab for Mulligan's solo, then to Db for a final ensemble chorus, and back to F for the last 10 bars.

OUT OF THIS WORLD is a Harold Arlen song that seems to have been popular among jazz musicians in those years; other recordings of it were made by John Coltrane, Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams and Cal Tjader-Clare Fischer. Said Bill Holman, "I had just been exposed to that tune - I did a chart for a quintet that Mel [Lewis] and I had - and I got to know it and like it. I talked Gerry into doing it." Holman's arrangement is a masterly example of his distinctive contrapuntal style. Mulligan begins alone alternating between the tune's opening phrase and a Holman countermelody; Brookmeyer then takes the melody and Mulligan the countermelody, and soon the two exchange roles. After a trumpet solo by Don Ferrara, the brass come in with a Holmanesque unison, then some call-and-response, and Brookmeyer and Mulligan take it home. (It's interesting to compare how the CJB's arrangers wrote for the clarinet. Cohn in SWEET AND SLOW used it very Dukishly, whereas Holman here used it more transparently as part of the ensemble textures; listen closely and you'll hear it.)

MY FUNNY VALENTINE is, of course, a Rodgers and Hart classic, and a Mulligan fixture since his 1953 quartet recording with Chet Baker. Mulligan has the spotlight of this Brookmeyer arrangement to himself, and despite the countless times he played the song, the baritonist never seems to have performed it less than eloquently. Brookmeyer used the opening bass line that was typical of the quartet's treatments of the tune, and otherwise, he said, "tried to make it as unobtrusive as possible - color washes in back of Gerry's playing."

BROADWAY is Brookmeyer's arrangement of this Swing Era warhorse; he previously had scored it for the mid-Fifties sextet. A straightforward swinger, with solos by Mulligan, Brookmeyer and Sims and a brief baritone-valve trombone duet.

Duke Ellingtons (and Billy Strayhorn's) 1959 score to the film Anatomy of a Murder was the source of I'M GONNA GO FISHIN', with a lyric later added by singer Peggy Lee. "I had done the chart for Peggy Lee not too long before that," said Holman, "so I just kept talking to Gerry about it, and he finally said okay." (Lee recorded her version for Capitol in August of 1960 on EXTRA SPECIAL?.) A soaring 6/8 blues, FISHIN' features two solo choruses each (preceded by introductory vamps) for Ferrara, Jim Reider, Brookmeyer and Mulligan. (Reider was a good Zoot-like player. Ferrara was a musical, unflashy improviser who did stints in the Fifties and early Sixties with Lester Young, Lee Konitz, Lennie Tristano and Mulligan; Brookmeyer described him as "one of my favorite trumpet players.") Then comes some swirling Holman ensemble counterpoint and a climactic shout before the theme returns.

The preceding selections comprised the CJB's widely acclaimed debut album; of those eight pieces, only FISHIN' was recorded by the first (i.e., pre-July 1960) edition of the band. The quality of the writing, ensemble playing and soloists was uniformly high, and though the CJB was not as seasoned as it was to become, its potential already was obvious to knowledgeable listeners.

The next four selections - Brookmeyer's arrangement of Mulligan's I KNOW, DON'T KNOW HOW, Johnny Mandel's scoring of his own BARBARA'S THEME and antecedents of the aforementioned SWEET AND SLOW and OUT OF THIS WORLD - were all recorded by the "first band" in late May and early June; they are released here for the first time. All are good, serviceable versions, but they lack the depth and shading of the subsequent ones used on the albums. In particular, the earlier recording of SWEET AND SLOW is noticeably faster, and suffers for it. We'll save a more detailed discussion of I KNOW and BARBARA'S THEME for later.

DISC TWO: (C) OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1960

GO HOME is a slow blues in G that first appeared on GERRY MULLIGAN MEETS BEN WEBSTER, recorded for Verve in 1959 (and including Mel Lewis in the rhythm section). It's simply and effectively arranged by Bill Holman, who allowed for all sorts of spontaneous changes and additions by the soloists and the ensemble. The two versions heard here reflect that flexibility. In the first, recorded in Milan, we hear two choruses up front by Brookmeyer at the piano, then the theme and extended solos by Mulligan and Sims - both natural blues players. Behind the solos, the band comes up with "head" backgrounds before playing a final written chorus. (The second version appears later on this disc.)

Mulligan had asked Johnny Mandel to arrange for the CJB three pieces that Mandel had written for his ground breaking score for I Want to Live. This 1958 film, which starred Susan Hayward, was one of the first to feature a genuine jazz score. It was the true story of a woman named Barbara Graham who was sentenced to die in the gas chamber; as fate would have it, Graham was a Mulligan fan.

