1. Roundhouse
2. Ide's Side
3. Bweebida Bobbida
4. Kaper
5. Funhouse
6. Mullenium
7. Mulligan's Too
8. Bernie's Tune
9. Lullaby of the Leaves
10. Utter Chaos
11. Line For Lyons
12. Carioca
13. My Funny Valentine
14. Bark For Barksdale
15. Nights At The Turntable
16. Frenesi
17. Aren't You Glad You're You
18. Walkin' Shoes
19. Soft Shoe
20. Freeway

August 17, 1951

August 16, 1952

September 2, 1952

October 15-16, 1952

 LINER NOTES

Bop had often seemed random, reliant on great improvisational skills given unencumbered reign, and as a result its apparently self-indulgent codes isolated and disenfranchised jazz fans. It was clever, yes, but it was hardly melodic in a broader sense.(Mulligan later wrote that Charlie Parker's 'Yardbird Suite' appealed to him because, among the altoist's compositions, it was the "most song-like".) However, at the height of Bebop, a group of white musicians were extending the influence of a pre-bop hero, creating in the process a neo-classicism tailor made for a player with Mulligan's attitudes. Tenor saxophonist's Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Brew Moore, Stan Getz and Allen Eager all revered Lester Young, not the tattered Young of the post-army period, but the ebulliant performer who had turned the pre-war jazz world on its head from his seat in the Basie band. Each of them possessed that light, frothy quality that made Young so appealing, yet each had his own take on Prez' legacy; they were melodic, romantic, unhackneyed and refreshing, and Mulligan, had he chosen to stick to tenor, could have been one of them. He had all the attributes listed above and more, but he chose to create both further difficulties and an eventual niche for himself by concentrating his efforts on the baritone saxophone.

Traditionally, the baritone was a sometimes awkward ensemble instrument, and, it had few solo exponents, save Harry Carney, who essayed forth the kind of full bodied, regal sound that fitted Duke Ellington's vision so well. The arrival in the mid-forties of a young white virtuoso, Serge Chaloff, who could play the larger horn with all the dexterity and accuracy of Parker was a major breakthrough. It was also a major obstacle for Mulligan, who preferred to retain the values of the Swing Era, and those preceding it. ('I'm really a Dixieland player', he later commented) If Chaloff echoed Parker then Mulligan recalled Lester Young, a poetic yet incisive player whose logic seemed at odds with the helter skelter jazz world which surrounded it.

One only has to look at the other jazz "developments" of 1951, the year of Mulligan's first recording as a leader, included here ,to see how ill at ease Gerry must have felt with the prevailing currents: fellow Prestige artist Miles Davis had forgone the formal constraints of his Nonet to head an earthier, harder sounding sextet with such men as Art Blakey, Jackie McLean and Sonny Rollins: Dizzy Gillespie recorded `The Champ' ,a driving R & B riff that reduced bop to elemental excitement: Charlie Parker was touring with a commercial strings outfit. Amid this, Mulligan's recording date sounds both self-assuredly personal and incongrous. Only the lengthy 'Mulligan's Too' ,an extensive jam with the tenorist Allen Eager, is informal, a kind of Mulligan-after-hours in shirt-sleeves as it were, the sort of thing he indulged in at the time at New York rehearsal studios like Don Jose's with its famous Red Door. The rest amplifies and extends the concepts that he had introduced as far back as his arrangements for Gene Krupa: instrumental clarity, and linear writing, played in this instance by a medium-sized group including such notables as pianist George Wallington and trumpeter Nick Travis. Importantly, Mulligan was given carte blanche to do as he wished with his first record date as leader, part of Prestige Records "New Sounds" initiative. The pieces, unsurprisingly, were all Gerry's, and their history and (re)development is worth noting: 'Mullenium' was written for Elliot Lawrence and was revisited by Mulligan's big band on a Columbia session in 1957. 'Bweebida Bobbida' became a staple in the baritonists book in the late fifties and early sixties, first with his Quartet and later with the Concert jazz band. 'Ide's Side' was also taken up again by the Quartet, and 'Funhouse' became 'Haig and Haig' when re-recorded in 1953.

Despite its success, the date failed to serve notice that Mulligan was now a voice in his own right. Frustrated and with his career going nowhere, he sold his instruments and, with girlfriend Gail Madden in tow, followed Horace Greeley's incitement and headed west. The Prestige date had yet to be released, but the New York chapter of Gerry Mulligan's career was over. The Los Angeles chapter began with similar hardship, after an epic 'On the Road'-style hitch-hike across the continent. Mulligan actually had nothing waiting for him, save the slim chance that he could sell some arrangements to Stan Kenton. This he did but it was hardly the way in which to make a living, and so he began jamming around the L.A. clubs, often on a borrowed tenor sax. In early 1952 one such venue, The Haig on Wiltshire Boulevard, installed Gerry to organise its regular Monday night jam session, where musicians such as Art Pepper and Jimmy Rowles would feature. The Haig residency proved crucial to Mulligan's success: manager John Bennett had asked former A and R man at Discovery Records Richard Bock to handle the music side of the business and that summer Bock began recording several of the Haig regulars at his friend Phil Turetsky's ad hoc front room studio. The resulting music wasn't really as cohesive as Mulligan might have wished and it lacked an identifiable "group" sound. Gerry was keen to once more try his hand at bandleading, and bassist Bob Whitlock, a Haig habitue, suggested he hear a young white trumpeter who had been working with Charlie Parker up in San Francisco, Chet Baker. As good looking as a movie star, Baker possessed a gift for lyrical improvisation that endeared him to Mulligan. His was a soft, intimate style not much given to bop hystrionics. The two men jammed together, liked the results and began regular rehearsals.

