LINER NOTES

What is there to say? Actually, there's no need to say very much on cover notes beyond the names of the songs and the players. (I like to see the dates of the recordings also, myself.). But I notice a lot of jazz albums these days (some of my own included) whose notes go pretty far afield, with hardly a mention about what's inside (sometimes no mention at all).

I will now go far afield.

Jazz music is fun to me. All music can be fun for that matter, but what I mean is we usually have a hell of a good time playing and listening to each other.

But some of the people who do the most talking about jazz (that may even be the basic problem, right there!) don't seem to get any real fun out of listening to it. It seems to me that all the super-intellectualizing on the technics of jazz and the lack of response to the emotion and meaning of jazz is spoiling the fun for listeners and players alike.

So if the critics haven't got everyone scared with a lot of high-flown technical talk and Jack Kerouac hasn't got everyone impressed with the beauties of numbness and hipness for hipness' sake, maybe we could launch a little enthusiasm and restore fun to its rightful place in jazz.

Now, inside this jacket is a record (or should be!) into which we (meaning the Quartet and the people from Columbia) put a great deal of work to make as good an album as we could. And at the risk of sounding indecent, I'd like to say we all had a lot of fun making it.

Now we just hope you have a share in our fun.

(CD)

In Gerry Mulligan's own words, from his liner notes to the original release of What Is There To Say? 'Jazz music is fun to me.' It isn't about 'all the super-intellectualizing on the technics of jazz and the lack of response to the emotion and meaning of jazz.' Instead, he wants you to know 'we all had a lot of fun making [the album],' and that 'we just hope you have a share in our fun.'

Having said as much, I hope that what follows in these notes is received in a spirit consistent with Mulligan's concept of fun, not to mention the music on What Is There To Say?

In his 1991 biography of Gerry Mulligan, Listen.' Gerry Mulligan, An Aural Narrative In Jazz, author Jerome Klinkowitz isn't past page 2 before he's singing the praises of What Is There To Say?, the 'flawlessly executed album' that 'caught the high point of [Mulligan's] improvisatory lyricism.' Mulligan's career was almost 14 years along at this point (the album was recorded in December and January, 1958 and '59)- What Is There To Say? was his first as a leader for major-label Columbia (if you don't consider the Columbia sampler Gerry Mulligan: The Arranger, with selections from 1946-49 and 1957, eventually released in 1977). Featuring a piano-less, small-group sound that had been developed in a variety of settings with, among others, trumpeter Chet Baker, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, and saxophonists Paul Desmond and Zoot Sims, What Is There To Say? serves as a reminder that Mulligan was interested in chordless, piano-less jazz well before the innovative saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Mulligan was just coming into his prime as a player, writer and arranger, with What Is There To Say? providing what Klinkowitz described as a slice of 'pure Mulligan ... exquisite proof of Mulligan's gift as a writer and arranger ... as clear an insight into the man and his music as four decades of listening might provide.'

That someone brandishing the traditionally uncalled-for and unwieldy baritone saxophone would go on to such great heights in the jazz world is a testimonial to Mulligan's drive, talent, and creativity. And while Mulligan's career was to become a multi-faceted one, only Harry Carney in Duke Ellington's band precedes Mulligan as a noteworthy baritone soloist in jazz. Thanks largely to Mulligan's influence, the list of bari players has grown to include, among others, Jimmy Giuffre and Pepper Adams (both relative contemporaries), Hamiet Bluiett, John Surman, Ronnie Cuber, Nick Brignola, and Cecil Payne.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. To better understand the brilliance of What Is There To Say? let's take a peek at its - and, consequently, Mulligan's genesis. Born in Queens, New York City, on April 6, 1927, our man Mulligan received the proverbial piano lessons, followed by clarinet and some instruction in the World of arranging. His family moved to Philadelphia (thanks to his father's job transfers), and it was there that Mulligan took his first professional gig, at the age of 17, arranging for a radio band at Philly's WCAU in 1944. It was here that he came in contact with the big band of Elliot Lawrence, a relatively innovative leader who saw in Mulligan the potential for playing (clarinet, alto, tenor, and baritone sox) and arranging. With Lawrence, there was enough room to experiment with the tonal colors that would eventually set him apart from traditional big-band arrangers. Incorporating the French horn as a regular brass instrument, for example, and breaking up the standard riff figures so common to dance tunes, Mulligan was clearly straddling the fence between the big-band era and what was to follow. This was the postwar era - 1945, to be exact.