Mandel actually had written the film's music for two different instrumentations: an expanded jazz orchestra, and a Mulligan-led septet (with Art Farmer, Bud Shank on alto saxophone and alto flute, trombonist Frank Rosolino, piar Pete Jolly, bassist Red Mitchell and Shelly Marine). The septet appeared briefly on-camera as well. BARBARA'S THEME, a waltz (but notated in 6/4 instead of 3/4), was played by both ensembles, and though it's not as well-known, it's as distinctive a melody as such other, later Mandel movie themes as EMILY, THE SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE, A TIME FOR LOVE, THE THEME FROM "M*A*S*H" and CLOSE ENOUGH FOR LOVE. Recorded in Milan, the CJB version gets much of its effectiveness from Mandel's keen attention to colors: Mulligan; baritone, Gene Quill's clarinet, Gene Allen's bass clarinet the cup-muted trumpet of Don Ferrara (the featured improviser) and Mel Lewis' mallets.

For the CJB adaptations, Mandel expanded his septet versions of BARBARA'S THEME, THEME FROM "I WANT TO LIVE" and BLACK NIGHTGOWN. "He amazed me with those things," said Mulligan. "The way he expanded them from the small band charts - I never was able to do that. I always marveled at a few guys that were able to do very economical kinds of tricks (laughs) to get a score together. And a good deal of that chart [sic] is written with four lines; as you go down the line, it's like colla trumpet, colla this colla that. [Author's note: in other words, doubling lines with other instruments.] He had a lot more writing chops than I did." (Countered Mandel, "I always envied Mulligan's] writing chops; I thought they were wonderful. I still do.")

THEME FROM "I WANT TO LIVE," recorded in Berlin, is a dark 16-bar blues in Bflat. For the blowing, however, soloists - Mulligan, Brookmeyer and bassist Buddy Clark (b. 1929) - play 12-bar choruses. Again, Mandel's attention to colors pays off handsomely. There's also some effective double-timing behind Brookmeyer. Clark's solo evolves into a subtle duet with Mulligan - a nice touch.

THE RED DOOR, recorded in Santa Monica, is a quintet performance with Mulligan, Sims, Brookmeyer at the piano, Clark and Lewis. In his liner notes for the 1954 CALIFORNIA CONCERTS, which likewise contained a quintet version of the tune, Mulligan wrote: "THE RED DOOR is a delightful tune composed by Zoot Sims. In New York in the late Forties, 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." Brookmeyer is a better pianist than is generally recognized; in fact, in 1959 he recorded a two-piano album with Bill Evans (THE IVORY HUNTERS, United Artists), and in 2000 did his own piano trio album (HOLIDAY, Challenge). As for the two saxophonists, they carry on in a most agreeable fashion, as veterans of many late-night sessions are wont to do.

Again from Santa Monica, Mulligan's arrangement of Harold Arlen's COME RAIN OR COME SHINE is one of his very few charts for the CJB. "The reason for having a band in the first place," Mulligan observed, "was to have a vehicle to arrange for. And of course, there's enough business involved trying to put a band like that together - I didn't really have time nor the frame of mind to be able to do it. So much for having a band to write for."

Too bad, because Mulligan had surely not lost his touch as a big-band writer. This feature for Zoot Sims is proof, and Sims' inspired performance - the term "soulful" seems most apt - leaves one wishing for more. (Arranger Sy Johnson has noted, though, that this chart may have begun life as an arrangement for a vocalist before being altered for Sims.)

From the Milan concert comes Bill Holman's arrangement of Mulligans APPLE CORE, based on LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME changes. Holman described it as his favorite of all his recorded CJB charts. "I really wrote it for Zoot, and did a lot of hip things [for him] playing with the band, like he's got some tenor lead in there, where he doubles the ensemble. It's what I could conceive of him doing for a big band." Sims delivers the kind of explosive, relentless swinging for which he was famous; he's especially intense over a stop-time chorus in the middle.

In the second version of GO HOME, recorded six weeks earlier in Santa Monica, we hear more of the written chart, though also altered on the spot. This time, there's no piano and no opening theme; instead, several horns ad lib conversationally for two choruses before Mulligan jumps right in for his solo. Then Brookmeyer enters for a chorus with a clarinet-led written background, followed by an ensemble push to usher in Sims. The tenor saxophonist's solo is subsequently backed with "head" figures by the band before - again - that last written chorus.

