Mosiac Release the Complete Verve Gerry Mulligan

[Lois Gilbert]

Mosaic Records Celebrates One of the Most Unique Bands in Jazz History
With the release of "The Complete Verve Gerry Mulligan Concert Band Sessions"


Mosaic Records announces the release of The Complete Verve Gerry Mulligan Concert Band Sessions, a 4-CD set that documents the recorded legacy of this remarkable, short-lived ensemble.

Produced for release by Michael Cuscuna, the set contains the Concert Band¹s five Verve albums with eleven unissued performances, all remixed by Ellen Fitton and remastered in 24-bit by Malcolm Addey from the original tapes.

In many ways, Mulligan¹s Concert Jazz Band recordings from 1960 to 1962 were the culmination of ideas that began forming in the late 1940s when he was writing for big bands, and for the "Birth of the Cool" sessions led by Miles Davis. He loved the richness of big band instrumentation. But not the heaviness. He liked the fleeter feel of the Davis-led sessions, but the nonet might have been a little confining. And besides, Mulligan couldn¹t call it his.

As a leader, Mulligan began searching for the ideal environment for his musical ideas. Finally, in 1960, with Bob Brookmeyer, Mulligan began to build out the Concert Jazz Band; six brass, four reeds, plus Mulligan on baritone sax with drums and bass providing the rhythm. It was all he needed to provide the wallop you get when a big band is really cooking, without the loss of spontaneity. For the Concert Jazz Band, Mulligan and Brookmeyer (virtually a co-leader and principal writer) brought together musicians who could make things up on the spot within a written-out chart. He employed writers who got it and musicians who could hack it.

This was a big band that played complex, intriguing, and playful charts like it was a tight little ensemble. The voicings rang through, and they could pop with authority and precision, some numbers were frames for blowing _ others, refined works of tantalizing counterpoint. The band featured an array of stellar soloists and sidemen, including Clark Terry, Conte Candoli, Willie Dennis, Gene Quill, Zoot Sims, Bill Crow and Mel Lewis on drums. On one session, Jim Hall joins them playing guitar.

The first album "Gerry Mulligan _ The Concert Jazz Band" was begun in May 1960 with one set of personnel. Only "I¹m Gonna Go Fishin¹" was used on the album, but we¹ve discovered four more pieces by that original lune-up.

That fall, the Concert Jazz Band toured the U.S. and Europe. Mulligan selected the best from a series of live recordings for the album "On Tour". Three more performances, originally selected for the album but eliminated because of time constraints, are included here.

"A Concert In Jazz" which features a masterful reading of George Russell¹s "All About Rosie" and "At The Village Vanguard" are presented as they were originally issued. The final album "Mulligan Œ63" is an ambitious studio affair with Jim Hall¹s guitar added and the compositions of Gary McFarland and Brookmeyer featured; added to the original album are three alternate takes and Gerry Mulligan¹s otherwise unrecorded "Chant".

On November 24, Mosaic Records will release The Complete Verve Roy Eldridge Studio Sessions, a 7-CD collection, and Mosaic Select sets by Curtis Amy and Duke Pearson.

It is requested that all reviews or articles include the following: "All recordings are available solely through Mosaic Records, 35 Melrose Place, Stamford, CT 06902; (203) 327-7111. Please check their website at www.mosaicrecords.com for more information."

[Clay Fink]

Stop torturing me. Looks like it's time to dip into that hidden bank account.

[Clay Fink]

Here's the sessionography for the box:

http://www.mosaicrecords.com/Discogr...lectionID=1044

I want the Randy Weston, the Bix/Trambouer/Teagarden and the Max Roach Boxes too...

How can I hide this from my wife?

[Chris D]

'Bweebida Bobbida" from the Concert Jazz band is one of my absolute favorites in all music.

I suppose this release makes my Japanese import LP pressings a little less valuable.

Viva Johnny Carisi!

[Tanager]

I only have the Vanguard disk from the CJB. The CJB box went to the top of my want list as soon as it came out earlier this month, but I'd blown my budget for this billing cycle. As of this weekend, it gets ordered, period. Mulligan is one of those players of whose work I never ever tire.