A bit of traveling and roadwork ensued, including trips to New York. In 1946, at 19, Mulligan had his first taste of real jazz with Gene Krupa's big band. Primarily hired as an arranger, but playing alto occasionally, Mulligan flexed his musical muscles with Krupa for less than a year, incorporating a new music he'd heard on his trips to New York, namely bebop (e.g., 'Birds Of A Feather,' "Bird House'). 1947 was a critical year for Mulligan, for that was the year he left Krupa to join another big-band leader with ideas miles from the company of dance orchestras led by fellas with names like Miller, Goodman, and Dorsey. That leader was Claude Thornhill, a pianist and arranger in his own right. Thornhill sought to use Mulligan's ideas, along with those of Gil Evans, a young arranger who'd been working with Thornhill on and off since 1941. It was with Thornhill and Evans that Mulligan's move away from '30s and '40s bigband swing gathered momentum. Experimenting with new voicings, tempos, and textures, Mulligan took advantage of Thornhill's and Evans' penchant for rich dynamics and understated colors, for unusual instrumentation (e.g., clarinets galore, French horns, and tuba). All of this activity echoed the orchestral jazz of Duke Ellington, but it also called on bebop, and smaller, more economical groups.

It was this dialectic of big hand and small group that was to inform Mulligan's subsequent work with the best of his quartets and sextets of the '50s, his concerto grosso work with Bob Brookmeyer in 1957, and again with his Concert Jazz Band of the early '60s. Prior to these endeavors, however, Mulligan's fruitful collaborations with Thornhill and Evans ended with what were to become known as the 'Birth Of The Cool' sessions of 1 949-50. Through Evans, Mulligan was to meet a young trumpeter who'd been apprenticing with heboppers Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in New York, one Miles Davis. Davis shared an affinity with Evans and Mulligan for orchestral jazz played in the context of behop. It was only natural that Thornhill's, Evans', and Mulligan's adaptations of new bop classics for big band (e.g., Parker's 'Donna Lee' and 'Yardbird Suite') would find an audience not only with Davis, but with other young jazz musicians such as Lee Konitz, Kai Winding, John Lewis, and Max Roach, musicians who were to figure prominently on the 'Cool' sessions and beyond. Thornhill's exotic uses for French horns and tuba, in particular, were carried over into the rich ensemble textures of the Miles Davis Nonet, as the band was to be called. Unlike bop, as it had thus far developed, with fiery tempos, and an emphasis on virtuosity, extended solos, and elliptical phrasings, this new group sought a sound that some saw as a retreat, others an advance toward a more melodic and inventive kind of big-band bop, a sound tied less to rhythm than to sound itself; a sound that, in some ways, anticipated what was to be called West Coast Jazz. Mulligan's 'Jeru,' from the nickname Davis gave Mulligan, survives as a classic example of this brand of big-band jazz from both the Thornhill and Davis days.

Basically a rehearsal studio band, the ambitious Nonet was born in 1948, only to die two years later as musicians sought other opportunities, other playing formats. And yet, for Mulligan, the impression had been made, the connection to Evans, Davis, bop, New York City, and a host of progressive jazz musicians solidified. Players such as trombonist Kai Winding, bassist/leader Chubby Jackson, and Charlie Parker all had important collaborations with Mulligan during this time. Work as a player and writer for Elliot Lawrence and Claude Thornhill, and as a member of various small combos, continued into 1951 (including a brief roller- coaster ride with bandleader, Stan Kenton), when he put together his first large ensemble, a New York dectet modeled after Davis' ensemble. (His second dectet was formed in California in 1953.)

But small-group work was the primary focus of the '50s for Mulligan. Southern California, 1952, was the setting for his first piano-loss quartet, one that held the same instrumentation that makes up the What Is There To Say? sessions. A young trumpeter named Chet Baker helped bring this new group to the attention of the world, and started Mulligan especially on the road to critical acclaim as he began to dominate the music polls (including down beat's) as a baritone saxophonist.

