Mulligan, Gerald Joseph (“Gerry”)

(b. 6 April 1927 in New York City; d. 20 January 1996 in Darien, Connecticut), composer, arranger, baritone saxophonist, bandleader, and pioneer of the Cool School of jazz.

Mulligan was born in the borough of Queens in New York City. His father, a management engineer, moved the family frequently, but in 1944 they settled in Philadelphia, where Mulligan spent his adolescence and received his early education. Both parents played piano, and Mulligan first took lessons on piano and ocarina. He studied clarinet and the basics of arranging with Sam Correnti in Reading, Pennsylvania, but was largely self-taught, and continued his musical education informally.

Mulligan quit high school after his third year and began his professional career at age seventeen, selling arrangements for radio bands and playing with East Coast bands led by Harvey Marburger and Chuck Gordon (1944–1945), Alex Bartha, and George Paxton (1945). He did musical arrangements for the radio band led by Johnny Warrington (1945), which performed on WCAU in Philadelphia, and later toured with Tommy Tucker, arranging and playing alto saxophone. He then took a regular job as an arranger with WCAU’s house band, led by Elliot Lawrence.

Encouraged by his friend Charlie Parker, Mulligan moved to New York City in 1946, and at age nineteen he found high-profile work arranging and filling in on alto sax for Gene Krupa’s band (1946–1947). For Krupa he composed a big hit, “Disc Jockey Jump,” and an arrangement of “How High the Moon.” Through bandleader Claude Thornhill, with whom he recorded, he met arranger Gil Evans, who introduced him to rising stars in the jazz world, including the pianist John Lewis and trumpeter Miles Davis. Mulligan took part in rehearsal sessions at Evans’s apartment in New York City. He found a home in the small-ensemble format, collaborating with Davis’s “Birth of the Cool” nine-piece ensemble (1948–1950). Their album, The Complete Birth of the Cool (1948), featured original Mulligan compositions, including the innovative “Jeru,” and several arrangements, including one of Davis’s “Boplicity.” Mulligan played a number of exceptional baritone saxophone solos on the album.

After relocating in 1950 to Los Angeles, where he had a brief association with bandleader Stan Kenton, Mulligan recorded Gerry Mulligan All Stars (1951) with his own ten-piece band. The following year he formed his first piano-less quartet with trumpeter Chet Baker, bassist Bob Whit-lock, and drummer Chico Hamilton. (The lineup changed over time: Baker was followed by John Eardley, by valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, and then by trumpeter Art Farmer.) In 1952, with Baker on trumpet, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet first recorded on the World Pacific label. Their overnight success helped establish the West Coast sound in jazz, and the quartet played regularly to large audiences at the Haig in Los Angeles from 1952 to 1954. The absence of a dominant chord instrument, such as piano or guitar, was a marked departure from the era’s standard jazz ensemble and allowed Mulligan to improvise a new aesthetic in two-part horn counterpoint, first with Baker and later with Brookmeyer and others.

Mulligan was jailed briefly in 1953 for a narcotics offense and returned to New York City after his release in 1954. In the early 1950s his quartet made frequent tours of Europe and in 1954 played to great popular and critical acclaim at the Salle Playel in Paris. A fixture on the international jazz scene, Mulligan was exceptionally prolific throughout his career and was one of the biggest draws in jazz from the early 1950s through the early 1990s. He performed at the first Newport Jazz Festival (1954) and at most major jazz festivals through the early 1990s. His growing popularity led to a feature about him in Time magazine in 1953.

In 1954 Mulligan led a sextet that included Earley and tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. They toured the United States and Europe (1955–1958) and recorded three albums for Mercury Records that were notable for their exceptional solos. The successful Gerry Mulligan Songbook, released in 1957, featured his compositions for other saxophonists, including Sims, Al Cohn, and Lee Konitz. Mulligan recorded with Thelonious Monk and Stan Getz in 1957, and with Ben Webster in 1959. In 1958 he formed a group with Art Farmer, and in New York City in 1960 he established the thirteen-piece Concert Jazz Band, which toured Europe. Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band Live (1960) includes a scoring of the standard “You Took Advantage of Me.” The band’s Live at the Village Vanguard (1960) features the ballad “Come Rain or Come Shine” and the swinging “Blueport” with Clark Terry.