The next three selections, all from Santa Monica, are previously unreleased, and two of them are CJB pieces that were otherwise unrecorded. (Picked by Mulligan for inclusion on the ON TOUR album, they didn't make the final cut.) AS CATCH CAN is a Mulligan tune arranged by Al Cohn; it began life as a quartet vehicle and can be heard on the 1958-59 album WHAT IS THERE TO SAY? (Columbia). This is a barnburner on I GOT RHYTHM changes (this time in C, and with a chromatically descending bridge, or middle section); the melody is played by Mulligan, Quill (on alto) and Ferrara. Solos are by trumpeter Conte Candoli (1927-2001), Mulligan, Buddy Clark and Mel Lewis, all of whom acquit themselves with aplomb. On the out-chorus, there's a momentary bit of scuffling with the theme - most atypical for this band, and probably why this otherwise fine performance went unreleased.

Mulligan's composition YOUNG BLOOD, as recorded in 1952 by Kenton, is a postwar big-band classic. (The harmonies are I GOT RHYTHM with a HONEYSUCKLE ROSE bridge.) The composer retained some elements of the Kenton chart, including a transitional modulating passage and the famous out-chorus, but otherwise it's substantially rewritten. Mulligan apparently agonized over the revisions, according to Bill Holman, "When we were rehearsing, before we had done any gigs, he started that chart, and I thought he'd probably whip that whole thing out in a week. He would bring in 32 bars at a time, and we'd play it and play it and rehearse it and play it, and then he'd have it passed in and take it home and work on it, and bring it back the next week. By the time I left, he still hadn't finished it. The guys were saying that they had a Gerry Mulligan doll - you wind it up and he changes something." Eventually Mulligan did finish, and here's the convincing result. Solos are by Conte Candoli, who also was featured at shorter length on the Kenton recording, and Mulligan.

BLUEPORT is Al Cohn's arrangement of an Art Farmer blues. Solos are by Mulligan, Brookmeyer, Reider, Sims and Clark, followed by exchanges between Mulligan and Candoli. A fine rendition, but not quite as good as the unforgettable one recorded in December at the Village Vanguard. More about that one presently.

DISC THREE: (D) DECEMBER 1960

Art Farmer's BLUEPORT previously had been recorded in a quartet version on Mulligan's WHAT IS THERE TO SAY? album, and Al Cohn sparely orchestrated this blues in F, retaining the format of the small-group arrangement. The CJB's tempo is considerably faster, though. After some catchy opening ensemble passages, Mulligan takes the first solo - one of his best with the band; note the quote from Woody Herman's WOODCHOPPER'S BALL. Next comes trombonist Willie Dennis (1926-1965), a gifted soloist who had worked with Benny Goodman and Charles Mingus. Brookmeyer had given his solo space on this piece over to Dennis, explaining: "When Willie joined the band, he played so individually and well that we had to give him something to play - he deserved it." After Dennis are Reider (this time relieved of the pressure of having to precede Zoot Sims) and Crow, both heard to advantage.

Now comes the highlight of this performance: Mulligan and Terry trading four- and eight-bar phrases, respectively. It turns into a witty, largely geographic quote-a-thon, Terry's including CAMPTOWN RACES, ST. LOUIS BLUES, INDIANA, BROADWAY, I'VE BEEN WORKING ON THE RAILROAD and PLAYMATE, and Mulligan responding with CHICAGO, WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS, CAMPTOWN RACES and FORTY-SECOND STREET. Midway, the pair changes roles, with Terry taking on the four-bar phrases and Mulligan the eights. The quotes here include MOP MOP and a couple of marches. We're hearing an edited version, however, of' these friendly exchanges. As Crow revealed, "I think that Gerry probably cut two to three minutes out of that; he found a perfect place where there was a break that was silent, in two different spots."

The melody of Johnny Green's BODY AND SOUL is not much in evidence in Brookmeyer's arrangement, but given Mulligan's and Brookmeyer's strong lyricism, it's not missed. The warm colors (clarinet, cup-muted brass) and impeccably controlled dynamics (including the brass playing into their music stands for a muffled effect) give this performance a Thornhillian aura. And last but not least, there's Lewis' flawless brushwork.

BLACK NIGHTGOWN is the third of Johnny Mandel's I Want to Live pieces arranged for the CJB. It's a 24-four-bar, ABA theme - short and to the point, as is appropriate for film music. The sauntering melody and tempo - not unlike that of Sonny Rollins' 1965 ALFIE'S THEME, also for a movie - have a devil-may-care quality that befits the character of Barbara Graham. As always with Mandel, the arrangement is orchestrationally varied and well-paced. The brief solos are by Mulligan, Brookmeyer and Terry.

Next, here's another version of COME RAIN OR COME SHINE, this time with Mulligan taking the featured solo in place of Sims. It makes an interesting comparison with the Santa Monica recording, and you pays your money and takes your choice, as it were. My own feeling is that neither leaves the listener disappointed.

