Audio
Charles A. Robertson : August, 1957

A pause in the travels of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet permitted this potent recording last December in the precincts of Boston’s Storyville. Though there are some introspective moments, any lassitude on the audience’s part is dispelled by the holiday gaiety of four of the originals. Bob Brookmeyer‘s Rustle Hop is a bucolic romp and, on his Open Country, his valve trombone would rejuvenate a flagging Broadway chorus line. Mulligan’s Bweebida Bwobbida is a stimulating excursion for his baritone sax, and Bike Up the Strand is a memento of his recent European tour.

Another facet of the Mulligan personality emerges as he utilizes the piano in the revealing blues study Storyville Story. The standards Birth of the Blues,
Baubles, Bangles and Beads, and That Old Feeling are projected in the concentrated form of communication that makes for the best chamber jazz. Rhythm men are Bill Crow, bass, and Dave Bailey, drums. Father Norman O’Connor examines the emotional ties between jazz and modern art in the liner notes.

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Army Times
Tom Scanlan : 06/15/1957

The Gery Mulligan Quartet was THE jazz group to a good many members of the hip set several years ago. This was when Chet Baker, then playing trumpet with the group, was considered “the end” or close to it by the youngsters and jazz generally was beginning to sound much too tame and precious to those of us raised on a more vigorous kind of jazz music.

But recently it has seemed to me that some of the hip youngsters who once could see only Baker and other real cool type musicians have come around to appreciate older kinds of jazz as well (for example Count Basie) while some of the older musicians and aficionados have in turn opened their minds and ears more liberally to what Mulligan and other modern chamber group jazzmen have been doing. If so, this is a healthy sign. After all, there’s no reason why a man can’t enjoy a good piece of rare roast beef as well as caviar and there is no “one way” to do anything. As there are many ways to skin a cat, there are many ways to play jazz. No one way, no one band, no on musician is “the end.”

In any event, Mulligan, a talented arranger and baritone saxophonist, maintains a large following, and to my mind, at least, his present quartet which features valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer is a much more interesting group than the one he became famous with. This is largely because of Brookmeyer’s compelling, relaxed, inventive and softly swinging horn. Bill Crow on bass and drummer Dave Bailey round out the group.

The newest Mulligan LP, recorded at Boston’s Storyville club, is one I believe all Mulligan enthusiasts will want. Highlight of the record for this reviewer was a happy lifting thing by Brookmeyer called Open Country. The recent pop tune, Baubles, Bangles and Beads also comes over well in the Mulligan idiom.

Incidentally, there is an uptempo “original” in the set called Bike Up the Strand. As an example of a thinly disguised melody over an undisguised chord progression, this strikes me as a rather ingenious title. To identify the standard, all you need to do is quickly repeat the title over to yourself a few times.

The liner notes on the album are most curious. No information about the music or the musicians, quotes from this and that, extraneous autobiographical information, and I don’t know what all. Oddly enough, the notes begin: “If ever you are assigned the task of writing album notes for a favorite jazz artist, I think you will find your pattern will follow the lines I have set down here.” This is highly debatable.

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Berkeley Gazette
Cathy Furniss : 06/15/1957

That line from the old vocal – was it the Basie band? – that “nothing swings on Beacon Hill but the leaves on the trees” doesn’t seem to apply anymore. At least this album, recorded at George Wein’s nearby fine jazz club Storyville, certainly swings with Bob Brookmeyer‘s Open Country, Gerry Mulligan‘s Storyville Story, and Bike Up the Strand. Recording quality here is good with just traces of audience noise. Liner notes by Father O’Connor, although somewhat tangential, refer to the symphony as the “political oratory of music,” and the quartet as the poet-philosopher in his own home. Opera and orchestra speak to the multitude, chamber music – as the ad writers have it – to YOU. Not bad.

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San Bernardino County Sun
Jim Angelo : 07/14/1957

Many exciting things have happened in the world of music since that hot July night in 1952 when the Gerry Mulligan group exploded to inaugurate the West Coast school of jazz.

Still in the van of progress, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet continues to communicate fluently with this on-the-spot recording from Boston’s Storyville. Choice track is Storyville Story which highlights excellent Mulligan piano as well as baritone, and fine Bob Brookmeyer trombone. A must for aficionados.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 06/29/1957

Gerry Mulligan is back with his elegant quartet, the leader’s baritone saxophone poised against the fluent valve trombone of Bob Brookmeyer, with Bill Crow, bass, and Dave Bailey, drums. I suppose this might be called the dead (or rather alive) center of modern jazz. It faces both ways, with complete success, and takes on such themes as Baubles, Bangles and Beads from the operetta “Kismet.” I cannot forbear to mention here that while “Kismet” is drawn from the music of Alexander Borodin, there is not a single mention on this disc of the great Russian’s name.

