Gerry Mulligan took the baritone saxophone – the big, ungainly horn at the bottom of the section – and made it light, lyrical, and central. Before him the baritone was mostly ballast in a big band. After him it was a lead voice, capable of melody as graceful as any trumpet’s. Almost single-handedly he gave the instrument its place in modern jazz.
He was a gifted arranger first. As a young man he wrote for the Miles Davis sessions that became Birth of the Cool, helping define the whole relaxed, carefully voiced aesthetic of cool jazz. Then in 1952 he formed a quartet with Chet Baker that had no piano at all – just baritone, trumpet, bass, and drums – and the open, interweaving counterpoint of those two horns became one of the signature sounds of the decade.
The pianoless idea was radical and it worked because Mulligan and Baker listened so closely, weaving lines around each other like a conversation. It influenced countless groups and proved you didn’t need a chord instrument to imply the harmony – the horns could do it themselves.
Mulligan kept working in all sorts of settings for decades, leading bands, writing, collaborating across the jazz spectrum. Tall, red-haired, and articulate, he was one of the music’s great craftsmen, equally important as player and composer.
Start here
The Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker recordings (1952–53) are the essential cool statement.
Birth of the Cool (Miles Davis, 1949–50), which Mulligan helped write and arrange, is where it all begins.
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