Gerry Mulligan Quartet

It is a jazz milestone. A significant point in the evolution of modern jazz.

Gerry Mulligan’s celebrated piano-less quartet with Chet Baker left an influential stamp on modern jazz. It was short-lived, lasting just one year, but the quartet’s 1952-53 sessions and especially the nine songs recorded mid-1953 remain a collective of jazz masterpieces

The remarkable musical empathy between Mulligan and Baker – the blended harmonies and distinctive contrapuntal improvisation – was simply otherworldly.

Mulligan was born in Queens, New York in 1927. At an early age he showed an inclination for music and soon developed an inventive arranging and compositional talent. He studied classical music, but found himself drawn to jazz, dropping out of school as a teenager to join a touring swing era band as an arranger.

He teamed up with an exciting young horn player named Miles Davis in the early 1950s. Mulligan was a significant contributor to both the development and the final recording of one of the all-time great jazz albums – Miles Davis’ “Birth of the Cool.” He played Baritone Saxophone on all the “Birth of the Cool” tracks and was responsible for seven of the album’s arrangements including three Mulligan originals – Jeru, Venus De Milo and Rocker.

Mulligan headed west to Los Angeles in early 1952 where he began writing arrangements for Stan Kenton and sitting in at The Haig, a small jazz club located on Wilshire Boulevard in Hollywood. Throughout the 1950s The Haig was – along with The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach – the premier Los Angeles jazz venue and strongly associated with the evolution of West Coast jazz.

His time with Miles had provided Mulligan with a range of innovative musical ideas – Mulligan’s fascination with spare instrumentation and fugue like interweaving of contrapuntal themes set the stage for the quartet.

At about the same time a young trumpeter named Chet Baker was receiving local accolades playing around Los Angeles and, in early 1952, Charlie Parker asked the 23 year old Baker to perform several dates together. Chet Baker had arrived as a force to be reckoned with, so much so that Charlie Parker playfully reported to musician friends in New York, “There’s a little white cat on the coast who’s gonna eat you up.”

Baker was born on December 23, 1929 in Yale, Oklahoma. When Baker was 10 the family relocated to suburban Los Angeles. Chet was raised in a musical household.  His father was a Western swing guitarist and his mother an accomplished pianist. A natural musician Chet fell in love with the trumpet.

The fates aligned when Gerry Mulligan took over the Monday night jam sessions at The Haig and asked Chet Baker to join him.

A further happy coincidence occurred when they discovered The Haig’s grand piano had been put into storage and was unavailable. The unavailable piano turned out to be fortuitous. Here was Mulligan’s opportunity to put into practice his idea about a band with no harmonic accompaniment or chordal underpinning. Presto, Gerry Mulligan’s piano-less quartet with Chet Baker was born.

The quartet consisted of Mulligan and Baker, bassist Bob Whitlock and drummer Chico Hamilton.

They had a distinct sound. Baker’s melodic cool jazz style perfectly complemented Mulligan’s light and airy baritone saxophone tone. Together they improvised brilliant and exciting contrapuntal textures. Their telepathic rapport, the way they instantly read each other's musical thoughts was simply preternatural. “I never experienced anything like that before and not since," Mulligan said years later.

The quartet’s sessions at The Haig were a runaway success, the small 85 seat club was jam-packed with enthusiastic fans. Backed by sympathetic drumming from Chico Hamilton and rhythmic walking line bass playing from Bob Whitlock, the quartet evolved a hip “cool” West Coast jazz style. Their uncluttered lines stood out in sharp relief and the breathless thrilling frisson of their improvised pas de deux counterpoint duets.

In late 1952 the quartet’s live dates at The Haig were recorded by Richard Bock for his Pacific Jazz label (the audience response was edited out). The recordings sold very well – especially Bernie’s Tune – and created a major buzz for Mulligan and Baker.

Bernie’s Tune, the quartet number that first captured the public imagination, was composed by a Washington D.C.-based pianist named, appropriately enough, Bernie Miller. The recording features a great Mulligan arrangement and a rousing slice of Mulligan and Baker’s spontaneous musical affinity. Timeless and as big a delight today as it was first recorded in 1952.

The captivating finger snapping opening immediately grabs your attention. Taken at a bouncy medium andante tempo the two horns deliver a unison exposition of the central motif taking charge of the melody in close harmony. A swinging cohesive groove. Instantly memorable.

