Lee Konitz Plays With the Gerry Mulligan Quartet

 

Lover Man

Lee Konitz Plays With The Gerry Mulligan Quartet 

A Richard Bock Production

Cover Design by Armond Acosta

Photographs (during the recording session at the Haig, Los Angeles, in January 1953) by William Clayton

World Pacific Records WP-1273

1957

From the back cover: The proper study of jazz is jazzmen. Not only because improvisation is concentrated personal revelation but also because men who detest and shun each other have made thrilling music together whilst others who golf, goof, gamble and gambol together produce music that sounds like the weary waiter's endless mumbling of a morbid menu in that dim restaurant in Hell reserved fro those who squirt tomato ketchup on matzoh balls.

Some excellent records have been made by jazzmen who admire and respect each other. But there are instances, too, where disparate personalities rubbed each other so much that wrong way that a crackling blaze of heart-warming jazz resulted from the excessive friction between them. This is true most notable in some of the Armstrong-Bechet recordings – it is no secret that intense rivalry is the mildest label one can hang on the feeling in the recording studios between Louis and Sidney – and in the constant battle of nerves between Lester Young andHershel Evans that kept a good part of the Basie orchestra in a state of creative tension. A brisling bunch of morose thorns trying to blow each other, and the drummer,  off a bandstand is by no means exceptional experience. Attempts to market this condition, that is to build it up artificially as a "battle of the saxes," "Battle of the trumpets," "Battle of the bands," etcetera and ad nauseam, most often wind up as a duel of belching honks and spine-stiffening screeches at five paces, the purposeful intention being that of any self-respecting demolition squad.

Stimulation of his colleagues by consistent application of his peregrine personality is very likely the most wicked weapon in Gerry Mulligan's deadly arsenal. He has played probably in front of more gourds than lingered on in a recurring state of instant disintegration behind him that any other major jazzman. Not that Gerry plans it that way; he just seems mohave been possessed rather frequently of or by an impish natural talent for annoying others to an extent that is much more often productive than destructive.

How this quality operated in his work with Lee Konitz I have no way of knowing but I believe, after hearing this record, that someone constructed a small conflagration under Lee when he sat in with Gerry's quartet at the Haig in Los Angeles on the night of January 25, 1953. And since that expert at artistic arson, Gerry Mulligan, was present I think we may have solved this minor mystery.

Certainly, the Konitz four-alarm romp through "All Things You Are" and "I'll Remember April," both of which have been stocked safely in Richard Bock's fireproof vaults for almost five years, suggests Lee caught fire that night.

These two tracks apart, the other eight items have already gone round the world. Their international fame first hit me when I was on the all-night United Press news desk in Paris in 1955. Of the many Mulligan fans I have known, one of the most fervent was a young teletype operator on my shift named Arabian (pronounced Ah-rahb-yan). He used to delight me, amid the din of some thirty chattering teletypes, by singing note-for-note choruses from Gerry's records. One night, before I had heard it, Arabian ripped off Lee's chorus on "Too Marvelous For Words."

"Qu'est-ce'que'c'est-ca?" I asked him. "C'est Gerry?"

"Mais, non," said Arabian, grinning happily at having caught me out, "chest Koohneetz."

"Qui?"

"Koohneetz, mon vieux, I'altosaxist le plus formidable du monde."

And Arabian never puts tomato ketchup on anything. 

– Daniel Halperin - Mr. Halperin, a Canadian, went to Europe in 1950 and joined the staff of the late Continental Daily Mail in Paris and was later a United Press Staff Correspondent in Paris. He is now assistant Art Editor of the Daily Sketch in London.

I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me

Broadway

Almost Like Being In Love

Sextet

Lady Be Good

Too Marvelous

Lover Man

I'll Remember April

These Foolish Things

All The Things You Are