Something Borrowed Something Blue - Gerry Mulligan

 

Take Tea And See

Something Borrowed

Something Blue

Gerry Mulligan

Arranged by Gerry Mulligan

Produced by Hal Mooney

Recorded at Bell Sound Studios

Engineer: Phil Macey

Tape Editor: Jack McMahon

Cover Illustration: George Roth

Limelight STEREO LS 86040

1966

Gerry Mulligan - Alto & Bariton Sax

Zoot Sims - Tenor Sax

Warren Bernhardt - Piano

David Bailey - Drums

Eddie Gomez - Bass

From the back cover: There's more to beating the traffic than blowing your horn. All day long it's up the avenue, across the streets, through the alleys and over the cliff. At night the survivors limp back. Some of them think they know why they went. A few remember where they've been.

One of two even know who they are. Instead of fighting the game all knees and elbows they play it. They are makers, not breakers, of rules. We on the sidelines may cheer whom we please, of course, depending on our taste for slaughter or for skill.

Gerry Mulligan (for it is indeed he) is one of our more skilled game-players and rule-makers. He is also a team-leader, never out-distancing but always moving ahead. Unlike the bear in Thurber's fable, he neither falls flat on his face nor leans too far backwards.

"Actually," he says, "I don't know of any kind of jazz I'm not fond of, including the 'New Thing' – and some of my best friends are Dixielanders. But every musician should be seen in his own perspective, not categorized. My favorite 'Dixielanders' were melodists. Irving Fazola, for example. Would you call Bix Beiderbecke a Dixielander? or Sidney De Paris?"

Gerry's impatience with category gets him to places less secure jazzmen would avoid. He recorded his last album with strings because the songs were pretty and the strings kept them pretty. Just before that he gave the Mulligan Seal of Approval to top-40 tunes by Roger Miller, Tony Hatch, and Lennon and McCartney. A song can be both popular and musical, and the two albums introduced several audiences to each other.

The newest release is a jazz-rooted swinger. With Zoot Sims, what else?

"Zoot and I have been playing together for years," Gerry says. "I thought it was about time we got into a studio together. It's funny: I concentrated on the baritone for so long that I tend to search for the lower range of any horn I play, and form time to time Zoot's tenor and my alto may sound alike. The registers of the horn do overlap, and I was tremendously impressed by Zoot's playing."

Gerry also sounds from time to time like Charlie Parker. "That's not surprising. Bird was an is my idol. Playing alto, I can't help thinking of him. If a guy's got enough confidence in what's he doing himself, he doesn't have to be upset by what somebody else hears in it.

Actually, it's perceptive of the other person, because it's there.

Davenport Blues

Sometime Ago

Take Tea And See

Spring Is Sprung 

New Orleans

Decidedly