Gerry Mulligan Quartet Record In Boston At Storyville

 

Baubles, Bangles And Beads

The Gerry Mulligan Quartet

Recorded In Boston At Storyville

Recorded at George Wein's Storyville in Boston, Massachusetts, December, 1956

Recording Engineer: Richard Bock

A Richard Bock Production

Photographs by William Claxton

Pacific Jazz PJ-1228

1957

Gerry Mulligan - Bariton Sax and Piano

Bob Brookmeyer - Valve Trombone

Bill Crow - Bass

Dave Bailey - Drums

From the back cover: If ever you are assigned the task of writing album notes for a favorite bass 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 Clayton, 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, Bostons' Educational Station, with John McLelllan. How I got the job of chauffeuring the three of them around the following day wile they looked for background shots for this 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 tree 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 a 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 for them demonstrating their technique and inspiration by camera with the music of jazz performers played in the background. We weren't interested 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 that 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's name was Lawrence Kupferman, well-known 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 reaction 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 painting. 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 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 ting of it as a conditioning element in his work. There as at the same time a short mention of the New Statesman and Nation of the Romanian conductor who in rehearsing the London Philharmonic Orchestra had called upon 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 this who did not see this stocky, demoniac, utterly unselfconscious conductor at work, such stories will suggest affectation, but affectation gets you nowhere with hard-bitten professionals, and it was abundantly lear that the L.P.O. were plying for Constantin Silkvestri 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 in it means nothing. I do not read English – an English book is a black 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 why I know nothing about." The statement applied so neatly to not only the painting that we are to present by 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 must 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 poet-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 – 5:30 P.M. Music by Gerry Mulligan and the Quartet – pairing by Professor Kupferman. First a drawing in pencil and then painting in water color. There was talk and background material about the two artist 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 press one of the upward movement of the music. The painting was similar but down 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 brightly, most rest. This wasn't Gerry Mulligan in color, nor a chart of the music as it came froth from the recording. But the painting was an imposition of the movement of the music on the paper with water colors.

March 25, 1957 – The notes are written just as you see them. The program was will-received – there were some o the usual criticisms about the painting since it was down as an abstraction. There was no criticism of the music that you hear in this album. The audience appeared to achieve a better undertdadning 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 he popes to obtain a direct approach to you as he plays, and though each instance may not e successful and beat the tone and theme may escape you he well keep on inventing, creating and making new melody which in time you will enjoy – he hopes.

Many details, many possible reflection, have been omitted. Space is short bu 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 about notes tell you of just one of theiose situations. – Fr. Norman O'Connor, C.S.P. Catholic Chaplain, Boston University

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