1. Elevation
2. Mainstream
3. Ain't It The Truth - Under One Roof
4. Igloo
5. Blue At The Roots
6. Lollypop

• Dave Bailey
• Bob Brookmeyer
• Gerry Mulligan
• Zoot Sims

2 & 3: Bill Crow, Jon Eardley, Zoot Sims
   January 25, 1956

5: Jon Eardley, Peck Morrison
   January 25, 1956

 LINER NOTES

Gerry Mulligan's attitude toward music is in line with these developments. Though an uncompromising modernist, ha has always remained firmly rooted in the harmonic and rhythmic origins of jazz and its improvisational elements. As an arranger for big bands, has often displayed characteristics that seem to stem from the best of the swing era writers. It is significant that his vote in the "Musicians' Musicians" poll in The Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz named Duke ElIington, Ralph Burns, Gil Evans, Bobby Sherwood, Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan as his favorite arrangers. Similarly in improvisation his tastes and knowledge reflect an awareness of the entire history of jazz rather than simply the recent developments. Red Nichols ranked side by side with Dizzy Gillespie among his selected trumpet men, just as the late Irving Fazola shared Gerry's clarinet vote with Benny Goodman.

The present sextet represents, in Gerry's view, the outgrowth of a lengthy and time consuming effort to get the right feel with a group of this kind on records. "We tried for a year and a half;" he recalls, "to get what I was really looking for with the sextet. That kind of feeling between the men only comes after a while."

The format and general approach of the sextet is similar to that of the previous long play, MG36056. Members of the group are as follows: Mulligan, baritone sax (also piano on Root Blues); Zoot Sims, tenor sax; Jon Eardley, trumpet on Mainstream and Ain't It the Truth; Don Ferrara, trumpet on other titles; Bobby Brookmeyer, trombone; Bill Crow, bass; Dave Bailey, drums.

Elevation, the opening tune, is the perfect prototype of what Gerry was aiming at, and succeeded in accomplishing, on this date. The opening and closing theme is a 12bar blues which he wrote during his 'teens in Philadelphia. It was later featured by the Elliott Lawrence band when Gerry first came to New York. In this new performance, as Gerry points out, "We got into a real stomping feeling and all the guys fell into the right groove, that juke-box-Saturday-night sort of mood:" Gerry's role as Pied Piper in some of the ensemble choruses here produces from the group a remarkable quality of sounding spontaneous, yet arranged; riff backgrounds develop and soloists come and go as if this were a party held in the hi-fi-equipped apartment of a group of professional minded readers.

Mainstream, another Mulligan original, opens with a similarly astonishing counterpoint between Gerry and Zoot. "Jon played especially well here;" recalls Gerry. It is interesting to note, incidentally, the "old-time modern" sound of Eardley's horn, which may sound to some like a resuscitated Bix. Brookmeyer's burry sound and inimitable phrasing are again in evidence, making a major contribution as they do throughout the set.

Ain't It the Truth, which closes the first side, is a simple, swinging original written some fifteen years ago by Buster Harding, an arranger with the old Count Basie band.

Igloo was composed by Jerry Lloyd, a trumpeter heard around New York recently with the Zoot Sims combo.

Root Blues is a completely informal performance in which Gerry goes over to the keyboard to swing with a rolling, headshaking beat that he communicates brilliantly to his cohorts. Weaving in and out of the solo spotlight, he focuses it on all the horns as well as on bassist Bill Crow, then takes over himself again for a fadeout ending. This intimate blues portrait enables you almost to see the musicians' minds at work.

Lollypop is a composition credited to two west coast musicians, drummer Chico Hamilton and pianist Gerry Wiggins. Taken at a bright tempo, it has a wonderfully loose feel both in the horn solos and in the walking bass. Drummer Dave Bailey has a couple of effective snare breaks here.

One important overall impression that you may derive from listening to these sides is that Gerry Mulligan will never be a captive of formalized, over-pretentious jazz. Any situation in which the musicians have to worry about reading the music correctly than about developing an interrelationship, common ensemble mood, would be repellent to him; for individuality, rather than any contrived ingenuity, is a sine qua non of mainstream jazz.