1. Bernie's Tune
2. Five Brothers
3. Song for Strayhorn
4. Elevation
5. Walkin' Shoes
6. Limelight
7. Walk On The Water
8. Line For Lyons

November 1984

 LINER NOTES

"The first time I heard Gerry Mulligan's music was in the late '40s when Elliot Lawrence's band used to play `Elevation," Salvador remembers, "I would follow them around and see every show, and some times I had to wait all night before they would play it. But to me, `Elevation' was the new music. Later, when I was rooming with Tal Farlow and Jimmy Raney, Gerry would come around to visit and that's how I met him. He was always nice to me. We played a few gigs and later wound up on an all-star concert together. "I was on the road with Kenton in that summer of '52 when Gerry and Chet Baker were such a sensation at the Hague. When we finally hit Los Angeles, the whole Kenton band went en masse to hear the Quartet, and we filled up the place with all of our wives and chicks and everything. What an experience it was to hear something like that! The idea of a band without a piano intrigued us, but it was Gerry's use of harmony, his own and Chet's solos and, most of all, his tunes that really knocked us out!"

It's easy to see why the Kenton crew - and with them, the whole jazz world (including Charlie Parker, who recorded two Mulligan works, and Thelonious Monk, whose interest in Mulligan resulted in an album length collaboration) - were so impressed with Mulligan's music. First off, his melodies and chord changes are just made for blowing. Like a legal contract with clauses to cover every conceivable possibility, Mulligan's compositions prevent the player from doing anything but swinging. As with the music of Charlie Mingus and John Lewis, one is left with the impression that Mulligan's melodic lines are deliberately part-composed: they lead you to feel that only a small portion is written down, the rest is created in actual performance. You could listen to three different recordings of, say, "Bweebida Bobbida" (perhaps the most onomatopoetic title in all of jazz) and walk away feeling you've just heard three entirely different pieces.

Salvador continued, "When Gerry was writing for Kenton, Stanley would sometimes turn to us and say `I've been calling the tunes all night, what do you guys wanna play?' -this was the band with Conte, Zoot, Konitz and Rosolino - and we'd all say, `Let's play something that swings, like one of those Mulligan charts.' "

Mulligan's use of instrumentation also keeps his compositions fresh and vital, even though some of his earlier works are now over 35 years old. The career of Sal Salvador, like that of Mulligan, might also be described as a constant search for unusual and provocative jazz instrumentation. When Salvador first began to attract attention in the late '40s, it was with Teddy Charles and Terry Gibbs, a rarity in those days before Farlow and Norvo standardized the guitar-vibes trio (Sal has always used a vibist in his own groups, the best of which being the late Eddie Costa). When Salvador joined Kenton and began showing up in the Downbeat polls, in 1952-53, his featured numbers were "Invention For Trumpet And Guitar," (perhaps the only such pairing since the one-shot Bill Coleman/Django Reinhardt session of 15 years earlier) and "Frivolous Sal," performed in a period when guitarists just weren't spotlighted in front of big bands.

After leaving "The Great White Father" (Sal's term for Kenton), at the end of 1953, Sal devised the guitar-vibes quartet (and recorded it for Blue Note, Capitol and Bethlehem). "The drums are an integral part of everything that goes on," he said in 1957, "If it's not there, I miss it. I know what I want out of my music, and I've got to have at least a quartet to get it." When Salvador formed his own big band, "Colors In Sound," he used a full brass section but no reeds. Upon adding saxes later on, he also brought in a mellophone section to make sure his orchestra would sound like no one else's.

Since then Sal has returned to and perfected his quartet which has so far recorded one previous album for Stash (The World's Greatest Jazz Standards, ST 134) as well as half of the present collection. The current foursome - Paul Johnson, Butch Miles, Gary Mazzaroppi and Sal - is easily the best group Salvador has lead since the Eddie Costa period. For the other half of this record, the Quartet is joined by a pair of guests who merge, with it to form what may be the most daringly different combination ever presented on vinyl: the Salvador sound (guitar, vibes, bass and drums) meets the Mulligan sound (baritone sax and trumpet).