For Mulligan, the lack of a piano wasn't so much a concession to small stages or economics as a part of his ongoing approach to small-group jazz. As can be readily discerned on What Is There To Say?, the substitution of piano by trumpet and baritone sax provides an intriguing, and refreshing, chordal alternative. for Mulligan and others, the piano, more often than not, offered little that wasn't ultimately repetitious and confining to small groups seeking to expand the possibilities for horn players. Instead of competing with a comping piano during solos, or even when the theme was being played, Mulligan's design was to stock the horns - in this case, baritone and trumpet - with different registers and alternating melodic statements, a kind of two-horn counterpoint. Essentially, a song's chord structure was anchored by the bass but only implied by the horns, thus giving the soloists a new kind of chromatic freedom that the tightly knitted bebop forms were incapable of providing For standards and originals alike, the effect was a spare understatement, a sort of minimalism for jazz, with a sound both porous and pregnant with possibilities. For Mulligan, the small setting was starting to provide an ideal balance between his talents as both a composer/arranger and as a player. Unfortunately, this quartet - which included a series of bassists, from Red Mitchell to Bob Whitlock to Carson Smith, and drummers Chico Hamilton and Larry Bunker - was to last only a year because of a narcotics bust that sent Mulligan off for three months. No fun here.

When Mulligan returned to action, he was back in New York, with long-time associate Bob Brookmeyer fronting a new quartet that eventually, by the mid-'50s, added permanent new members to become the Gerry Mulligan Sextet. Up to this point, Mulligan had recorded for a variety of labels, both as a sideman for hire and as a leader, the most prominent ones being the Capitol sessions with Miles Davis and Chet Baker, and Pacific Jazz and World Pacific recordings with his quartet (including Baker) and dectet as well as with Lee Konitz. By 1954, the new quartet with Brookmeyer alternately included bassists Red Mitchell and Bill Crow, and drummers Frank Isola and Dave Bailey Crow and Bailey returning again for the What is There To Say? sessions). An emphasis in all of these groups was on a big sound, especially with the sextet sound coming from the saxophone, trombone, and trumpet. It was economy and heft all in one. Speaking of a big sound, a key difference between the Baker quartet and these new editions with Brookmeyer had everything to do with emotion, and a sense of humor (to get back to Mulligan's notion of fun posited earlier). With the music already capable of a certain lightness as well as big sound, substitute a penchant for perkier tempos and Brookmeyer's growling, sometimes blaring valve trombone for Baker's cool, understated tone and ofttimes mellower pulses.

It took them a while to reach that state of spontaneous polyphony that serves the What Is There To Say? quartet so well, but the spirited, fun-loving evidence is there on numbers like 'The Lady Is A Tramp' and 'Makin' Whoopee,' from The Fabulous Gerry Mulligan Quartet: Paris Concert 1954 (Vogue Jazz). The energy and good feelings remained with Mulligan's Sextet, from '55-'56, featuring the rich, breathy colors of jam-session friend, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. It was a sextet that recorded three albums for Mercury, and really soared as a concert band, emphasizing both a typically tight ensemble sound and a context that let each player express himself. On occasion, both Brookmeyer and Mulligan would play piano accompanist to one of the horns.

As for Mulligan, the period just preceding and including the '58-'59 What Is There To Say? sessions produced a whirlwind of activity that, in a sense, helped consolidate his place in the larger world of jazz. At the peak of his form as a soloist, Mulligan's increasingly vocal style of playing was to find expression with a veritable Who's Who of jazz: Ben Webster, Paul Desmond, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Count Basie, Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Annie Ross, Johnny Hodges, and Jimmy Witherspoon. (Did I leave anyone out? Of course!) The dates with Getz (with the tenorist and bari-man trading horns on three numbers!), Webster, Wilson, Hodges, and Desmond were all recorded for Verve, a label that was to figure prominently in Mulligan's early '60s work with his magnificent but unfortunately shortlived Concert Jazz Band. All of these 'blowing dates' freed Mulligan up to not only play the sideman, or co-star, but to concentrate on his style as a soloist and arranger, to heighten his listening skills, and to develop a newfound flexibility to styles he wouldn't normally play, let alone record (e.g., Monk's angularity and abstract touch contrasted sharply). In addition to these sessions were two large-ensemble dates in '57 that were, in a sense, preludes to the Concert Jazz Band, one with arranger/leader Manny Albam, the other with his own 15-piece bond, both groups including Sims and Brookmeyer.

There were other sessions, like a reunion with Chet Baker ('57), the soundtrack work for two films, I Want To Live! ('58) and The Subterraneans ('59), and a host of other recordings that Mulligan had made up to this point. But, hey, you get the idea!

