Billboard : 11/18/1957
Special Merit Jazz Album

A significant album in which these two major modern figures engage in relaxed, conversational jazz, and are obviously challenged by each other. Though their basic conceptions differ, the results are excellent; both are at their best. Most of the material dealt with is by Monk and is provocative to the improvisor. Name value here will help sales.

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Cashbox : 11/23/1957

This release showcases two prominent members of different jazz schools in Mulligan‘s sensitive baritone sax and Monk‘s expressive piano. The disk captures the two musicians in an inventive mood that greatly adds to their jazz stature. The artists are expertly assisted by Wilbuar Ware at bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. Among the selections portrayed are, Straight, No Chaser, (written by Monk), Sweet and Lovely, and Decidedly (written by Mulligan). Way-out sounds.

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Atlanta Journal
Diane Goldsmith : 06/21/1982
Gerry Mulligan helped alter the course of jazz

New York City, 1947. The birth of the “cool” started in a basement on 55th Street behind a Chinese laundry. All the pipes for the building routed through that particular room, which was home to arranger Gil Evans; it contained a bed, a sink, a piano, a hot-plate, a cat named Becky, no heat and one of hte most creative congeries of young Turks in music.

“At all hours the place was loaded with people who came in and out,” said arranger George Russell of that heady time. “Mulligan, though, was there all the time. He was very clever, witty and saucy, the way he is now.”

Russell was referring to Gerry Mulligan, then 20, whose huge talent as a baritone saxophonist, arranger and composer was changing the course of jazz with other oldsters like Miles Davis, trumpet, then 21; Max Roach, drums, then 22, and 27-year-old pianist/composer John Lewis.

There were even some men in their 30s – arrangers Evans, John Carisi, Russell and other assorted geniuses; saxophonist Lee Konitz, trombonist J.J. Johnson, French hornists Jimmy Buffington and Gunther Schuller. Members of Claude Thornhill‘s band dropped by when they were in town.

“All we did was talk. We never shut up,” recalls Mulligan, 55, who will appear with his big band Tuesday at the Fox. Mulligan’s appearance is the third offering in the Kool Festival, which began Sunday with a free concert in Piedmont Park and features the largest lineup of jazz talent Atlanta has seen in years.

Many of the artists who will appear here were present back in ’47 in that dingy basement, which definitely was the place to be. While others were gaping at the recent harmonic and rhythmic advances of Charlie Parker, young Miles, who played alongside the formidable alto sax man in his quintet, already was postulating the next step.

“The sound of bebop swept us together. But there were so many fine bands in town then, so many styles that it was like turning a kid loose in a candy store, assuming he liked candy,” says Mulligan.

That meant along with the peppermint where also would be apricot, butterscotch – even tutti frutti – as the nine-man band added color with French horns, trombones, baritone sax, then relaxed the frequently frenetic beop beat into what was called “the cool.”

Since then, Mulligan and Miles have gone their separate ways. “But that’s the attraction of the jazz festival syndrome,” added Mulligan. (Miles will be in Atlanta for Kool, too.) “You get to see old pals that you haven’t seen from one year to the next.”

Asked his opinion of Miles’ latest forays into fusion, Mulligan says he hasn’t really had time to keep pace with everyone else’s progress because of touring his own big band six months out of the year. That group, which showcases many Mulligan tunes and arrangements, will play here with Benny Goodman, Mel Tormé, and George Shearing.

“Writing music takes as much energy as playing,” he explains. “I can’t do both together so when I get home I’m like a dog circling. It’s tedious putting down all those notes… but there’s no way around it: If you want to hear it, you have to write it.”

Wednesday Mulligan puts on an entirely different musical suit as baritone saxophone soloist with the Atlanta Symphony in an orchestral medley of his tunes.

If anyone can bridge the gap between styles, it’s Mulligan. Take that album he did with the late Thelonious Monk – Thelonious Meets Monk. How did he mesh with this genius/reputed eccentric?

“Many people worried a lot about that,” he replied indulgently. “We had been friends and had talked a great deal but didn’t spend much time playing together. But (ego) was never a problem. I heard the album again recently and it sounds like Alphonse and Gaston. ‘No, after you, Thelonious. No, after you, Gerald.'”