While musicians think of Mulligan primarily as a composer, arranger and leader, the jazz public knows him as the most influential baritonist of his generation. One of the only other bighorn players who even comes close to Mulligan's league is the first of Sal's guest stars here, Nick Brignola. Raised in Troy, New York, Nick studied at Berklee University at which time he worked with Boston modernists Charlie Mariano and Herb Pomeroy, and later left the area to tour with Ted Curson and Woody Herman. Though recently he has waxed his own albums for Discovery and Beehive, the man whom Mulligan himself called "a fine young baritonist" and whom Harry Carney described as "terrific" went for many years both under-recorded and under-appreciated. Realizing this, Salvador featured Brignola both with his big band and on ST 124, In Your Own Sweet Way, the guitarist's first album for Stash, as well as this current set. "Nick sets me on fire," Sal admits, "He makes me want to get up and dance!"

Sal's second guest, trumpeter Randy Brecker, is anything but under-represented in record shop racks. Instead, he keeps up the busiest schedule of studio dates of any member of the New York local (check out Stash ST245 Corky Hale - Harp Beat for further details). Salvador first worked with Brecker on a Concert In the Park several years back and now relishes the long-awaited opportunity to share a mike with him. Says Sal, "Randy just tears your heart out, he's so soulful." In selecting his sideman sessions, Randy gives equal time to jazz (with Horace Silver and the Jones-Lewis Orchestra) and rock (with Blood, Sweat and Tears), while on his own Brecker Brothers Band albums he goes after a fusing of the two musics. "As a rock musician, you feel like a star," he once said, "As a jazz musician, you feel like yourself."

For Salvador Plays Mulligan the leader dug into his files and came up with a program that is strictly-from-Mulligan. Of the quartet numbers, "Lime Light," does more stomping than it's balladic title suggests. Mazzaroppi and Johnson solo before Sal takes over, alternating single notes with chords and embellishments with non-thematic lines. Mulligan originally conceived "Five Brothers" for a quintet of Lestorian tenors, but here it's Sal all the way, save for a brief entrance by Gary and a trade of fours with Butch. Sal and Paul climax "Elevation," a piece of straight bebop, with a chase chorus.

Everyone gets a chance to wail on the sextet selections. "Bernie's Tune" - an obvious though effective dedication to producer Bernard Brightman (as it was on The Incredible Ira Sullivan, ST208) - has been associated with Mulligan for so long that, like Miles David and "Walkin'," it's hard to believe that he didn't write it. Brignola swings with a vengeance here, both on his solo and on a round of fours with Randy and Butch. "Walkin' Shoes," the most famous example of Mulligan's music, was recorded definitively by both the Mulligan Quar- and Ten- Tets and also lyricized by Mel Torme. Brecker offers the free-est solo of the date, and, in an Ellington quote, Sal begins to see the light. He also squeezes "I Wish I Were In Love Again" into "Line For Lyons," while Brecker invokes the most satisfying of Mulligan's collaborators, Chet Baker. Brecker also joins forces with the quartet for a poignant reading of Mulligan's 1980 homage piece, "Song For Stray Horn."

Returning to the hornless quartet, Sal contributes one of his loveliest solos on record to "Walk On The Water," a 1980 Grammy-winning vehicle for Mulligan's other axe, the soprano sax. "When I first heard this waltz," says Sal, "it knocked me out. It proves that Gerry's the kind of a guy that's always modernizing, always growing."

The same point, needless to say, also applies to Salvador. It was mentioned at the outset that jazzmen have been playing Mulligan's music for a long time. If he keeps writing them like this, there's good reason to suspect that people -and Sal Salvador in particular - will be playing Mulligan's music for a good many years to come.

- Will Friedwald