Originally titled MOTHER'S DAY, LADY CHATTERLEY'S MOTHER is perhaps the Al Cohn masterpiece for the CJB. It has a medium-tempo, 40-bar theme oddly reminiscent of Leroy Anderson's SLEIGH RIDE; both, in fact, have 16-bar bridges. Brookmeyer, Terry and Mulligan all have happily swinging solos with the band grooving behind and underneath them. Following is a one-chorus saxophone soli (a harmonized, written feature for the section), Mulligan adding a fifth saxophone to the section an octave below lead alto Gene Quill. Then the band modulates from Eb to Ab (over a D pedal) for a shout-chorus, and the chart originally ended on that big chord at about 4:26 into the track.

Except, Crow revealed, that during the first rehearsal of the piece, Mulligan said to Cohn, "Jesus, Al, it's just got going good and it's over; do you think you could write a little more?" Crow continued, "I think Al was a little insulted, but he took it back and wrote a huge shout-chorus and an ending that you couldn't go beyond. I was glad he did; I thought it sounded great." In this fashion, a very good chart became a great one, thanks to Mulligan's judicious editing sense.

LET MY PEOPLE BE was originally called PIVO BLUES and was intended to enable Mulligan to assume' a Basielike role at the piano. It has a few written sections by Brookmeyer that were combined with solos and "head" backgrounds by the band. After opening piano sections and ensembles, Brookmeyer takes an especially fierce solo, followed by Reider on tenor and Terry with his joyous plunger-istics. As Mulligan told Nat Hentoff in the original liner notes, "We got into a real Count Basie-style `head' ensemble, and things got romping like mad. By judicious use of hand signals, we skipped a lot of the written material at the end and continued as we were going."

DISC THREE: (E) JULY 1961

The personnel is intact from the previous December, with one unexplained exception. Clark Terry, who was still in the band, was missing from this album; he was temporarily replaced by Doc Severinsen, who at the time was a respected New York studio lead trumpeter. (Nick Travis was the CJB's lead player, but it's possible that given the demands of the music, he may have split the lead chores with Severinsen.) When asked about this, Terry couldn't remember why he was absent; his only guess was that he may have been touring in Europe at the time.

A CONCERT IN JAZZ begins with a blockbuster: George Russell's three-movement ALL ABOUT ROSIE. One of Russell's finest pieces, it had been commissioned for the 1957 Brandeis University Festival of the Arts and was recorded in New York soon thereafter. On that recording is an outstanding up-tempo solo by Bill Evans - still generally considered one of the high points of the pianist's career. (That version is most recently available on THE BIRTH OF THE THIRD STREAM, Columbia/Legacy.)

As Mulligan told Dom Cerulli, "I asked George to write something for the band. And when he turned in ALL ABOUT ROSIE, I almost died. I was haunted by the recording he made of the piece with that fantastic piano solo by Bill Evans." Mulligan further informed Cerulli that "ALL ABOUT Rosie may have been written originally as variations on a children's song, but I think of the three parts this way: Rosie's Early Life, Rosie's Blues and Rosie Steps Out. The way George wrote it for us, Rosie's grown up!"

I would take things a step further and contend that the CJB's recording is - Evans' solo aside - the better performance, for several reasons. The ensemble's execution is exemplary; the overall quality of the solos is stronger; Gene Allen's baritone saxophone and bass clarinet and Alan Raph's bass trombone give needed bottom that the 1957 version lacked; and Mel Lewis makes a world of difference, especially during the third movement.

With a piece of such complexity, it's possible here only to single out a few salient details. The first movement -only a little over two minutes in length - is the most challenging. It contains rapidly changing textures and instrumental combinations, polytonality (two or three simultaneous key centers) and difficult polyrhythms. Rhythmically, there are opening 5/2 passages superimposed over 4/4 - Russell also used 5/2 in his 1956 THE DAY JOHN BROWN WAS HANGED and 1960 CHROMATIC UNIVERSE - followed by a section mostly in 4/4 and then the remainder of the movement in 3/2. By contrast, the second movement is slow, bluesy and charming, though it ends rather ominously.

The third movement brings back the original fast tempo; though this time in a straight 4/4. After more challenging ensemble playing, it's time for first-rate solos by Mulligan, Brookmeyer, Ferrara and Quill (on alto) over a 32-bar, AABA format. Quill is especially energetic; this is his finest improvisation on the CJB recordings. (Brookmeyer: "He was my choice alto player. I thought that Gene had the fire - and the madness sometimes - of Charlie Parker. He was a little maniacal, but controllable.") And listen to Lewis' "garbage-can" (as musicians liked to call it) Chinese cymbal underneath Mulligan and Quill; for a soloist, it was like being in the pocket of a kangaroo. (Bob Donovan also deserves a nod for his fine execution of some exposed flute parts in the second and third movements.) After that, there's a brief reprise of the theme from the first movement, and an abrupt ending.

