Gerry Mulligan – The Lost Interview

Roy Carr had been talking to me for some time about a Gerry Mulligan piece he planned to write, and a few months before he died on 1 July 2018, he emailed me a rough draft. He’d followed Mulligan’s career closely and the interview answers were based on the numerous conversations he’d had with him over the years in various bars and jazz clubs. Roy had a keen knack of getting musicians to open up and offer often deeply candid thoughts on their career highs and lows.

His lengthy friendship with Mulligan promised some rare insights and insider gems.

Roy mentioned that the interviews, done at different times and locations, needed a few added details and arranging in chronological order, but he was finding it difficult to concentrate for any length of time due to his illness. However he was insistent I edit and use it when the time was right. The recent release of Mulligan's Spring In Stockholm: Live at Konserthuset, 1959 is definitely that time. Over to you, Mr Carr... Jon Newey

I first met Gerry Mulligan socially during his first visit to the UK in May 1957, when Bob Brookmeyer was part of his quartet. To great acclaim, the quartet had previously played the Paris Jazz Festival three years earlier, but archaic problems with the British Musicians’ Union prevented them crossing the channel.

Since our first meeting, over the years we’d run into one another in the UK, the States and in Europe. Sometimes, it was just a short exchange of pleasantries, other times we’d chat – not always about music. From these various encounters, here are some of the subjects we discussed.

Before moving to the West Coast where he first encountered Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan had previously experimented with a 'pianoless' quartet in New York that featured local trumpeters such as Dan Ferrara and Tony Fruscella. Even before he began to make his presence known around New York, the young teenager had led his own group.

“As a family we moved around quite a bit…. from Detroit we went to Reading, Pennsylvania, then Philly. Though I was working in a quartet since I was a teenager I always wanted to lead a big band. Because of this I started collecting stock manuscript arrangements that music publishers use to sell and I studied them diligently. That’s what gave me the inspiration to start writing my own arrangements and soon after I was introduced to a bandleader backstage at one of his gigs.

Obviously I made a good impression because he said he’d try me out and signed me to a contract. He paid me 100 dollars a week – which was really good money in those days and all I had to do was write either two up-tempo jump arrangements or maybe some ballads. From the very start I was extremely fortunate that the leaders I wrote for were such genuinely nice people who encouraged youngsters like me, bandleaders such as Tommy Tucker, Gene Krupa and Claude Thornhill.

Of them all, Gene Krupa was probably the finest person I ever worked for. A truly wonderful human being. Gene went out of his way to encourage a fairly inexperienced youngster like me and appreciated what you did.”

Working with Miles Davis on Birth Of The Cool in 1949 and 1950 was a hugely pivotal period. Of the dozen tracks, Mulligan composed and arranged ‘Jeru’, ‘Venus De Milo’ and ‘Rocker’ and arranged a further three charts, Miles’ ‘Deception’, George Wallington’s ‘Godchild’ and the DeLange/Van Heusen standard ‘Darn That Dream’.

“At the time, We didn’t realise how influential [that album] was on fellow musicians such as Shorty Rogers & The Giants.

We would have liked to have toured with that line-up but when we actually appeared at The Royal Roost in New York for two weeks, musicians were enthusiastic but the public showed little interest. And, to make things worse, Miles was ill, so the touring thing never happened.”

Mulligan began playing with Chet Baker in early 1952 at The Haig club in LA.

“I’ve never really made it a big secret that of all the musicians I’ve worked with, that on a good night, and we had plenty of those, Chet was definitely the best partner I had. Those records that I made with the original quartet – I’m still very proud of. They still stand up and they gave me an opportunity to launch what has proved to be a long and successful musical career.

Even after the original quartet broke up, Chet and I occasionally worked together on a few projects. [We] cut some fine tracks with Annie Ross and did some live appearances. Like I said, Chet may well be the best musical partner I’ve ever worked with, but, even if we wanted to, I don’t honestly believe we could recapture that same magic… that youthful enthusiasm.”

There were stories that suggested that Stan Getz was eager to join the original quartet?

“Stan really liked what we were doing, but then so did a lot of other musicians like Lee (Konitz), but Stan joining the group on a permanent basis… musically it might have proved interesting, but I honestly don’t think that it would have ever worked over the long term.

The big problem was that Stan and Chet didn’t really like one another, never did. It was much more Stan’s problem, he had a massive ego as well as a serious habit. For one thing both he and Chet were handsome young men and I believe Stan resented [the fact] that Chet looked like a movie star.