The strongly linear aspects of Gerry's music both as a soloist and a composer, now fell into place, as he had boldly chosen to work with only his and Baker's horn as a frontline against Whitlock's bass and the drums of Chico Hamilton, a sensitive accompanist who had worked with Lena Horne, Billie Holiday and Lester Young. What prompted this choice is disputable: legend has it that the Haig had put the piano into storage during Red Norvo's trio engagement as the tiny stage wasn't big enough for it and Norvo's vibes, but Mulligan later insisted that the piano-less idea was already in his mind. There is also evidence to suggest that he may have even tried rehearsing an identical line-up in New York the previous year. Whatever the reason, the sound was unique and the almost telepathic interplay between Baker and Mulligan prompted Bock to record the quartet in August of that year. The two titles, 'Bernie's Tune' and `Lullaby of the Leaves' were released that autumn on Bock's fledgling Pacific jazz label and became overnight hits, ensuring Mulligan's stardom and Bock's success as a label boss. It wasn't so much the themes that impressed people, neither were Mulligan's, but the unity of the music. This was small ensemble music, containing the right balance between soloist and accompanist and a spontaneous cohesion that was entirely refreshing.

A great deal of interest centred on the apparently'revolutionary' absence of the piano, but Mulligan, ever the `modern-traditionalist' pointed out that contrapuntal lines unsupported by a dominant harmonic instrument were as old as jazz itself. The Haig found itself besieged by curious listeners and a great deal of hype abounded ranging from Mulligan creating a `West Coast Sound' ,to the quartet being both 'NeoDixieland' and 'suggestive of Bach', to its sound representing `the crux of postmodernism' (whatever that is). More importantly musicians were beginning to take notice: one of those who heard the group at this time was pianist Dave Brubeck. Impressed, he recommended that Fantasy Records, the label to whom he was signed, record the quartet during it's residency in San Francisco that September.

This session debuted two of Mulligan's finest compositions, `Line For Lyons', (dedicated to promoter Jimmy Lyons) and .'Bark For Barksdale' ,both of which illustrated that Gerry's orchestrated feel, far from being diminished by the minimal line-up, was actually enhanced by it. With such a reduced instrumentation, Mulligan the player also had nowhere to hide and as a result his emerging confidence as a saxophonist was all the more remarkable. He soon found himself becoming the role model upon the baritone. The Fantasy date was also responsible for the quartets `greatest hit'; a rendition of Rodgers and Hart's 'My Funny Valentine'. Dirge slow, and delivered with plaintive poignancy by his trumpet, it did as much for Baker's image as the ultimate dissipated and doomed youth as it did for Mulligan's as a brilliant conceiver of settings. This is one of his starkest transformations. The atmosphere, right down to the unusual 'vocal' backing to Chet's solo, spoke of a new sophistication, a laid back hipness not catered for by the fast-forward intensity of Bebop.

Richard Bock capitalised upon the quartet's success with 'Bernies Tune' by recording the group again that October. These sessions produced three more memorable Mulligan originals: `Nights At the Turntable', dedicated to jazz disc jockey's, `Soft Shoe', a theme as graceful as its title suggests, and the loping `Walking Shoes', perhaps Mulligan's best composition. The understanding between Chet and Gerry was probably at its peak here, before the rot of personal differences set in, and Mulligan even introduced Baker, the composer, with `Freeway', blowing holes in the legend of the trumpeter being an un-academic talent. The baritonists fondness for some unlikely material also surfaced with the Bing Crosby associated `Aren't You Glad You're You' getting a facelift, and 'Frenesi' very nearly making you forget that Artie Shaw had immortalised it years before.

Gerry Mulligan had secured fame for his considerable skills as both a player and a writer and he had conceived a unique sound and format; Baker was a star ascendent; Pacific jazz was on the map; the queues at the Haig stretched around the block; Time magazine ran a feature on the quartet; and briefly the jazz compass seemed to be pointed west rather than east. Six months later it was all gone. Mulligan's meteoric rise to success with a group of musicians who just happened to find themselves in the right city at the right time was finally undermined by a problem that plagued jazz wherever it was played in the United States. A narcotics bust spelled a prison term and the end of the original quartet. When Mulligan was released in late 1953, Baker was already out from under his shadow and set to embark on his nomadic career as a beatnik demigod. Mulligan formed a new quartet and eventually forged ahead with projects as diverse as the Concert jazz band and the fusion based `Age of Steam' in the decades to come. He remains, indisputably, the most effective jazz baritone soloist. Nothing, however, earned him more praise than his first piano-less quartet. Fifty years on, it still sounds bang on the money.

SIMON SPILLETT April, 2003