[shrugs]

Originally posted by Chris D

I suppose this release makes my Japanese import LP pressings a little less valuable.

They really don't go for much to begin with. But those who enjoy vinyl might want to keep an eye out on the used bins because I am sure some will get dumped.

[clinthopson]

I've been waiting for this release for a long time.

[shrugs]

Originally posted by clinthopson
I've been waiting for this release for a long time.

From the looks of it, you and a few others are the only ones excited around these parts. I managed to score most of the lp's and have loved these bands since first hearing the lp with gold lettering and a white background. I'll have to pull it out tonight.

[Tanager]

Originally posted by shrugs
From the looks of it, you and a few others are the only ones excited around these parts.

And I am mystified as to why that is...what great music.

[Tom Storer]

I make an effort not to be excited by almost every Mosaic box. For one thing, there are too many to choose from; for another, each box set purchased means a month or two with no other CD purchases, and I find that a very difficult experience.

I'd love to get this box, but if I decide to go for a Mosaic set, there are others I'd get first, not to mention the new "select" series. Like a deer in the headlights, I freeze, paralyzed... then I continue with my habit of getting two or three individual CDs a month. I'm afraid if I indulge my desire for Mosaic sets I won't be able to stop, and soon I'll be bankrupt and divorced.

[shrugs]

I believe Verve released a single cd of this music recently.
But it's 50's straight ahead so not much interest here at JC.

[Tanager]

Originally posted by shrugs
I believe Verve released a single cd of this music recently.
But it's 50's straight ahead so not much interest here at JC.

The only recent Verve Mulligan release of which I am aware is the CJB VV disk, which I have (was reissued last year, one of those time-limited Verve disks in LP-like packaging). I don't know why it would be of no interest here, since it's a superbly swinging set with lots of great playing (and it's from 1960, not the 50s). Did you have a different disk in mind, Dave?

[shrugs]

Pretty much same 50's straight ahead big band sound. Not a very active topic of discuss. around here.

Age of Steam, baby

[clinthopson]

Originally posted by shrugs
I believe Verve released a single cd of this music recently.
But it's 50's straight ahead so not much interest here at JC.

Maybe it isn't interesting to you, but there are a lot of us who like straight ahead. Jazz without electronics, but with melody, rhythm and harmony, baby.

I placed my order yesterday.

[shrugs]

Read it again sam.

[shrugs]

Anf why would I end with "Age of Steam, baby" if I didn't dig Mulligan? Try catching up on his output..

[Clay Fink]

Originally posted by shrugs
From the looks of it, you and a few others are the only ones excited around these parts...

That comment got me thinking. I listen to the whole range of stuff discussed here, from Teagarden to e.a.i and I like it all. I really think that Ellington was right when he said that there's only two types of music, good and bad. Jazz because of it's basis in improvisation is a very inclusive label. It's pretty interesting that you'll find Charlie Parker and Evan Parker next to each other in many people's collections, and if you listen to them you really can hear the evidence that Jazz really is a continuum, not just a loose collection of distinct and unrelated genres. That said, music that has large doses of melodicism and swing is much easier to take that the "Hands of Caravaggio".

I think I'll get my order in.

[Clay Fink]

I did the deed. I also ordered the Weston.

[Boris Badenov]

I'll have to be getting this. Here's Gary Giddins' take:

At long last, Gerry Mulligan's five Concert Jazz Band albums, recorded for Verve between 1960 and 1962, have been collected, though not by Verve. Mosaic (35 Melrose Place, Stamford, CT 06902, 203-327-7111, info@mosaicrecords.com) has done a consummate job with The Complete Verve Gerry Mulligan Concert Band Sessions. These much loved but long-unavailable records have never sounded better—even the muzzy Milan sides gleam. The integrity of the original LPs is preserved, with unreleased takes placed at the end of appropriate discs. From the first measures of Al Cohn's arrangement of "Sweet and Low," you know you are on enchanted ground, and the sense of discovery and triumph never subsides for long, partly because each album's personality is distinct from the others'.