Of his stylistic flexibility, Mulligan calls himself “the saxophonist who came to dinner. I’m the perennial guest,” he says. That’s the way he got together with pianist Dave Brubeck and saxophonist Paul Desmond.

Both he and Brubeck were temporarily at loose ends back in 1970, when jazz producer George Wein called to find out if they could play together at a New Orleans jazz festival.

In addition to helping birth the cool, Mulligan was again a prime mover in innovation when he teamed up with trumpeter Chet Baker in 1952 to form a pianoless quartet – just baritone, trumpet, drums and bass.

“I’d like the music to be around more so we wouldn’t have to explain it,” he says. “The music can speak for itself.” And if anything renders words more superfluous, it’s the civilized pleasure of hearing Chet and Gerry swing.

As to his beginnings, Mulligan remembers getting fired up as a kid in Ohio watching Red Nichols‘ bus park in front of the local hotel. “It seemed to be the ideal situation to be traveling and playing each night,” he recalls. Later he gained invaluable experience as an arranger and baritone saxophonist in the big bands of Gene Krupa and Claude Thornhill.

But why the baritone, the least popular of the saxophones and the most ungainly with its yards of brass tubing? Mulligan is one of only two or three players today to gain pre-eminence on this instrument. Did he choose it for its rarity?

“I liked the register, it was like the cello,” he replied. Then, unable to remain serious for long, he added, “I absolutely forbid anyone else to play it.”

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Altoona Tribune
Willie Wax : 11/25/1957

Mulligan Meets Monk on Riverside is a significant album in which these two major modern figures (Thelonious Monk and Gerry Mulligan) engage in relaxed, conversational jazz, and are obviously challenged by each other. Most of the material dealt with is by Monk and is provocative to the improvisor. Both artists are at their best, and Willie can think of nothing better than putting this one in place of your old Red Foley records.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : February, 1958

Tangible evidence of some of the freshening winds blowing through jazz, and a heartening forerunner of things to come, are contained in this meeting of two of the leading representatives of two major schools of modern jazz. As Gerry Mulligan, a doyen of the cool Pacific Coast contingent, engages in a ruminative conversation with Thelonious Monk, an old settler in the land of bop, they consolidate their forces and, while stopping off to examine some odd corners, relate them to the mainstream of jazz. Like the recent joining of clarinetists Jimmy Giuffre and Pee Wee Russell on television during a Seven Lively Arts program, it is a significant encounter and can only lead to more such engrossing combinations and healthy realignments.

Though it was planned to expand the quartet with musicians of similar stature on formal arrangements, the mood created by Monk’s piano and Mulligan’s baritone sax proved too pristine for such intrusions. Ideas flow from Mulligan without limit, as though they had been held in check just for this moment, and are most compassionate when he chooses to play below the solo piano. Comparable choruses are not recorded often, but there was Higginbotham behind King Oliver on The Trumpet’s Prayer, or Young behind Billie Holliday. The four originals by Monk are ‘Round Midnight, Rhythm-a-ning, I Mean You, and Straight, No Chaser. Mulligan’s Decidedly is a pulsing transformation of the Charlie Shavers‘ swinging favorite Undecided, with the standard Sweet and Lovely to round out the program.

With true economy, Monk makes a few notes do the work of an entire brass section, and bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Shadow Wilson provide the tasteful, unobtrusive support appropriate to the occasion. The same high compliment can be given the engineering. It never distracts from the mood conveyed by the musicians.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 12/08/1957

It’s always fair weather when good fellows get together. Richard Hovey (1864-1900) wrote that. The next line is “With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear.”

You’ll find the music ringing clear on a Riverside album called Mulligan Meets Monk. Pianist Thelonious Monk and baritone saxman Gerry Mulligan, both modern jazz colossi, tangle here for the first time. I use the word advisedly because tangle they do. There is an intertwining here that makes the word acceptable.

Making up the quartet on the six-track session are Shadow Wilson on drums and Wilbur Ware on bass. There are four Monk compositions. The opening is his ‘Round Midnight which has come to be a standard on jazz albums. Hearing it played by the composer gives me a better understanding why so many jazz musicians are attracted to it.

When Monk and Mulligan turn their talents to a standard (Sweet and Lovely), it brings to mind the Leonard Bernstein discourse on jazz for Omnibus last season. Here is a searching for something between the notes as we know them from the piano.