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St. Joseph News-Press
Edwin R. McDonald : 09/01/1957

It’s good to see capable outfits like the Gerry Mulligan Quartet recording an album in which five of the eight selections are by its own members. New chamber works are taking their place in jazz literature.

A large segment of the listening public will take to jazz chamber music more quickly, we believe, if the players will spend less time working up variations on popular songs. To be sure great talent is required for this, but so many listeners struggle so hard to catch the tune that they forget to enjoy the music. Actually, they are hearing a new piece anyway, so the players might as well play a new work in the first place.

Mulligan’s quartet made its latest album at Storyville, Boston, with Richard Bock, Pacific Jazz president, as recording engineer. Mulligan’s compositions are Bweebida Bwobbida, Storyville Story and Bike Up the Strand. Bob Brookmeyer, valve trombone man in the quartet, composed Rustic Hop and Open Country. As usual, the playing is thrilling and the music generally is on the lively side.

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Down Beat : 12/26/1957
Dom Cerulli : 5 stars

Recorded live at Boston’s Storyville, even until George Wein’s end-of-set acknowledgement at the close of side 1, this set is about as good a sample of the Mulligan–Brookmeyer meeting of the minds as we’ll ever have on records.

High points for me are the compelling way each hornman works a contrapuntal second line to the other’s solo, the unhurried but still tingling bass work by Crow, and the free flow of ideas in Mulligan’s blowing.

On Bweebida, for instance, he rolls through several choruses, building easily to a climax, prodded by Brookmeyer. Baubles is the neglected show tune which Gerry was making a jazz standard. Following Mulligan’s gritty but pretty solo, Bailey and Crow break rhythm to send Brookmeyer through the bridge. Brookmeyer is superb on Rustic Hop.

Gerry opens Storyville Story with some lean, bluesy piano. Brookmeyer takes an appropriate chorus, then hands over to more Mulligan keyboard, a bit of fancy bass work by Crow, some characteristically tasty fours by Bailey, more piano and out. Gerry’s piano playing has the same directness he applies to the baritone.

Feeling is a fine walking ballad, with some lyrical Brookmeyer at the close. Bike’s melody is about as thinly disguised as the spoonerism it bears as a title, but it has some typical horn interplay, and some fine fours during which Gerry finishes off a phrase in three short bursts on Bailey’s time, but welcome nonetheless.

Well worth having as a reminder of what this group accomplished before it broke up last summer. And, don’t fail to read the liner notes about gather notes for a liner by Father O’Connor. They’re as intelligent and witty as the music on the record.

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Liner Notes by Norman O’Connor

If you are ever assigned the task of writing album notes for a favorite jazz artist, I think you will find your pattern will follow the lines that I have set down here. Richard Bock, President of Pacific Jazz Enterprises, and Bill Claxton, a most capable and most friendly West Coast Photographer, were in Boston to record and photograph Gerry Mulligan. This was last December. Gerry, playing at Boston’s Storyville, appeared on a television show that I do for WGBH-TV, Boston’s Educational Station, with John McLellan. How I got the job of chauffeuring the three of them around the following day while they looked for background shots for the album I don’t know. All I am sure of is that on a Saturday afternoon in December we were at Louisberg Square on Beacon Hill, deep in the heart of Boston. While Bill posed Gerry against fences, doors, windows, mail boxes, Dick Bock quietly suggested that he would appreciate it if I would write the album notes for the recording. This didn’t appear too difficult since I had been listening to the music during the week and Gerry has been a favorite of mine since I heard him rehearsing a band in the open air in Central Park back in 1949. The band had no money, and the Central Park lawn was free.

Jan. 1957 – Skip ahead a good month. The three of the above paragraph have left. Christmas is over, and the task of writing the notes is now conflicting with several other jobs such as radio programs, TV each week, and an assignment which I have at Boston University where I have the care of some five thousand Catholic Students. One evening while working on the television show we had come up with the suggestion that the relationship of jazz to the other arts could be shown by having workmen from the demonstrating their technique and inspiration by camera with the music of jazz performers played in the background. We weren’t interesting in charting the music, but we wanted to see if the same sense of movement, vitality, and emotion that is the mainspring of jazz might not be a common factor in all contemporary art.