Mulligan's only reservation was about that conclusion: "I always complained to George about it; it's not a good stage piece for the kind of band presentations that I like, because it doesn't have an ending. Not an ending with a capital `E' - it just kind of winds down. Which in a formal way, it's all right, but it's an unsatisfying stage ending. You need something that brings an audience to a feeling that it's over, not that brings it down to a place that they're waiting for another movement." Perhaps for this reason, Mulligan rarely played the piece in concerts or clubs, but in any case, ALL ABOUT ROSIE is a milestone in the CJB's history, and in the development of jazz composition. "That's a good example of what the band could have done [more]," asserted Brookmeyer - "taking a non-normal piece and kicking the shit out of it."

The biggest writing discovery to come out of the CJB was Gary McFarland, who had moved to New York in the fall of 1960. "I didn't really know him," Brookmeyer recalled, "and he called me and came by my place in the Village and had WEEP. I said, `Come on in to rehearsal,' and I vouched for him. We played it and everybody liked it, including Gerry, and that was sort of the beginning of McFarland in New York."

WEEP is one of McFarland's definitive pieces, containing all the elements of his best work: lyricism, harmonic sophistication, orchestral colors that reflect the influence of Ellington and Gil Evans, and a trace of melancholy. The sensitively-done solos are by Mulligan, Brookmeyer and Ferrara (in a harmon mute). Pay close attention to the ending, especially that last chord - it's unforgettable.

Mulligan, who described McFarland as "a godsend," was a mentor for the young composer, who had been writing for only a few years. "Gary was anxious to learn, and was trying to do the best things he could for what we needed. And I discussed with him - I thought this would be better out, or this would be better here. I remember reading later on, Gary quoted what I had said to him, `An arrangement has to have a beginning, a middle and an end; it has to go somewhere, and in the process of getting there, it has to be definite. And also, not with a lot of extraneous wandering around."'

A CONCERT IN JAZZ contains two of Brookmeyer's most alluring CJB arrangements - both of them of lesser-known Mulligan tunes. I KNOW, DON'T KNOW HOW first appeared as a sextet piece on CALIFORNIA CONCERTS. Appropriately, Mulligan and Brookmeyer take the solo and duet spots; note the especially attractive ensemble voicings behind the trombonist's solo entrance. The first 24 bars of the final chorus are an orchestration of passages from Mulligan's sextet arrangement.

CHUGGIN' is Gary McFarland's second contribution to the CJB, an Ellington-like feature for pianist Mulligan and Willie Dennis. It starts out as a 32-bar tune but soon becomes a blues. Also heard prominently are Nick Travis (with a plunger) and Gene Allen (b. 1928) on bass clarinet - their only solo appearances on these recordings. Mulligan then reappears, this time on baritone, followed by a double reprise of the theme's bridge - the second time with a Dixieland frontline - and Dennis and Mulligan the pianist one last time.

SUMMER'S OVER is Brookmeyer's scoring of a gentle, evocative Mulligan ballad. After a pointillistic ensemble introduction, the baritonist enters slowly, playing obbligatos while the band softly reveals the melody; Mulligan then takes over the theme at the bridge and holds the spotlight to the end. As with I KNOW, there are a number of lovely arranging touches, many of them quite subtle. And the final bars are positively haunting. (Three months earlier, Mulligan had recorded this song with Judy Holliday, who contributed an equally gentle lyric.)

At Mulligan's request, Johnny Carisi contributed a new arrangement of his landmark piece ISRAEL, immortalized by the Miles Davis nonet in a 1949 recording. ("Originally," Carisi told Ira Gitler, "I wrote ISRAEL for Woody Herman's band, which [sic] I never got to him at all, but in other words, it was a big-band thing that I was writing.") Carisi stuck closely to the format of the original, but added some new touches. One of the most interesting follows Brookmeyer's solo (three blues choruses in C-minor): Carisi orchestrated Davis' recorded two-chorus solo as a unison for the trumpet section. He supported this texture partly with written counterpoint, using Mulligan, Brookmeyer and Quill on alto. As on the nonet version, the CJB then modulates to G-major, and this time Mulligan takes a blues solo. When the ensemble returns, it plays a final chorus identical to that written for the nonet. Brookmeyer admiringly described the innovative Carisi as "one the most unsung people in the history of music."

DISC FOUR: (F) DECEMBER 1962

In the liner notes to MULLIGAN '63, the recording dates are listed as December 18-21, 1962. This is confirmed by Bill Crow's gig diary. But the Verve session sheets and matrix numbers give the information as December of 1961. As Crow pointed out, it's atypical of Verve that the label would have sat on the tapes for over a year, rather than releasing them as soon as possible in order to make back recording costs. At this writing, however, there's no preponderance of evidence one way or the other about the year of recording.