Mulligan became an overnight sensation with his piano-less quartet in the early 1950s, but big bands remained his first love and the CJB was his boldest attempt to initiate a venturesome orchestra—its very name warned dancers to go elsewhere. It was to be a workshop ensemble, an expanded version of the Miles Davis nonets (for which Mulligan had scored most of the music), allowing him and other writers to show what a full complement could do. His celebrity, plus the willingness of members to work cheap and Norman Granz's deep pockets, made the undertaking possible. Another crucial component, as Bill Kirchner demonstrates in his illuminating notes, was the steady instigation of Bob Brookmeyer, the Mulligan quartet's valve trombonist and ultimately the CJB's most prolific arranger.

Eighteen months after the start-up, Granz sold Verve, dooming the project but for one last hurrah in late 1962, but the CJB's influence was immediate and lasting. The first big band to play the Village Vanguard, it engendered what is now known as the Vanguard Orchestra, unleashing a tide of rehearsal or Monday-night bands. Its method of building orchestral constructs from combo outlines helped Mulligan retain a limber spontaneity; among the many bandleaders who elaborated on the idea were Charles Tolliver (see below), David Murray, and most recently Dave Holland. But Mulligan's band had something no other band could rival—his stubborn, nostalgic, frequently inspired, occasionally cloying passion for melody.

Ironically, Mulligan was so preoccupied with the mechanics of bandleading that he wrote nothing for the project beyond an unreleased update of his Kenton classic "Young Blood" and a majestic "Come Rain or Come Shine," recorded twice to feature Zoot Sims and, more successfully, himself. So in addition to Brookmeyer and Cohn, he enlisted Bill Holman, George Russell, Johnny Mandel, and a then unknown Gary McFarland. Mulligan and Brookmeyer were the primary soloists, spelled by Sims, Clark Terry, Gene Quill, Jim Hall, Willie Dennis, the forgotten tenor Jim Rieder, and the group's unsung hero, trumpeter Don Ferrara, whose bursts of invention on "Out of This World," "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'," "Barbara's Theme," and "All About Rosie" place him in the Hasaan category of lost jazz noblemen.

A benign Olympian hovers over this material, and it isn't Apollo. The blessings of Duke Ellington are everywhere; no other group of writers paid homage with more candor and creativity. The original notes to the CJB's last LP specified Ellington's impact on those pieces, but it was apparent from the first: symbolically in the first recorded number, "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " (from Anatomy of a Murder), and wittily in the Ellington-meets-Clyde McCoy passages of "Sweet and Low." Hats are tipped to Evans-Thornhill, Basie, Goodman, and Herman, while Russell's "All About Rosie"—a superior update of the 1957 version—flies in its own orbit. Yet Ellington is invoked constantly, in voicings that include clarinet and in the interplay between soloists and ensemble.

There is so much to admire, not least the rhythm sections, especially the team of Mel Lewis and Bill Crow, which emphasize a relaxed capering that reflects Mulligan's easeful swing. The contrast between Mulligan's smoothly gruff lyricism and Brookmeyer's gruffly smooth barking, hissing, chomping solos typifies the good humor that often rises to the top—as in anything by Cohn, notably the matchless double windup of "Lady Chatterley's Mother," or the last bar of Brookmeyer's "You Took Advantage of Me" (a solo sigh that was played by the ensemble at a European concert released on European labels), or Mulligan's whimsical "Emaline" intro to "Come Rain or Come Shine," or his breakaway interpolation of "Blues in the Night" and Brookmeyer's asthmatic entrance on "Sweet and Low," or John Carisi's orchestration of Miles Davis's two choruses on "Israel," to say nothing of Holman's 6/8 arrangement of "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'," which turns it into a rocking counterpart of "All Blues." The On Tour album qualifies as a de facto Zoot Sims concerto and a definition of mercurial wit.

Rumors of hours of unreleased material have proved untrue; the Vanguard tapes are apparently lost, and the 11 new alternates and otherwise unreleased items don't add much, except for "Young Blood." Mulligan would undoubtedly be relieved. This is desert island material, returned to life after more than two decades, in a limited pressing of 7,500 copies. Those should sell quickly enough; maybe then Verve (which now offers only the Vanguard set) will return this music to stores. Don't wait.