Mulligan played the part of the beatnik priest in the film The Subterraneans (1960), was on the soundtrack of The Hot Rock (1972), and appeared in other films. Following a 1964 tour of Japan, Mulligan returned to the small-group format, leading a quintet (1966–1968) that included piano, guitar, bass, and drums. In 1966 Mulligan collaborated with Bill Holman on Music for Baritone Saxophone and Orchestra, which premiered with the Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra. He won the Down Beat magazine readers’ poll for best baritone saxophone from 1966 to 1975. Mulligan became active as a sideman, and from 1968 to 1972 he appeared as the guest soloist on five albums for the Dave Brubeck Trio.

After a hiatus of more than five years, in 1971 Mulligan recorded The Age of Steam (1972), a breakthrough album that included electric bass and electric piano. In 1974 he was an artist-in-residence at the University of Miami. A series of acclaimed reunion concerts with Chet Baker in 1974 and 1975, including one at Carnegie Hall, yielded a recording of exceptional range and depth. He formed a sextet with Dave Samuels that played in New York City and in Italy (1974–1977) before reforming the Concert Jazz Band in 1978. He also collaborated, in 1974, with Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla.

The 1980s were a productive decade for Mulligan, with regular appearances at jazz festivals and clubs and a fine recording in Gerry Mulligan Meets Scott Hamilton: Soft Lights and Sweet Music (1986). Earlier in the decade he formed a twenty-piece big band. Mulligan won a Grammy Award for his recording Walk on the Water (1981), as well as the Connecticut Arts Award (1982) and the Viotti Prize (1984). He was a recipient of the Yale University Duke Ellington Fellowship (1988) and was inducted into the Philadelphia Museum Association Hall of Fame (1990). In 1992 he recorded Re-Birth of the Cool, which revisited his sessions with Davis from the early 1950s, this time with a different lineup. He died from complications after surgery for a knee infection at age sixty-eight.

Mulligan was married several times, first to Jeffie Lee Boyd in 1953. The marriage was annulled, and in May of that year he married Arlyne Brown, with whom he had a son. They divorced in March 1959, and Mulligan later married the actress Judy Holliday. After Holliday died in 1965, Mulligan married another actress, Sandy Dennis. This marriage ended in divorce in 1976, and he later married Contessa Franca Rota.

A major artist who helped define the Cool School of jazz, Mulligan remained a prolific composer and player for nearly fifty years. With more than 100 albums to his credit, he recorded and performed with many of the twentieth century’s greatest jazz musicians, from small combos to big bands, often but not always using the piano-less format. Although Mulligan earned his early reputation as an articulate arranger, over time he became best known as a baritone saxophonist of exceptional melodic range.

As an instrumentalist—in addition to his trademark baritone saxophone, he played tenor and soprano sax, clarinet, and piano—Mulligan’s elegant improvisational style evoked a wispy lighthearted lyricism, and his thoughtful phrasings were short in excess and long in measured understatement. Original compositions from his 1950s quartets, such as “Line for Lyons,” “Walking Shoes,” and “Song for Strayhorn,” along with his popular perennial rendition of “My Funny Valentine,” retain their vitality and reveal a distinctive artistry. Outstanding albums include the classic early sessions with Chet Baker, as well as What Is There to Say? (1959), Two of a Mind (1962), Night Lights (1963), and Something Borrowed, Something Blue (1966).

Valuable sources include A. Morgan and Raymond Horricks, Gerry Mulligan: A Biography, Appreciation, Record Survey, and Discography (1958);J. Burns, “Gerry Mulligan: The Formative Years,” Jazz and Blues 1, no. 1 (1972): 9; and L. Tomkins, “The Classic Interview: Gerry Mulligan,” CI 24, no. 10 (1987): 16. Jerome Klinkowitz, Listen, Gerry Mulligan: An Aural Narrative in Jazz (1991), provides a detailed discography. An obituary is in the New York Times (21 Jan. 1996).

Jonathan G. Aretakis