Whenever the music was recorded, there's no question about one thing: it's really good, though MULLIGAN '63 is, overall, a bit more conservative than A CONCERT IN JAZZ. Nonetheless, there were some new concepts at work; as the result of lobbying by Brookmeyer and others, there were four trumpets on some of the pieces, as well as guitarist Jim Hall (b. 1930). "Brookmeyer wanted to write for Jim," said Mulligan, "and I thought it would sound great with the band." On live appearances afterward, though, the CJB used only the usual three trumpets, and no guitar.

There were three substitutions in personnel, including Eddie Caine on the second reed book and Tony Studd on bass trombone. Mel Lewis was in California and unavailable for this album, so Gus Johnson (1913-2000), who had been doing some quartet gigs with Mulligan, was enlisted. Johnson was an outstanding big-band drummer, a veteran of the Jay McShann and Count Basie bands. He had been recommended by Crow, who told Mulligan, "if you don't care that he's not the latest bebop whiz, he'll swing you into bad health."

The album begins with Al Cohn's fleet arrangement of pianist Joe Sullivans LITTLE ROCK GETAWAY. (The tune itself is an offshoot of stride giant James P Johnson's CAROLINA SHOUT.) Solos are by Mulligan, Hall, Terry (playing flugelhorn, I believe), Reider and Crow. A challenging straight-ahead cooker.

Mulligan's BALLAD was first recorded by the 1953 tentette. (Note the BODY AND SOUL harmonies in the bridge.) Brookmeyer's arrangement gets much of its character from the sound of Quill's clarinet as a lead instrument and spare-but-perfect use of Hall, both chordally and in doubling lines with the ensemble. Solos are by Mulligan and Brookmeyer.

Brookmeyer first recorded BIG CITY LIFE in 1956 (BROOKMEYER, Vik) with a modified BIRTH OF THE COOL instrumentation. It's an ambitious, multi-thematic work - what the composer described as "the first time I wrote a composition that was formless by song standards." On both the '56 and CJB versions, Brookmeyer is featured as a pianist; this time, Eddie Caine is heard on alto flute and Terry on trumpet with a plunger. (Incidentally, both recordings were made at Webster Hall with the same engineer, Ray Hall - no relation.) The CJB's larger palette of tone colors deepens the mood(s) of the piece. This is one of the very few CJB pieces where Mulligan is not heard at all.

Brookmeyer segues with some somber chords on piano into his companion BIG CITY BLUES, following with a quasi-atonal bass line for 12 bars, and another, more obvious blues chorus with himself and Hall. Then Mulligan enters on clarinet(!), building intensity with the band for three choruses. The ensemble then pumps out three Ellingtonlike choruses (unusual for Brookmeyer) that lead into a solo for Hall, a consummate blues player. Hall leads the ensemble into some shouting that brings on Terry, another uninhibited bluesman. (He's using an unusual mute - like a straight mute, but not quite. A "buzz mute," perhaps?) Terry and the ensemble carry on for a while before the saxophones return with the theme, and Mulligan finishes with some more attractive Lester Young-like clarinet.

Mulligan and Brookmeyer share the limelight on the latter's arrangement of MY KINDA LOVE. In a sense, the song is the duo's homage to trombonist Jack Teagarden. "It was on one of his records from the Forties," recalled Brookmeyer, "and him playing and singing, and I just loved the song, and it wouldn't go away. So I brought it in, and Gerry decided to record it." The rest of the band takes care of business nicely as well, especially on the climactic ensemble shout - one of those passages that separates the haves from the have-nots.

Following are three Gary McFarland originals. The first, PRETTY LITTLE GYPSY, is a feature for Mulligan's clarinet. The piece is entirely written-out, and it sounds like it could have been part of a Sondheim-like Broadway musical or a film. Considering that Mulligan had serious aspirations to write for Broadway, it's a good match. This is one of only a handful of clarinet recordings that Mulligan made, and in view of his obvious gifts as a clarinetist, it's unfortunate that he didn't pursue his interest in the instrument past the mid-1960s.

BRIDGEHAMPTON SOUTH was initially called SWEET YOUNG GIRL, and I'm not alone in wishing that McFarland had kept its earlier title. Terry's flugelhorn sound - sweet but not saccharine, and subtly humorous - is perfect for this piece. Mulligan, back on baritone, solos after Terry and sounds fine, but this one really belongs to Terry, who returns to finish it. The ending bass-trombone note is another amusing touch.