[clinthopson]

I have about 20 titles in my collection by Gerry Mulligan from the first quartets to his final recordings plus sides he arranged for other bands like Birth of the Cool and Elliott Lawrence.

We were listening to Age of Steam the other evening and again were taken by the beauty, swing and humor of his music.

I have a worn out lp of the concert band so this set will fill a big gap for me.

[Chris D]

I'm a little hesitant only in that I'm broke and have good pressings of "the white album," "A Concert in Jazz" and the original Vanguard LP. Still, this is among the most consistently intersting big band stuff around; every time I listen, I hear more revealed.

Damn, I think I'm gonna bite the bullet.

[shrugs]

Originally posted by Clay Fink
That comment got me thinking. I listen to the whole range of stuff discussed here, from Teagarden to e.a.i and I like it all. I really think that Ellington was right when he said that there's only two types of music, good and bad. Jazz because of it's basis in improvisation is a very inclusive label. It's pretty interesting that you'll find Charlie Parker and Evan Parker next to each other in many people's collections, and if you listen to them you really can hear the evidence that Jazz really is a continuum, not just a loose collection of distinct and unrelated genres. That said, music that has large doses of melodicism and swing is much easier to take that the "Hands of Caravaggio".

I think I'll get my order in.

Is there even a Teagarden thread here? I dig Teagarden and probably should have held on to the Mosaic set but I found some of the material to be repetitive. I have managed to score some nice records though.
I think Charlie Parker is in just about everyone's collection so finding it next to Evan Parker wouldn't surprise me. But finding some Dodo Marmarosa next to Cecil Taylor would. Or some Susannah McCorkle along with the more popular singers. Or how about something from the 20's other than Louis Armstrong?

[shrugs]

Originally posted by clinthopson
I have about 20 titles in my collection by Gerry Mulligan from the first quartets to his final recordings plus sides he arranged for other bands like Birth of the Cool and Elliott Lawrence.

We were listening to Age of Steam the other evening and again were taken by the beauty, swing and humor of his music.

I have a worn out lp of the concert band so this set will fill a big gap for me.

Age of Steam is an amazing gem that should be in everyone's collection. The Mulligan/Baker Mosaic set is probably my favorite. I also dig the Newport sets with Bob Brookmeyer. I think there is great cut of Mulligan with the Teddy Wilson trio as well.

[Tanager]

On a semi-related subject, there are two Mosaic Selects of Brookmeyer coming out next year...plus a Select of Mulligan.

[shrugs]

Originally posted by Tanager
On a semi-related subject, there are two Mosaic Selects of Brookmeyer coming out next year...plus a Select of Mulligan.

The Brookmeyer will have the great Traditionalism Revisited. A very nice date with Giuffre. Kansas City Revisited is a great session and I will have to look out for any lp's that will get dumped off after this comes out.

[mke]

Originally posted by shrugs
I think Charlie Parker is in just about everyone's collection so finding it next to Evan Parker wouldn't surprise me. But finding some Dodo Marmarosa next to Cecil Taylor would.

It's unlikely, because it would mean you have nothing between Mar and Tay. Unless you use some crazy rainbow ordering system.

[shrugs]

I never organize A-Z.
Too easy.

[mke]

Originally posted by shrugs
I never organize A-Z.
Too easy.

From the NY Times:

"Louis Armstrong did not catalog his possessions according to the rules of library science. For example, though he kept song indexes for his collection of 650 reel-to-reel tapes in neat three-ring binders, he curiously alphabetized titles by their last word. So "The Girl That I Married," on side one of reel No. 44, is cataloged on the line above "In the Mood." "

I've never considered myself too much of a Gerry Mulligan fan. Most of the pianoless quartet music has never excited me much.

But the Concert Jazz Band is a big exception. I love it! This is by far my favorite Mulligan.

Now I've just got to save my pennies...

[Tanager]

I just pulled the trigger. I can't wait...