The main theme unison introduction devolves into the two voices intertwined in delicious counterpoint. Back and forth they go, Baker’s effortless tone rising above Mulligan’s delicate and light baritone sax. And good heavens dig Chico Hamilton’s drum accents.

A solo chorus from Mulligan – the voluptuous deep register of his baritone sax delivering swingy variations on the central melodic idea. Bob Whitlock’s bass drives the moderate swing rhythm. Baker takes a solo turn his melodic phrasing delightfully on display. Listen to how he shapes a sequence of notes, altering tone and tempo to give expression to emotion, as Mulligan shadows him with a background counterpoint figure.

In the finale the two horns come together in a tightly orchestrated sublime contrapuntal fugue followed by a return to the opening motif in unison, Hamilton offers up brief drum accents and Mulligan holds a last resonate vibrato note for a dramatic coda. Wow.

Elements of classical music are often heard in West Coast Jazz. The quartet’s rendition of Bernie’s Tune instantly puts me in mind of Bach's most famous fugues.

The quartet traveled to San Francisco where they recorded four songs live at the Blackhawk (again the audience response was edited out) including their celebrated rendition of My Funny Valentine that would become so identified with Chet Baker.

Returning to Los Angeles and The Haig the band was garnering serious mainstream attention. A Time Magazine feature helping to spread the word, “The hot music topic in Los Angeles is the cool jazz of a gaunt, hungry young fellow named Gerry Mulligan who has been performing in a nightclub known as The Haig and drawing the biggest crowds in the club’s history.”

The quartet continued to record, laying down nine performances live at The Haig on May 20, 1953. I am not alone in arguing these recordings represent the pinnacle of the group’s collaboration. Every number has something to commend it especially Mulligan’s wonderfully arranged standards My Old Flame, Darn That Dream, I Can’t Get Started, I May Be Wrong, Makin' Whoopee, and Love Me or Leave Me. The recordings hugely impacted the direction of West Coast jazz.

Mulligan was a visionary arranger. The great jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason credited Mulligan for “single-handedly” bringing Great American Songbook standards back into national popularity. Indeed. Mulligan’s reworking of standards is both inspired and original not least the band’s recording of Love Me or Leave Me. Composed in 1928 by Walter Donaldson with lyrics by Gus Kahn the song was famously the signature tune of 1920s songstress Ruth Etting whose recording and performances of Love Me or Leave Me became immensely popular.

Mulligan opens Love Me or Leave Me with an infectious baritone sax riff chased by Baker’s searing trumpet accents before falling into a unison exposition of the main theme (Love me or leave me and let me be lonely) the alternating to and fro interplay between Mulligan and Baker just delicious. Gerry improvises a flourish on the bridge (You might find the night time the right time for kissing), the two horns join in unison again as lead in to Mulligan’s swinging solo variations on the central motif.

Baker solos his hesitant phrasing and expressive inflection prominent as Gerry tracks him softly with an engaging background counterpoint melody . . . switching the lead back and forth, a magnificent contrapuntal fugue follows, a bass solo leads Mulligan and Baker to a final unison recapitulation of the catchy main theme and the inventive coda.

Gets to me every time. Great stuff.

A word about the quartet’s influential recording of the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart standard My Funny Valentine. Mulligan’s arrangement makes brilliant use of the melodic interplay between himself and Baker. And of course, there is Chet’s much celebrated solo. His sound and lyricism musical gold dust.

The recording helped the group – and especially Chet -- to achieve widespread success and In 2015 the quartet’s 1953 recording of My Funny Valentine was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.

The band’s short term success came to an end when Gerry Mulligan was arrested – and imprisoned -- on a narcotics charge in mid-1953. While Mulligan was in prison, Baker continued to record heading up his own group . . . his Bix like pure trumpet sound and his “cool” jazz singing voice bringing him great acclaim and celebrity. Although in later years Baker and Mulligan would sometimes reunite for performances and occasional recordings they were never able to recapture the magic of the 1952-3 piano-less quartet.

Mulligan eventually kicked his heroin habit, Baker did not. Mulligan died in 1996 from complications of surgery, Chet died eight years earlier in 1988 having fallen from the second-story window of his Amsterdam hotel. Heroin and cocaine were found in his body.

Gerry Mulligan’s illustrious piano-less quartet with Chet Baker remains one of jazz's most celebrated ensembles. A historic union of two of the most formidable jazz musicians ever to play a note, the musical relationship conjured up between them was simply dazzling. The quartet’s legacy is captured by their extraordinary body of work -- the brilliant recordings of 1952-3.