Even though the group for What Is There To Say? lasted for only an album's worth of material (Mulligan was planning the Concert Jazz Band), the return to a piano-less quartet setting toward the end of the '50s was a natural for Mulligan. In a sense, it was like coming full circle: a return, with substantial changes, to the acclaimed format he explored with Chet Baker starting in 1952. Having begun his recording collaboration with Art Farmer in '57 on the Albam date (followed by the Annie Ross and I Want To Live! sessions), Mulligan's work with Dave Bailey and Bill Crow likewise preceded the What Is There To Say? recordings by even more dates together.

The repertoire an What Is There To Say? includes some familiar tunes, like 'My Funny Valentine,' a standard normally associated with Chet Baker. 'What Is There To Say' and 'Just In Time,' the other standards given the Mulligan overhaul here, are balanced by Mulligan's 'As Catch Can,' 'Festive Minor,' and 'Utter Chaos,' as well as Farmer's 'Blueport' and Crow's 'News From Blueport.' And yet, the constantly changing, highly inventive playing and arrangements (the only quartet record where Mulligan credits himself as arranger) on all eight numbers make for a seamless whole.

Spurred on by the delicate interplay between Mulligan and Farmer (who takes Baker's breathiness one step further and adds some characteristic grit), the Gerry Mulligan Quartet works as an organism, rhythmically slowing down and speeding up depending on each tune's arrangement and song form. Combining the best of the jazz tradition handed down from Dixieland with the free expression of individual improvisation, a tune like 'What Is There To Say' strikes that balance even as it takes its cues from a kind of chamber-group sensibility. The up tempo 'Just In Time,' perhaps the album's most obvious example of rhythmic interplay, has Mulligan stating the melody at the outset, only to have Farmer restating it at the end, with all kinds of fancy dancing in between from everyone. Crow's 'News From Blueport' features alternating 4/4 time over the standard 6/8, as Crow sets up a bass figure that leads the tune's moves into rhythmic variation. On 'Festive Minor,' the solos include Farmer's cozy, muted trumpet followed by a 'singing' solo by Mulligan. Throughout, time-signature changes occur repeatedly. Belying its title, the 'Festive' heat is turned up only toward the end as Farmer's open horn spars with Mulligan's. The perky 'As Catch Can' sounds like a cat-and-mouse game between all participants, as the arrangement takes a number of turns, including a fair number of stops and starts.

As with every number here, the lovely 'My Funny Valentine' showcases how Mulligan and Farmer back each other up, in lieu of the chordal accompaniment normally provided by a piano. This sound, more than any other, distinguishes this quartet. Along with 'My Funny Valentine' and 'Utter Chaos,' Farmer's 'Blueport' would find its way into the Concert Jazz Band book a few years later. Here, the tempo is slower but no less spirited. Everyone is 'up' for this hard-blowing blues vehicle, which features Farmer and Mulligan trading fours halfway through the tune. 'Utter Chaos' is a funny title, given the tune's relatively cool, convivial mood. Having been a favorite set-closer, the bouncy, swinging 'Chaos' reminds one of the occasionally impish Mulligan: his oblique sense of humor, playfulness, and desire to 'launch a little enthusiasm und restore fun to its rightful place in jazz.'

-John Ephland
down beat
February, 1993

Fill Your Head With Jazz

History may well record that the richest period of American jazz was the decade between 1955 and 1965. Much of the best of the 1940s still was with us, its offshoots were in full blossom, and here and there some odd (and sometimes forbidding) buds were budding.

This album is a compendium of tracks. Not all of them were made in that 10-year period, to be sure, but all of them are related to what was going on then. George Benson's The Borgia Stick and Don Ellis' K. C. Blues were recorded later than that - hors de l'epoque, so to speak. Still, most selections contained in the two sleeves of this package date from that incredibly fecund period, during which I was privileged, if that's the word, to work with and/or among the principals of this production.

Ah, what interesting times we had then. I was the editor of down beat from the spring of 1959 through autumn of 1961, at which time I decided that the problems of running the damned magazine were insoluble, the job was thankless, the owner was hopeless, and the pay inadequate to say the least, and I took off for South America with Paul Winter. An editor's lot is a variegated one. I remember Charlie Mingus, represented here by Slop, calling me one morning to complain about something I'd written in the magazine. The call began quietly, but within 70 seconds he was telling me he was going to beat me within an inch of my life and break my "puny back." Within 85, he'd hung up in speechless fury. He called back five minutes later and said, "I shouldn't have said that to you, but" and repeated the performance almost verbatim. Thus three times did Mingus call to proffer mayhem. I've always found Mingus a little quaint. A young alto player I know who used to work with him carried a .32 automatic in a hip holster onto the stand for self-defense.

