Gerry mulligan meets paul desmond biography

He loved love stories. He loved love, as such, and I think marriage fit whatever criteria, or most of the criteria, he had.

Gerry mulligan meets paul desmond biography: Gerry Mulligan - Paul Desmond

He gave me a ring. I was still a virgin. Yeah…He was my first. Having written and arranged 11 pieces for the seminal album, Mulligan then played a role in ushering in the laid-back sound known as West Coast Jazz in the early s; his California-based quartet was renowned for both its lack of a piano and the presence of trumpeter Chet Baker.

Mulligan also helped foster renewed interest in big band jazz with outfits that he formed in the s. Although making his reputation first as an arranger, Mulligan eventually earned widespread kudos for his playing. His piano teachera nun, told his mother not to waste her money on piano lessons, as he would always improvise a written tune.

Mulligan was born in New York, but his father's work as an engineer demanded many job transfers, so the family moved frequently.

Gerry mulligan meets paul desmond biography: Gerry Mulligan and Paul Desmond

Gerry began taking piano lessons at age seven, then learned to the play the clarinet. As a teenager he focused mostly on the saxophone. He loved the big band sound and developed an early interest in arranging. Mulligan was encouraged in his arranging efforts by his music teacher. In he arranged for and toured with Tommy Tucker's band, but Tucker lost interest when Mulligan's work became too jazzy.

Playing alto sax, Mulligan performed with various dance bands around Redding and Philadelphia. He got his first taste of the limelight as a performer in the mids when he played baritone sax at Philadelphia's Academy of Music in a concert that showcased some of the hot new jazz performers of the day, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sarah Vaughan.

Mulligan performed well enough to earn an invitation from Parker to play in a jam session after the concert. In Mulligan shifted his base of operations to New York City, where he concentrated on writing and arranging. His skill as an arranger was increasingly defined by his creation of "intricate inner parts, careful balance of timbres, and light swing," as described in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.

At age 19 he was writing, arranging, and sometimes playing for the orchestras of Gene Krupa and Claude Thornhill. His "Disc Jockey Jump," which he wrote for Krupa inwas especially praised. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the arrangement for "Disc Jockey Jump" was particularly notable for "pitting a small group against the full ensemble, [foreshadowing] the resourcefulness of His style of play was influenced by Harry Carney, though he ultimately moved away from Carney's mode.

I couldn't, impossible, but the fact was that any band that used the instrument well, the baritone had an effect on the sound. Once I found that, I was on my way to being able to get out of the horn what I wanted. By this point, he had mastered a melodic and linear playing style, inspired by Lester Young, that he would retain for the rest of his career.

In the spring ofseeking better employment opportunities, Mulligan headed west to Los Angeles with his girlfriend, pianist Gail Madden. Through an acquaintance with arranger Bob Graettinger, Mulligan started writing arrangements for Stan Kenton's Orchestra. While most of Mulligan's work for Kenton were pedestrian arrangements that Kenton needed to fill out money-making dance performances, Mulligan was able to throw in some more substantial original works along the way.

His compositions "Walking Shoes" and "Young Blood" stand out as embodiments of the contrapuntal style that became Mulligan's signature. During the Monday night jam sessions, a young trumpeter named Chet Baker began sitting in with Mulligan. Mulligan and Baker began recording together, although they were unsatisfied with the results. Around that time, vibraphonist Red Norvo's trio began headlining at The Haig, thus leaving no need to keep the grand piano that had been brought in for Erroll Garner's stay at the club.

Faced with a dilemma of what to do for a rhythm section, Mulligan decided to build on earlier experiments and perform as a pianoless quartet with Baker on trumpet, Bob Whitlock on bass and Chico Hamilton on drums later Mulligan himself would occasionally double on piano. These early live dates were recorded by Dick Bock on a portable reel-to-reel tape deck.

Bock along with Roy Harte would soon after, start the Pacific Jazz label and release Mulligan's records. These three informal sessions took place in June, July, and August at the Hollywood Hills cottage of recording engineer Phil Turetsky. Baker's melodic style fit well with Mulligan's, leading them to create improvised contrapuntal textures free from the rigid confines of a piano-enforced chordal structure.

While novel at the time in sound and style, this ethos of contrapuntal group improvisation hearkened back to the formative days of jazz.

Gerry mulligan meets paul desmond biography: Fitzgerald and Armstrong recorded this double-album

Despite their very different backgrounds — Mulligan, a classically trained New Yorker, and Baker, from Oklahoma and a much more instinctive player — they had an almost psychic rapport and Mulligan later remarked that, "I had never experienced anything like that before and not really since. This fortuitous collaboration came to an abrupt end with Mulligan's arrest on narcotics charges in mid leading to six months at Sheriff's Honor Farm.

Both Mulligan and Baker had, like many of their peers, become heroin addicts. However, while Mulligan was in prison, Baker transformed his lyrical trumpet style, gentle tenor voice and matinee-idol looks into independent stardom. Thus when upon his release Mulligan attempted to rehire Baker, the trumpeter declined the offer for financial reasons.

They did briefly reunite at the Newport Jazz Festival and would occasionally get together for performances and recordings up through a performance at Carnegie Hall. But in later years their relationship became strained as Mulligan, with considerable effort, would manage to kick his habit, while Baker's addiction bedevilled him professionally and personally almost constantly until his death in Middle career Mulligan continued the quartet format with valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer replacing Baker, although Mulligan and Brookmeyer both occasionally played piano.

This quartet structure remained the core of Mulligan's groups throughout the rest of the s with sporadic personnel changes and expansions of the group with trumpeters Jon Eardley and Art Farmer, saxophonists Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and Lee Konitz, and vocalist Annie Ross. The final song is, well, something different, which I will get to later.

Gerry mulligan meets paul desmond biography: “Gerry Mulligan, the baritone saxophonist whose

Three of the ten songs are from Mulligan and four are from Desmond, including the opening number, Blues In Time. The melody is infectious, and to use the old time parlance, it cooks without setting the house on fire. Benjamin and Bailey set a fast pace while the two horn players trade off the lead. Before I go any further, I should mention the pound gorilla in the middle of the room.

That means this Mulligan-Desmond disk was recorded in mono.