Gerry Mulligan

Early life and career Gerry Mulligan was born in Queens Village, Queens, New York, the son of George and Louise Mulligan. His father was a Wilmington, Delaware, native of Irish descent; his mother a Philadelphia native of half-Irish and half-German descent. Gerry was the youngest of four sons with George, Phil and Don preceding him. George Mulligan's career as an engineer necessitated frequent moves through numerous cities. When Gerry was less than a year old, the family moved to Marion, Ohio, where his father accepted a job with the Marion Power Shovel Company. With the demands of a large home and four young boys to raise, Mulligan's mother hired an African American nanny named Lily Rose, who became especially fond of the youngest Mulligan. As he became older, Mulligan began spending time at Rose's house and was especially amused by Rose's player piano, which Mulligan later recalled as having rolls by numerous players, including Fats Waller. Black musicians sometimes came through town, and because many motels would not take them, they often had to stay at homes within the black community. The young Mulligan occasionally met such musicians staying at Rose's home. The family's moves continued with stops in South Jersey (where Mulligan lived with his maternal grandmother), Chicago, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Mulligan lived for three years and attended Catholic school. When the school moved into a new building and established music courses, Mulligan decided to play clarinet in the school's nascent orchestra. Mulligan made an attempt at arranging with the Richard Rodgers song "Lover", but the arrangement was seized prior to its first reading by an overzealous nun who was taken aback by the title on the arrangement. When Gerry Mulligan was 14, his family moved to Detroit and then to Reading, Pennsylvania. While in Reading, Mulligan began studying clarinet with dance-band musician Sammy Correnti, who also encouraged Mulligan's interest in arranging. Mulligan also began playing saxophone professionally in dance bands in Philadelphia, an hour and a half or so away. The Mulligan family next moved to Philadelphia, where Gerry attended the West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys and organized a school big band, for which he also wrote arrangements. When Mulligan was sixteen, he approached Johnny Warrington at local radio station WCAU about writing arrangements for the station's house band. Warrington was impressed and began buying Mulligan's arrangements. Mulligan dropped out of high school during his senior year to pursue work with a touring band. He contacted bandleader Tommy Tucker when Tucker was visiting Philadelphia's Earle Theatre. While Tucker did not need an additional reedman, he was looking for an arranger and Mulligan was hired at $100 a week to do two or three arrangements a week (including all copying). At the conclusion of Mulligan's three-month contract, Tucker told Mulligan that he should move on to another band which was a little less "tame". Mulligan went back to Philadelphia and began writing for Elliot Lawrence, a pianist and composer who had taken over for Warrington as the band leader at WCAU. Mulligan moved to New York City in January 1946 and joined the arranging staff on Gene Krupa's bebop-tinged band. Arrangements of Mulligan's work with Krupa include "Birdhouse", "Disc Jockey Jump" and an arrangement of "How High the Moon", quoting Charlie Parker's "Ornithology" as a countermelody. Mulligan next began arranging for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, occasionally sitting in as a member of the reed section. Baker's melodic style fit well with Mulligan, leading them to create improvised contrapuntal textures free from the rigid confines of a piano-enforced chordal structure. While novel at the time in sound and style, this ethos of contrapuntal group improvisation hearkened back to the formative days of jazz. Despite their very different backgrounds (Mulligan was a classically trained New Yorker, while Oklahoman Baker was mostly self-taught and a much more instinctive player) they had an almost psychic rapport and ability to improvise sophisticated melodic and harmonic patterns together. Mulligan later remarked: "I had never experienced anything like that before and not really since." Their dates at the Haig became sell-outs and the recordings they made in late 1952 became major sellers, that led to significant acclaim for Mulligan and Baker. The recordings included singles such as "Motel" (1953) labelled as 'The Gerry Mulligan Quartet Featuring Chet Baker'. The fortuitous collaboration came to an abrupt end with Mulligan's arrest on narcotics charges in mid-1953, leading to six months at Sheriff's Honor Farm. Both Mulligan and Baker had, like many of their peers, become heroin addicts. However, while Mulligan was in prison, Baker transformed his lyrical trumpet style, gentle tenor voice and matinee-idol looks into independent stardom. Thus, when upon his release Mulligan attempted to rehire Baker, the trumpeter declined the offer for financial reasons. Middle career Mulligan continued the quartet format with valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer replacing Baker, 'The Gerry Mulligan Collection' is open to registered public researchers in the library's Performing Arts Research Center. The library placed Mulligan's saxophone on permanent exhibit in early 2009. ==Theatre and film==