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Gerry Mulligan:Before & AfterBy Leonard FeatherThe following DownBeat classic interview isan abridged version of a two-part featurearticle published 50 years ago in our May 26and June 9, 1960, issues.It was St. Patrick’s Day. A jazz fan who happenedto stop in at a bar near YankeeStadium glanced idly at the jukebox. Thiswas a typical Irish bar—nothing on the piccolobut songs of old Erin, plenty of Bing Crosby’sIrish efforts and, of course, the customary quotaof Carmel Quinn. But the box was not 100 percentsquare: Nestled like a jewel in one slot wasa card announcing a side by Gerry Mulligan.That Mulligan today is at a zenith of esteem,among both Irish and non-Irish fromHollywood to Helsinki, is a source of astonishmentto many of those who observed his arrivalin Los Angeles in the summer of 1951, whenhis fortunes were at their nadir. Mulligan hadspent most of his 24 years escaping—fromsocial and religious problems, from conformity,from reality, and finally from the musical maelstromof Manhattan in which he had found nofirm path to tread.Mulligan’s first Hollywood job of any consequencewas an assignment to write somearrangements for Stan Kenton. Though themusic he wrote (10 charts in all) was not quitestartingly colorful enough to elicit the unboundedenthusiasm of Kenton himself, many musiciansboth in and out of the band felt that theMulligan contributions were among theswingingest pieces ever inserted in the Kentonbooks. Some of them were used only as throwawayson dance dates. But Kenton did recordtwo of Mulligan’s originals, “Swing House”and “Young Blood,” and continued to play thelatter frequently long after Mulligan stoppedwriting for the band.During the Kenton period, Mulligan becamefriendly with a young man named RichardBock, then a student at Los Angeles CityCollege with a side job doing publicity andorganizing Monday night sessions at the Haig.One day, at the Laurel Canyon home of hisfriend Phil Turetsky, Bock produced some tapeswith Mulligan, and without a piano. It had notbeen scheduled as a pianoless session. “JimmyRowles was supposed to be there,” Bock related,“but couldn’t make it at the last moment. Sowe did it with just Gerry, Red Mitchell andChico Hamilton.” This was in July of 1952, andthe records were never released.Soon afterwards, Bock began to useMulligan on the Monday nights at the Haig.Only a couple of these gigs had taken placewhen, said Bock, “One afternoon in Septemberwe went up to Phil’s home again—he had somefine sound equipment—and made ‘Bernie’sTune’ and ‘Lullabye Of The Leaves,’ withGerry and Chet [Baker] and Chico and BobWhitlock. This started the Pacific Jazz label,with a single 78 disc. Later, we went into theGold Star studios on Santa Monica Boulevardand did the other tunes for the first 10-incher,LP-1. This was how the company got started.”By year’s end, the LP had been released,lines were forming all around the block at theHaig and the Gerry Mulligan Quartet was put towork on a full-week basis. Before long, Gerryhad reached what is usually the vital point inany artist’s career: People needed him morethan he needed them.During the first half of 1953, Mulligan andBaker had a parternship that seemed as historic,in its way, as Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang in the1920s, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey in the ’30s,and Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in the’40s. “Gerry’s musical communion with Chetwas a fantastic and beautiful thing,” said a girlwho knew them well. “But as a person, Gerrywanted Chet to be so much more sensitive thanhe was capable of being.”“The group really came off until Gerry andChet started hating each other,” Hamilton said.“They’d come on the stand and Gerry wouldface one way and Chet another. A couple oftimes I had to pull them apart.”The breakup that resulted was inevitable.But, though it seemed to augur disaster,Mulligan turned it to advantage: DuringChristmas week of 1953 he organized a newquartet featuring the valve trombone of BobBrookmeyer instead of trumpet.This group represented the second of sixmajor phases in Mulligan’s career as a leadingjazz figure. The third was a sextet he led in1955–’56, with Zoot Sims, Brookmeyer andJon Eardley or Don Ferrara; the fourth was the1958–’59 quartet with Art Farmer; the fifth wasa period of movie-making, during most of 1959,when he had no organized group; and the sixthbegan a few weeks ago when he formed a 13-piece band in New York.“Each of my groups has had an entirelydifferent sound, and a different effect onme,” Mulligan said. “It’s misleading to talkabout ‘the quartet’ as if there’d been onlyone. And the septet was completely differentagain—there we had the first leaningstoward a big band sound, a more concertedthing, getting away from the strictly spontaneouscounterpoint.”Along with Mulligan’s musical growth,there has been a striking development in hispersonality. Musicians who once saw in him anair of belligerent intolerance, a garrulity, a lackof direction, now observe that the intolerance isdirected against stupidity, racial prejudice andnarrowmindedness. And the talkativeness—based on sensitivity, a keen concern for music,the theater, politics and a broad range of generalinterests—is leavened with humor and a refusalto accept pompousness on any level.Mulligan is very much wrapped up in hisnew band, which played its first date in April atBasin Street East. So far, the reaction amongmusicians both in and out of the orchestra, andamong critics and the more attentive listeners atBasin Street, has been uniformly enthusiastic.During several visits I found enough excitement,both in the writing and in the spirit thatformed the interpretation, to produce some ofthe most genuine and unpretentious swingingbig-band jazz this town has heard in years.Just before he opened at the club I interviewedMulligan in an hour-long session overWNCN-FM, New York.Feather: Let’s talk about the new band, yourpersonnel and your plans.Mulligan: Well, first and foremost, let’s say wehave Bob Brookmeyer and Bob Brookmeyerand Bob Brookmeyer … playing valve tromboneand writing; Wayne Andre on tromboneand Allan Raph on bass trombone; on trumpetsPhil Sunkel, Danny Styles, and most of thesolos are taken by Don Ferrara. The reeds areEddie Wasserman on clarinet; Bill Holman ontenor—he came east to do a lot of writing forus. We also have arrangments by Al Cohn, andsome by Johnny Mandel of themes from his I46 DOWNBEAT May 2010