Mingus is a genius musician.

When Mingus called in anger to Chicago it was only from New York. Stan Getz did it from Copenhagen. He didn't like something I'd said about him in the magazine. Stan, too, is famous for charm. He is one of my two or three favorite tenor players, sometimes I think my very favorite, and the track on this album is called Jive Hoot. It's one of the best in it. Bob Brookmeyer, who introduced me to many weird and wonderful things, including Gerry Mulligan, wrote it, and Herbie Hancock is the pianist. I remember Herbie when he first came out of college. We all knew he was going to be terribly good one day but no one knew he'd be this good.

Four of my best friends are heard on this collection: Woody Herman, Bill Evans, the aforementioned Mr. Mulligan, and Arthur Farmer.

I've idolized Woody since my adolescence. Later I was his press agent for a minute-probably the most incompetent in history. Woody hired me to keep me from starving to death after Paul Winter and I got back from Latin America, not with riches, like the unseen brother in Death Of A Salesman, but flat broke.

Woody has been on the road playing music for nearly 40 years. Not long ago, I said to him, "Woody don't you get tired of traveling?" He looked at me as if I were an idiot, which not infrequently I am, and said emphatically, "Yeah!" A girl once said to Woody, "I think Gene thinks you're his father." The old man grinned and said, "But I am." And so he was, and is, to a whole generation of us, including Stan Getz and Herbie Mann (heard here on Manteca) and all the others who pass through his employ and learn invaluable little lessons, such as how to survive (sort of) in the music business. Even Bill Evans is a sort of product of Woody. He used to listen to Woody's bands in the late 1940s, when he was a kid on his way to or from his first playing jobs.

After the Latin America tour with Paul Winter I fell on evil times, and so did Bill. And we spent a lot of time broke together. For a brief while he shared my apartment. A lot of Woody's clothes were stored there. Woody has so many clothes I figured he'd never miss one blue blazer, so I gave it to Bill. A few days later Bill met Woody and me for lunch, or something, and to my horror he showed up wearing that blazer. To my further horror he said, "How do you like this blazer?" Woody looked at it with puzzlement and said, "Yeah, it's nice." And Bill ripped it open and showed him the letters WH embroidered on the pocket. "It stands," Bill said, "for William Heavens." So far as I know Bill still has that blazer. Woody has given more things to more people than anyone I know. He is one of the great souls.

Vierd Blues, made with Dave Pike, is from an album on which, in Bill's opinion, he did some of his best playing.

I met Thelonious Monk in the middle of a stage in Chicago when I presented him with a plaque affirming that he had won one of the innumerable and interminable down beat polls. Monk is very tall.

I got to know Chico Hamilton when he called down beat to ask why we weren't giving him more publicity. I don't think we'd had an article on him in at least six weeks. I met Clark Terry in a bar. He is one of my favorite people and one of my three favorite trumpet players. The second is Art Farmer, and I won't tell you who the third is, because by this evasion I am enabled, when I run into one of my trumpet player friends, to say that I had him in mind as the third. This is called tact.

I met J. J. Johnson somewhere in Wisconsin. He is an Aquarian. Stan Getz is an Aquarian. I am an Aquarian. So is Antonio Carlos Jobim, with whom I wrote some songs that Stan helped make famous in America. All Aquarians are ambivalent, and evasive, and don't like to be pinned down. J. J. is a gentleman, and a brilliant musician, and virtually all the modern trombonists have been influenced by him. He recently moved from New York to California, and I don't blame him. He writes music for television commercials, and I don't blame him for that either because it's one of the few places you can still get away with good music. Bill Evans is a Leo and he was born either the day before or the day after Oscar Peterson in August. And, as Bill once observed, "Actually Oscar's approach to the piano and mine are essentially the same." All the weird, long-haired kids turning out to hear Bill these days is one of the few encouraging signs I've seen lately.

I forget what sign Herbie Mann was born under, but he has the same birthdate as Henry Mancini. Frank Sinatra was born on the same date as Pablo Casals, December 12th. Henry Mancini, Frank Sinatra, and Pablo Casals are not represented in this collection, but I thought you'd like to know. Miles Davis is a Gemini. He certainly is.

