1. Disc Jocket Jump - Songbook
2. Venus De Milo - Songbook
3. Revelation - Songbook
4. Walkin' Shoes - Tentette
5. Five Brothers - Quartet
6. My Funny Valentine - Timeless
7. Open Country - Storyville
8. Western Reunion - California Concerts
9. The Red Door - California Concerts

December 4-5, 1957

May 20, 1953

January 25, 1953

December 6, 1956

December 14, 1954

 LINER NOTES

Jazz has seldom had a force as cerebral Mulligan, a baritone saxophonist, composer, arranger, bandleader, pianist, and firebrand. He built the prime of his career around experiments, each planned with an almost scientific logic. What's more, he had the charisma of a born leader. Standing over six feet, wielding a sax that seemed almost as tall as he was, he held forth as if he were channeling from the heavens. Add to that the masculine swagger of his playing, with its distinctively grainy tone, and you have an indelible presence in jazz.

He died on January 20, 1996 at the age of 68, but each phase of his career was well-documented on record. This disc spans 1952 to 1957, when he recorded for Pacific jazz, a label he inaugurated. By that time Mulligan, born in Queens, New York, had arranged for Gene Krupa, Claude Thornhill, and notably for Miles Davis' historic Birth Of The Cool band. Looking to Stravinsky and Ravel for inspiration, he tried to bring an orchestral breadth to his arranging. His charts for Davis employed tuba and french hot., giving them a semiclassical sonority that Gil Evans expanded upon in his later work with Davis. Around that time Mulligan toyed with the idea of dropping the piano from his charts. "You don't need a piano," he declared to Ralph Gleason. "It occurred to me that the piano was being used as a crutch for the other instruments. The pianist is playing the chords all the time. I found that a great deal of the time he was getting in my way." That led to his "pianoless quartet" with trumpeter Chet Baker - the group that defined West Coast jazz. From there he varied his bands from four to ten pieces, while teaming with the best of his peers, including Stan Getz, Ben Webster, Dave Brubeck, and Paul Desmond. His goal was the concert hall, and in 1960 he achieved it by funding his Concert Jazz Band. By then he had left Pacific Jazz behind, but the pleasures of his work for that label remain. Mulligan closed his Pacific Jazz year, with The Gerry Mulligan Songbook, in which he revisited the milestones of his first decade in music. The earliest of these, "Disc Jockey Jump," was first recorded by Gene Krupa in January 1947. Mulligan's arrangement which borrowed some of the big band innovations of Dizzy Gillespie and Earl Hines - took Krupa's swing orchestra into the behop era. In this remake, arranger Bill Holman adapted the tune for an octet fronted by Mulligan and four of his most valued cohorts: saxophonists Lee Konitz, Allan Eager, Zoot Sims, and Al Cohn.

The Krupa side ushered Mulligan into the modern jazz elite, and in August 1948 he joined the Miles Davis nonet for a two-week booking at the Royal Roost in Manhattan. There Davis' group woodshedded the material for its 1949 Birth Of The Cool sessions on Capitol. Mulligan made a crucial contribution to those sides, playing on all of them, arranging seven, and writing a number of originals, including "Venus de Milo," a rich exercise in multi-horn counterpoint. Holman's Mulligan-style arrangement avoids piano; instead, guitarist Freddie Green and bassist Henry Grimes anchor the tonality.

From 1947 through 1950, pianist and businessman Elliot Lawrence led what Leonard Feather called a "good semi-jazz dance band." Lawrence hired Mulligan in 1950 as a sideman and arranger. He wrote "Revelation" at that time, but Lawrence never recorded it and may not have even performed it. This performance is pure Mulligan: a catchy theme, relaxed solos by all the hot. players and the bassist, and touches of graceful counterpoint. No Mulligan chart is more famous than "Walkin' Shoes," introduced at another classic session: the 1953 "tentette" date with an unconventional horn ensemble - two trumpets, trombone, french horn, alto, tuba, and two baritones. This tune, as jazz historian Gary Giddins notes, "sounds just like its title." It has a wonderful loping quality. Gerry could notate his arrangements so that they swung on paper, the way Benny Carter's did." Despite its advanced harmonies, "Walkin' Shoes" is eminently hummable.

"Five Brothers" and "My Funny Valentine" are souvenirs of the most memorable club engagement of Mulligan's career: his eleven months (1952-1953) at the Haig in Hollywood, -here he and Chet Baker fronted the Gerry Mulligan Quarter. With its effortless contrapuntal lines, this live version of "Five Brothers" illustrates the once-in-a-lifetime rapport that Mulligan and Baker shared in those days. The group first recorded "My Funny Valentine" in 1952 on a Fantasy 78. That three-minute side was dominated by Baker, with his aching yet distant solo. At the Haig, Mulligan took a full chorus of his own. Clearly under Baker's spell, he becomes uncommonly reflective.

After they parted in late 1953, Mulligan found a new sidekick in Bob Brookmeyer. He had known the trombonist since 1946, when Brookmeyer, then 17, sat in with him at a Kansas City gig. Their official partnership lasted from 1954 through 1965. "He and I had it that easy," Mulligan told writer Les Tomkins, "because he was always stuck into that role of being a substitute trumpet player." "Nevertheless," he said, "Bobby and I have parallel thinking. The kinds of things that we can do with improvised counterpoint, or improvised accompaniments, we can serve the function that a piano player does with his left hand." Brookmeyer's "Open Country", comes from a 1956 date at Storyville in Boston. True to the title, he and Mulligan take a spacious, melodic excursion into the land of polyphony.

Two more live tracks, "Western Reunion" and "The Red Door," stem from a West Coast tour in late 1954. The former tune features a sextet composed of Brookmeyer, Zoot Sims, trumpeter Jon Eardley, bassist Red Mitchell, drummer Larry Bunker (from the original pianoless quartet) and Mulligan. The group, which lasted until 1956, found Mulligan making his "first leanings toward a big band sound, a more concerted thing, getting away from the strictly spontaneous counterpoint," as he told Leonard Feather. In "The Red Door," a Sims-Mulligan original, Eardley drops out while Brookmeyer switches to piano. Mulligan loosens his arranger's grip and lets everyone, including himself, blow in jam-session style. Yet whatever freedom he gave his sidemen, Mulligan's commanding leadership makes everything fit together like the pieces of a puzzle.

- JAMES GAVIN, 1997