About a year before this a Professor of Art at the Massachusetts School of Art had written a short note to me, after hearing one of the radio programs I do, saying that he thoroughly enjoyed the music and he also used jazz in his drawing classes because he wanted his young students to get a sense of the rhythm so basic to the music. He name was Lawrence Kupferman, a well-know Boston artist. We decided to contact him, and sound him out on the idea. His response was most favorable, and the two artists whom he was accustomed to use both for his own enjoyment and painting at home were Gerry Mulligan and Chico Hamilton. A more fortunate combination of circumstances you could not have imagined.

Feb. 1957 – There were strong reactions to the above plan. First of all, we were laboring under the problem of black and white television and yet trying to get across the sensitivity of an artist who works in color and oftentimes in water color, an even more fragile medium. Also Professor Kupferman was currently enthusiastic about and concerned with Japanese paining. Thus Television could prove to be a downfall for us. Another reaction was the common enough one which states that this sort of artistic relation is most artificial, has been done countless times before, and is really invalid since you are forcing artistic creation into the one hour time limit of the TV program.

Late Feb. 1957 – There were no points in our favor. Professor Kupferman wanted to do it and saw no problem. The program would be a working hour and the results were not to be understood as finished paintings, and the music was a valid factor in his painting since he had come to think of it as a conditioning element in his work. There was at the same time a short mention in the New Statesman and Nation of the Roumanian conductor who in rehearsing the London Philharmonic Orchestra had called up French painters to convey the brightness that he wanted for a Debussy number. “Not often, one may surmise, are workmanlike British musicians bidden, when they tackle Fetes, to remember ‘Cezanne, Renoir… Sisley… to those who did not see this stocky, demoniac, utterly unselfconscious conductor at work, which stories will suggest affectation; but affectation gets you nowhere with hard-bitten professionals, and it was abundantly clear that the L.P.O. were playing for Constantin Silvestri with all their heart and soul.”

Late, Late Feb. 1957 – Then a fine quote from Picasso about painting, made in 1923, stimulated further boldness: “The fact that for a long time cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything it it means nothing. I do not read English – an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist and why should I blame anybody but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about.” The statement applied so neatly to not only the painting that we were to present but also to the intricacies of chamber jazz and the work of Gerry Mulligan. We had no apologies about either form, but only hoped that the audience would realize that some of the work we were doing might be in the English book that Picasso spoke of.

March 1957 – The album notes are not written yet but you can see that they are taking shape in a most unusual way. The recording has been played over countless times and we are most aware of the development that Gerry and Bobby Brookmeyer have given the musical material. Then came the New York Times and its Sunday supplement on Chamber music. Harold Schonberg wrote “… Chamber music, though its total resources may be slender, can pack into its frame as much drama, as much lyricism, and poetry as any concerto, opera, or symphony. Of course, it is a concentrated form and it thus demands concentrated listening… Bad writing emerges in all its sadness for all the world to see. Good writing achieves a purity, a serenity, untouched by any of the grosser elements. Where symphony and opera can be the political oratory of music, the quartet is the discourse of the post-philosopher in his own home. For opera and orchestral music speak to the multitude; chamber music speaks (as the ad writers have it) to YOU.” No need to make any comparisons or parallels – they are quite obvious.

March 15, 1957 – WGBH-TV – Channel 2 – 5:30pm Music by Gerry Mulligan and the Quartet – painting by Professor Kupferman. First a drawing in pencil and then painting in water color. There was talk and background material about the two artists concerned; some discussion by the artist and myself about the work and how the two arts fitted together. Talk about the classes and the students and jazz. The drawing was mostly vertical in appearance as the artist tried to express some of the upward movement of the music. The painting was similar but done in colors that were sometimes soft grays, strong and receding yellows, a touch of pink, and then a rough ink line drawn through the colors. Most vital, most sprightly, most fresh. This wasn’t Gerry Mulligan in color, not a chart of the music as it came forth from the recording. But the painting was an imposition of the movement of the music on the paper with water colors.

Marcy 25, 1957 – The notes are written just as you see them. The program was well received – there were some of the usual criticisms about the paining since it was done as an abstraction. There was no criticism of the music that you hear in this album. The audience appeared to achieve a better understanding of what the modern jazz musician is doing through the connection established with the artist. Both wanted immediate, direct contact with the onlooker. In this album the musician plays chamber music that is highly personal, and though each instance may not be successful and beat and tone and theme may escape you he will keep on inventing, creating and making new melody which in time you will enjoy – he hopes.

Many details, many possible reflections, have been omitted. Space is short but some suggestion of the role of Gerry Mulligan and jazz in contemporary art has been made. More thought and study must be put into the material. This will come in time because the subject matter is loaded with possibilities and there are intelligent rumblings all through the country in which jazz, art and the world of today are related or discussed or condemned. The above notes tell you of just one of those situations.