Miles once called his manager, Jack Whitemore, from Paris and said he wanted a phonograph in his room. Jack said, "Why don't you call the Columbia Records distributor there and have them send one over?"

Miles rasped, in his well-known manner, "Would Frank Sinatra have to call his record company?"

Jack remarked later, "And you know something, he was right."

So Jack called Columbia Records in New York and Columbia Records in New York called Columbia Records in Paris and Columbia Records in Paris sent a phonograph to Miles' hotel room.

Miles has made some of the classic records in the history of jazz. Here he plays a Gil Evans piece, Seven Steps To Heaven

. Miles and Gerry Mulligan were probably the dominant forces in the evolution of jazz in the 1950s. The small group records they made together in 1949 virtually created what became known as cool jazz. They were kids then and scuffling. They went separate ways. Gerry is one of the most intelligent men I know and What Is There To Say, made with the quartet, is one of the best things of its kind he's done.

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross was one of the most noteworthy vocal groups in jazz history. Jon Hendricks wrote lyrics for various famous jazz solos and ensemble passages, as Eddie Jefferson and King Pleasure had done before. Jon, Dave Lambert, and Annie Ross, rose to phenomenal success around 1960.

Dave Lambert, an ex-tree surgeon, was a groovy guy. He was killed one night helping someone change a tire on a turnpike: somebody ran into them. Annie Ross has gone home to her native British Isles where she works steadily, and I love her dearly, and sometimes when I'm in England she and her husband invite me over for dinner. Annie makes the best chili con carne in London. I once won two quid on the slot machine in the nightclub there that Annie used to own.

As I look over the list of these tracks, I find that there are few of the performers I haven't known. And some like Dave Lambert are gone. So is Coleman Hawkins: I remember driving Bean to a concert through a fog. I loved that man's music. Bud Powell, one of the early influences on Bill Evans and Heaven knows how many pianists, l never knew. He spent his last years on the verge of collapse in self-imposed exile in Paris, and came home to die. But he left some things to us including Ruby My Dear, a classic.

Let's see. I've never known George Benson, but his playing knocks me out: he hasn't forgotten about swinging. And I've never known Mose Allison, but he knows about it, too. Nor have I known George Handy, but he is part of the New Thing, as the defunct Jazz Review used to call it, that began shaping up by 1960, and so is Charles Lloyd.

And then there's Dave Brubeck (one of the prettiest ballad players in the business, though nobody ever seems to talk about that aspect of his work) and Paul Desmond. Paul is an authentic genius. After a festival, Paul and Dave and I got lost in the middle of an Indiana cornfield en route to a party at someone's house. While our driver awoke a farmer to use his telephone, Paul stood there in the middle of the road under moonlight recounting in infinite detail and with sound effects those various Roadrunner and Coyote animated cartoons. The driver came back, we found what we took to be the right house, and concluded that the other people hadn't yet arrived. Ever resourceful, I opened a window with Paul's help and began to climb in whereupon someone descended the stairs with a shotgun. I remember racing down the driveway with Paul to the car and roaring off into the night. Wrong house.

In February of 1962, I took off to South America with Paul Winter and his Sextet, to manage their State Department tour, disputed with an astonishingly varied lot of idiots in the United States Information Agency (protesting for example, being forced to play three concerts a day), and to talk about music to students who were more interested, not without reason, in revolution. Most of us thought Latin America would go up in flames within ten years. Eight years have passed. Look how the horizon is glowing.

We rode across Paraguay one evening in two Volkswagon buses. Half the group was in the bus ahead, half, including Paul and me, in the bus behind. We bought two sacks of oranges-very poor oranges, put dirt cheap. We used them as ammunition in a running fight between the two buses. (Have you ever seen a Volkswagon bus covered in orange juice?) We were crazy with over-work and exhaustion, and maybe a little fed up with seeing music we loved used for a political purpose. I remember Paul letting fly with an orange at the bus in front and missing. He hit, instead, a ruminating roadside cow smack in the middle of the forehead. As the cow looked at us with a bemused expression, you could practically read the poor creature's thoughts: "Oh man, here I am, minding my own business, like, and along comes this clown with an orange . . . ."

It's an era that's gone now. Its people, most of them (a sad bow to Bean and Dave Lambert and the anguished Bud Powell), are still with us. And so, thank God, is the music they made then.