Mulligan’s most soulful moment comes in his solo work Monk’s Straight, No Chaser. Throughout the album, bass and drums stay discreet. But on Straight, the Ware bass comes through with a tender line.

All in all, a big moment for jazz.

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Pittsburgh Courier
Harold L. Keith : 11/16/1957

With respect to Gerry Mulligan‘s cutting with Messrs. Monk, Ware and Shadow Wilson, we haven’t heard Mulligan blow with as much soul since he put out the memorable album containing Octet and Simba without piano some years ago on the Cap label. They say association brings on assimilation, and here Gerry has been definitely been inspired. Dig them on Sweet and Lovely and ‘Round Midnight.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 11/17/1957

Gerry Mulligan and Thelonious Monk in a series of six numbers accompanied by a rhythm section. It is a quiet, yet exciting LP with interesting interplay of ideas between pianist Monk and baritonist Mulligan. Decidedly is really Undecided but it’s still fun to hear.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 07/20/1958

There is a very common idea among jazz fans that the “cool” movement, which has more or less dominated jazz during much of the fifties, came as a sort of rebellion against the excesses of early bop; those who hold this idea would have it that bop disappeared, more or less, to be replace by “cool” – even though it hangs on, as a sort of anachronism, in the so-called “hard bop” school of present day New York jazzmen.

The fact would seem to be quite other. The music which stemmed from Minton’s contained almost equal parts of the frenetic, the lyric, and the cool. Gillespie and Parker exemplified the frenetic; Parker and Miles Davis the lyric, Parker and Thelonious Monk the cool. (If Parker’s role here be doubted, I submit the evidence of Parker’s Mood.) Thus, the development of the “cool” period was, in fact, an assertion, not a negation, of the fundamental basis upon which bop was – and is still being – built.

The truth of this is exemplified most adequately in Mulligan Meets Monk which, I think, is one of the most important records of the year in jazz. For here, Mulligan, “the king of the cool,” chooses to play it Monk’s way, from start to finish – and Monk plays it Monk’s way, and the result is the best Monk it has been my privilege to hear.

There is little lyricism here; how little there is can be seen by a comparison of Monk’s Round Midnight on this version with Miles Davis’ very famous, lyric performance of the same tune of a couple years back Columbia 949. Monk’s chords are impossibly satiric, his lines hard and angular. But here, for the first time to my knowledge, he is adequately supported by a horn – which has the same things to say – and chooses to say them in the same way.

This is the essence of “cool” – and it is hard, and angular and bitter. It is not for those who just want to dip their fingers in jazz; it is not pretty. But it would be something to cut one’s teeth on – as the impossible tracks which Parker cut for Dial in the middle forties were to cut one’s teeth on. When you have assimilated it, you will know something of what modern jazz – emotionally – is about.

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Down Beat : 02/20/1958
Dom Cerulli : 4.5 stars

The minutes of this meeting are very interesting, indeed.

They begin with a lyrical ‘Round Midnight, and continue through Monk‘s brittle I Mean You. In between, there are stretches of good to excellent Mulligan, brilliant Ware, and good to excellent Monk.

I found something of interest on every track, even on Rhythm-a-ning, where Gerry rings in a motif I have found recurrent in some of his solo work; and where he seems to run out of gas toward the end of his solo.

He is superb on Decidedly, a reworking of Undecided so thin that it’s hardly disguised at all. There’s a section where Gerry blows with the rhythm suspended behind him, and in addition to being an effective device it demonstrates Mulligan’s inherent rhythm as a soloist.

Ware continues to be one of the most compelling of bassists, and Wilson offers firm support.

Monk, while he has shone brighter in other contexts as a whole, has some peak moments on this set, notably on I Mean You and Straight, No Chaser.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime meetings of giants…

It can be said that to date there have been basically two major schools of modern jazz. The start of it all was the music originally known in the early 1940s as “be-bop” and then “bop”; and although these specific terms are now out of fashion, the music itself – as adapted and performed through a decade and a half – remain a vital force. Later in the ’40s there arrived what has come to be known as “cool” jazz. Both developments were gradual and complex creations: no one man can be singled out as the only, or even the primary instigator of either. But no musicians can be considered as more significant to the birth of these two basic facets of the contemporary jazz revolution than, respectively, Thelonious Monk and Gerry Mulligan.