BRIDGEHAMPTON STRUT does just that. It's a medium tempo, 40-bar, AABBA swinger that combines Ellington-like orchestration with Davis-like modality a la MILESTONES. The soloists are Willie Dennis on trombone and Gene Quill on clarinet. Again, McFarland concludes with a single bass trombone note, and again it works, but once was enough. (Bndgehampton, incidentally, is one of several "Hamptons" municipalities located in eastern Long Island.)

And so ended the album. But wait, there's more. CHANT is a nice discovery - a Mulligan tune that, as Brookmeyer recalled, dated back to the late-1940s. Brookmeyer couldn't recall if it was his chart, but to my ears, it sure sounds like the trombonist's writing. There's a convincing solo from Mulligan, as well as brief glimpses of Hall and Crow, and overall, it's a perfectly good take, except for a sloppy ending.

The alternate take of BALLAD demonstrates the superiority of the master take, but not by a lot. This one is a pleasure to hear, too. On the alternate of BRIDGEHAMPTON SOUTH, Terry plays trumpet with a plunger instead of the flugelhorn heard on the master. The humor with the plunger is a bit too broad for the piece, and the flugelhorn take is an obvious winner. On BRIDGEHAMPTON STRUT, the ensemble playing on the master is clearly superior, while Dennis' and Quill's solos are better on the alternate. This couldn't have been a fun decision for Mulligan. It's not all glamour.

- Bill Kirchner

July 2003
(Bill Kirchner is a composer-arranger, saxophonist, jazz historian, record and radio producer, educator, and leader of the Bill Kirchner Nonet.)

APPENDIX

In 1994, Mulligan gave me a roster of the arrangements for the CJB and his 1970s= 80s band; on it were titles only, no composer/arranger credits. The following is a list, in order of appearance, of unrecorded CJB pieces, with composer/arranger credits when known. (I've left out the names of composers of well-known pop and jazz standards.)