If that wasn’t enough, Chet had become something of an overnight sensation and Stan saw that as direct competition and didn’t like it one bit. On those rare occasions when they did perform together, it usually proved disastrous. The records were very tense and when, in 1983, they toured together it quickly fell apart.

I believe Stan got fed up with Chet’s problems with drugs, because I think Stan was clean at the time, but I’m not sure. Stan lived a very complex lifestyle that also involved various women. Also, I think that Chet was far more popular with European audiences than Stan, which didn’t help. Bad chemistry.”

Mulligan has gone on record to clear up a number of misconceptions about Chet Baker.

“People love to say Chet couldn’t read music: but Chet could read. When he was in that US Army band in West Germany he had to read all those things they put in front of him and some of those could be quite difficult. It’s not a question of whether Chet couldn’t read chords or anything like that, it’s that he didn’t care. I’ve been around a lot of musicians and let me state that Chet had one of the quickest connections between mind, hand, and chops that I have ever encountered. Quite amazing. He really played by ear, and he could play intricate progressions without encountering any problems. You’d run a tune by Chet and he’d get it, and in any key.

There are a lot of myths surrounding Chet, like everything he did was intuitive… to a point, but it’s quite obvious that at some point in his life Chet practiced a lot, probably when he was in the army. Maybe someone like Charlie Parker and a few classical players are born with a facility to learn quickly, but they don’t spring up out of nowhere full-blown. It’s a fact, that as a kid Charlie Parker practiced a great deal.”

Mulligan recorded with Lee Konitz around this time.

“Those recordings that Lee Konitz made with the quartet back in 1953 really are first rate. I knew it would work from the outset. Lee and I first met up years earlier in New York. In 1948 we were both in Claude Thornhill’s Orchestra and a year later, Lee and I were the two sax players in the Miles Davis Nonet which later became known as the Birth Of The Cool sessions. In actual fact that nine-piece line-up was a trimmed down version of Thornhill’s much bigger band with each horn representing a section. Nobody played like Lee… same goes for Paul Desmond, who I’ve also recorded with. When every alto player tried to copy Charlie Parker, there was Lee who created his very own style. A natural one-off and when you played alongside of him, he kept you on your toes.”

In December 1957, Pacific Jazz released The Gerry Mulligan Songbook, which featured Mulligan leading a sax team made up of Lee Konitz, Zoot Sims, Allen Eager and Al Cohn.

“I’ve known Zoot since those early days in New York and he’s always been a pleasure to work with – truthfully, I could listen to him play all night long and with the Concert Jazz Band I get that pleasure. The band really served itself on both a musical and financial level. It wasn’t a compromise. Five horns plus bass and drums gave me a lot of scope to write and arrange while at the same time allowed everyone to have a voice. The concept was to have a small group having the same dynamics of a much bigger unit… and it proved itself.”

Mulligan had once described the inner workings of the Concert Jazz Band from 1960 as being a combination of low dynamics, light swing and meticulous attention to inner harmonic movements. It was basically the sextet in a big band setting.

“Wasn’t it Woody Herman who once said if you want to make a million dollars out of a big band, then first start out with two million? To keep a big band on the road can cost a fortune. Both Count Basie and the Duke, even Stan Kenton, experienced financial difficulties in paying bills to keep their bands employed [and on the road]. It’s not like the swing era of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller. You don’t form a big band to get rich. No way. While gigging around New York in the late 1940s, my ambition was to organise my own large band while writing arrangements for Thornhill, Krupa and later Stan Kenton.

In 1951, before I hitch-hiked to Los Angeles, Prestige Records funded a session for a 10-piece band. Some of the material I wrote for that album like 'Roundhouse', ‘Bweebida Bobbida’ and ‘Funhouse’ I later incorporated into the quartet’s repertoire. In 1953 I also did that tentet 10-inch LP for Capitol – which was the quartet plus Pete Candoli, Bud Shank, Bob Enevoldsen which was very much like the arrangements I’d done for the Miles Davis sessions.”

Dave Brubeck and Mulligan worked together following the break-up of Brubeck’s Quartet in 1967.

“It made good sense at the time. For the two of us to team up. You can’t keep on churning out the same formula year after year. Even a successful group such as the Modern Jazz Quartet realised the need to take break from what they were doing. Though I also believe that Milt (Jackson) had become dissatisfied with the fact that he felt that they weren’t being paid their true worth as a concert attraction. Brubeck and I had known each other for years… shared concert bills with our quartets, and more or less appealed to the same audiences. And on those rare occasions when we were joined by Paul Desmond… with whom I had previously recorded a couple of albums – it turned out to be something quite special.”

This article originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Jazzwise. Never miss an issue – subscribe today