Although only in fiction, legend and superficial histories of jazz is it claimed that vast changes take place in single blinding flashes, you can point out specific key times and places for modern jazz. One: the experimental sessions at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem at the turn of the ’40s. Another: the late-’40s recordings for Capitol that have been put together into an album most aptly titled Birth of the Cool. It is of course anything but coincidental that the playing and thinking and thinking of (in the first instance) Monk and (in the second) Mulligan were fundamental factors. You would be fairly safe, even in so argumentative a field as jazz, in reducing matters to the simplest terms and saying that bop begins with Monk and cool jazz begins with Mulligan.

Possibly even more significant is the fact that neither of these men were content merely to blaze trails and then sit back to let others follow them. Both remain in the very forefront of jazz creativity. Mulligan’s first big impact on the jazz public was through his original Quartet (which included Chet Baker and Chico Hamilton), and he has gone on from there with other important groups of both quartet and sextet size, and with consistently fresh and adventurous arrangements both for his own groups and for others. He has also managed over the past several years to hold a steady lease on the top baritone sax position in those notoriously unstable indices of success and fame – the numerous polls operated by numerous magazines.

Monk, although he has been prominently on the scene ever since the start, remains an excitingly inventive creator who is just about as far in front of the pack as he ever was. Thelonious has of late undergone something of a resurgence in popularity; quite a few reasons for this have been advanced, and you are free to take your pick. It may be that more people are arriving at a point of being able to grasp his concepts; it may be that (as I happen to believe) he is now at a peak of his immense powers both as a composer and as a player. The fact that so many younger musicians bearing unmistakable signs of appreciating Monk and of being strongly influenced by him are now coming into prominence may have something to do with it as well.

Since its only in fiction, legend and superficial histories of jazz that there is supposed to be either indifference or active dislike between various schools of jazz, there should be nothing at all surprising in the revelation that Gerry and Thelonious have always had strongly positive feelings about each other’s music. What may be more surprising is that there is a long-standing bond of personal friendship between them, and that the idea of playing together has long been a very appealing one to both men. Consequently, the suggestion that they record jointly made immediate sense to both.

Actually, Riverside’s plans for the album were rather more pretentious than the way things turned out. We had in mind beginning with a simple quartet set-up, and gradually expanding to a large, all-star group and more formal arrangements. But at the end of one ‘blowing’ session (at which I Mean You, Rhythm-a-ning, and Straight, No Chaser were made), both Gerry and Thelonious felt strongly that this was so much the right groove that it would be a mistake not to complete the album this way. Having learned from experience that certain musicians know their business far better than any members of the control-room set, and having enjoyed the first session as much as they had, we offered no objections whatsoever.

The atmosphere on both occasions was one of complete and fruitful relaxation. There was much too much mutual respect and affection on hand for there to be any danger of feelings of competitiveness getting in the way. By general choice, the bassist and drummer with whom Monk was currently working at the Five Spot were used. Gerry had played with Shadow Wilson before, and knew to expect his wonderful firm support. But Wilbur Ware was a new experience for him, and – like most people newly exposed to this extraordinarily inventive bassist – he was mightily impressed. It was Mulligan’s preference to work largely with Monk’s challenging tunes; it was his insistence that he have the opportunity to play the modern-jazz classic ‘Round Midnight with its composer. A Mulligan original and a standard rounded out the picture. And, very probably, Gerry’s approach to ‘Round Midnight and the application of the Monk treatment to a characteristic Mulligan tune are the high spots of the LP.

This is not the sort of album that stands in any need of hysterical hard-sell advertising copy on its liner notes. The solo work and the joint exploration of the lines worked out by both men can speak very ably for themselves. Among other things, the record serves to demonstrate that Mulligan’s usual pattern of playing with a pianoless group is a concept, not a fetish. When the occasional calls for it, he is certainly neither unwilling nor unable to play most effective in the company of a pianist – or, at least, this pianist.

This is a rare meeting of major facets and major figures of jazz. It is, like their separate efforts, intriguing and provocative. It is in all probability a significant document, a piece of jazz history. But surely there has never been a more enjoyable and enjoyed historic occasion than these two evenings when Mulligan met Monk…