History has never known such a thing. I have often wondered if Chopin would ever have put a note on paper had there been a machine in his time that could immortalize his improvisations. In our time there is such a machine.

Giants. I was walking among giants. And here we can hear their footprints.

- Gene Lees

The Winners of the Down Beat's Readers Poll 1960

If any poll in the world of jazz reflects the significance of the interest taken in musical achievements by today's jazz-lovers, it is the Readers' Poll which is organised every year by the magazine Down Beat and which aims to give expression to current tastes or trends of taste in jazz.

This significance is firmly emphasised in the music of our three EP records, "The Winners of Down Beat's Readers' Poll 1960."

The title speaks for itself, and so does the repertoire played by America's foremost jazz artists: Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie (429 743 BE - Hall of Fame); Miles Davis and J. J. Johnson (429 744 BE - Horns), and John Coltrane, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, and Gerry Mulligan (on this record - Reeds).

The sub-titles perhaps need some explanation. The "Hall of Fame" is a once-in-a-lifetime honour, and is not tied down to any particular instrument. It therefore covers the "Personality of the year" idea. So far - until 1960, that is - nine famous artists have been selected for the first place in the "Hall of Fame": Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Lester Young, and Dizzy Gillespie.

"Horns" refers to the first prizes in the categories trumpet and trombone, and "Reeds" (the sub-title of this EP) spotlight the first prize-winners in the categories Alto-sax (Julian ",Cannonball" Adderley), Tenor-sax (John Coltrane), and Baritone-sax (Gerry Mulligan).

The 1960 poll victory is John Coltrane's first important one. A discovery of Miles Davis's, John Coltrane started out as a member of the Gillespie band in 1949, but it was with Davis that he achieved acceptance as a solo performer. In 1958 he was third in the poll. He maintained that position in 1959. This year he made the jump to the first position.

Julian "Cannonball" Adderley (alto) is generally considered today's most impressive saxophonist. Fourth in the 1958 poll, he was voted second in 1959, after Paul Desmond, and in 1960 walked away with the first position. His influence on jazz is unmistakable. Baritonist Gerry Mulligan, voted first in 1958, 1959, and 1960, is one of America's greatest jazz musicians of all time, and he feels at home in any sort of jazz. He became famous with his pianoless quartet in the early Fifties, after being associated with Miles Davis.

Mulligan's style, massive and explosive, has sometimes been the object of severe criticism, but the votes of his audiences speak a clear language. Other poll-winners hear on this EP are Miles Davis, Paul Chambers, Art Farmer, and James Cobb.

Swingin' Sound

Swingin' Sound brings together some of the finest and most unusual jazz combos, bands, instrumentalists and singing artists of our time.

The album opens with The Dave Brubeck Quartet's inspired statement of I'm in a Dancing Mood, recorded in performance at the American Jazz Festival at Newport, Rhode Island. It features alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Norman Bates and drummer Joe Dodge. The Hi-Lo's, one of today's most inventive vocal groups, offer a brassy treatment of Styne and Sondheim's Everything's Coming Up Roses, from the Broadway musical comedy hit, Gypsy. Duke Ellington's version of Perdido follows. In this, Harry Carney's baritone sax and the trumpets of Ray Nance and Clark Terry perform brilliantly. The famed Gerry Mulligan Quartet (Gerry on sax; Art Farmer, trumpet; Bill Crow, bass; Dave Bailey, drums) swings out with What Is There to Say, a Vernon Duke classic. In an on-location recording made at Le Bistro, Chicago's well-known nightclub, Buddy Greco sings a torrid arrangement of Rodgers and Hart's The Lady Is a Tramp. Ray Conniff and his orchestra give Jerome Kern's The Way You Look Tonight an unusual twist in the strong beat, a Conniff trademark.

Marianne introduces Side Two. In this calypso number, The Brothers Four interject amusing asides of their own. Carmen McRae sings with The Dave Brubeck Quartet in a driving new version of a jazz classic, Paradiddle Joe. Next, Roy Hamilton sings a warm, memorable Angel Eyes. Andre Previn is brilliant piano soloist and conductor as well in Like Love. Down Beat Magazine has called Lambert, Hendricks and Ross "one of the most remarkable groups in jazz." Here is one of their best performances, Cloudburst. The album concludes with Frank Loesser's If I Were a Bell, played by one of the most creative instrumentalists on the jazz scene, trumpeter Miles Davis

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