1. WALKIN' SHOES, comp./arr. Gerry Mulligan
2. POLKA DOTS AND MOONBEAMS, arr. Bob Brookmeyer
3. BERNIE'S TUNE, arr. Bill Holman
4. G BLUES, comp./arr. Bob Brookmeyer
5. LINE FOR LYONS, comp. Gerry Mulligan, arr. Bill Holman
6. 18 CARROTS FOR RABBIT, comp. Gerry Mulligan, arr. Bill Holman ("Rabbit" was Johnny Hodges' nickname. This tune was recorded in 1959 on GERRY MULLIGAN MEETS JOHNNY HODGES, Verve.)
7. MOONLIGHT IN VERMONT, arr. Bob Brookmeyer
8. DARN THAT DREAM, arr. Bob Brookmeyer
9. EASY LIVING, arranger unknown
10. ROCKER, comp. Gerry Mulligan, arr. unknown
11. TAKING A CHANCE ON LOVE, arr. Gerry Mulligan
12. LESTORIAN MODE, comp./arr. Johnny Carisi
13. TANGERINE, arranger unknown
14. MOTEL, comp./arr. Gerry Mulligan
15. THE NEARNESS OF YOU, arr. Bob Brookmeyer
16. FIVE BROTHERS, comp. Gerry Mulligan, arr. Bob Brookmeyer
17. KITTY CITY, comp./arr. Al Cohn
18. TAYLOR, comp./arr. unknown ("Taylor" was Mel Lewis' nickname.)
19. MILESIGN, comp./arr. unknown
20. LOUISIANA, air. Bob Brookmeyer
21. NEW PIANO BLUES, comp. Gerry Mulligan, arr. Bob Brookmeyer (This is probably SPRING IS SPRUNG, recorded at the November 19, 1960 Paris concert not heard in this set.)
22. B.C. BLUES, comp./arr. Bob Brookmeyer
23. BROTHERHOOD OF MAN, comp. Frank Loesser, arr. Gary McFarland
24. MAMA FLOSIE, comp./arr. A1 Cohn
25. EMPTY BALLROOM BLUES, comp. Duke Ellington and Cootie Williams, arr. unknown
26. NIGHT RIDE, comp./arr. unknown
27. KITCH, comp./arr. Gary McFarland
28. MAMA G, comp./arr. Wayne Shorter (The composer recorded this piece with Wynton Kelly on Vee Jay. It appears on Mosaic MD6-205.)
29. I'LL WRITE A POEM, comp./arr. unknown (possibly Mulligan)
30. JOOST AT THE ROOST, comp. Gerry Mulligan, arr. unknown
31. NIGHT OF THE ROADRUNNER, comp./arr. unknown (possibly Mulligan)
32. I'M GETTING SENTIMENTAL OVER YOU, arr. Gerry Mulligan (This was finally recorded in 1980 on Mulligan's WALK ON THE WATER, DRG.)
33. NIGHT LIGHTS, comp./arr. Gerry Mulligan (unfinished)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Alexander, Dick. "Mulligan Orbits Back to Earth," in The Tucson (Arizona) Star, October 4, 1960.
2. Bourne, Mike. "Thad Jones and Mel Lewis: Soulmates," in Down Beat, April 16, 1970.
3. Brooks, Gene. "Mulligan Jazz Band Should Bring 'Em Back for More," in The Tucson (Arizona) Citizen, October 4, 1960.
4. Carp, David (producer-writer). "John Carisi: 70th Birthday Tribute," WNYC-FM, New York City, February 27, 1992.
5. Cerulli, Dom. Liner notes to GERRY MULLIGAN PRESENTS A CONCERT IN JAZZ: THE CONCERT JAZZ BAND, Verve.
6. Cerulli, Dom. Liner notes to GERRY MULLIGAN '63: THE CONCERT JAZZ BAND, Verve.
7. Coss, Bill. "Mulligan - The First Year of the Band," in Down Beat, April 21, 1961.
8. Crow, Bill. From Birdland to Broadway. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
9. Feather,'Leonard. "Gerry Mulligan - Before," in Down Beat, May 26, 1960.
10. Feather, Leonard. "Gerry Mulligan - After," in Down Beat, June 9, 1960.
11. Feather, Leonard. Liner notes to GERRY MULLIGAN: THE CONCERT JAZZ BAND, Verve.
12. Frost, Harry. "Big Band Soft Sell," in Down Beat, April 23, 1964.
13. Gitler, Ira. "Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Orchestra at Birdland," in Down Beat, April 23, 1964.
14. Gitler, Ira. Swing to Bop. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
15. Hentoff, Nat. Liner notes to GERRY MULLIGAN AND THE CONCERT JAZZ BAND AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD, Verve.
16. Horricks, Raymond. Gerry Mulligan's Ark. London: Apollo Press Limited, 1986.
17. "In Review: Granz to Back Mulligan Band," in Down Beat, July 21, 1960.
18. Kirchner, Bill (producer-writer). "Bob Brookmeyer: NPR (National Public Radio) Jazz Profile, 1999.
19. Klinkowitz, Jerome. Listen: Gerry Mulligan, An Oral Narrative in Jazz. New York, Toronto: Schirmer Books, 1991.
20. Korall, Burt. "Gerry Mulligan," in Nugget, October, 1961.
21. Lees, Gene. "Gerry Mulligan: A Writer's Credo," in Down Beat, January 17, 1963.
22. Lees, Gene. Meet Me at Jim & Andy's. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
23. Mulligan, Gerry. Liner notes to CALIFORNIA CONCERTS,Pacific Jazz.
24. Mulligan, Gerry. Liner notes to GERRY MULLIGAN AND THE CONCERT JAZZ BAND ON TOUR: GUEST SOLOIST ZOOT SIMS,Verve.
25. Ross, Dorothy. "Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band Back to Village Vanguard by Popular Demand This Tuesday,Nov. 29th: Pianist Bernard Peiffer to Alternate." November 1960.
26. Simon, George T "Blasts of `Controlled Violence,"' in The New York Herald Tribune, May 21, 1961. "Strictly Ad Lib," in Down Beat, May 12, 1960.
27. Tynan, John. "The Box Office Blues Bowl Fest," in Down Beat, August 4, 1960.
28. Tynan, John. "The Monterey Festival," in Down Beat, November 10, 1960.
29. Wilson, John S. "Adderley, Mulligan, Armstrong Give Jazz Concert for C.O.R.E.," in The New York Times, June 29, 1961.
30. Wilson, John S. "Big Bands Again," in The New York Times, October 30, 1960.
31. Wilson, John S. "Newport: The Music," in Down Beat, August 18, 1960.

All quotes unless otherwise attributed are from interviews by the author with Bob Brookmeyer (March 29, 1999 and April 29, 2003),

Bill Crow (May 14, 2003), Bill Holman (May 30, 2003), Johnny Mandel (April 21, 1994), Gerry Mulligan (April 20, 1994 and February 25, 1995), Doug Ramsey (spring 1999), and Phil Woods (June 17, 2003).

Thanks to them and to Wayne Andre, Dick Bank, Don Ferrara, Mike Fitzgerald, Ira Gitler, Terri Hinte, Andrew Homzy, Sy Johnson, Lee Konitz, Stuart Kremsky, Paul Langosch, Dick Meldonian, Dan Morgenstern and the staff of the Institute of Jazz StudiesT Alan Raph, Phil Sunkel, and Clark Terry for help and information.