53 Facts About Gerry Mulligan

Gerry Mulligan was a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments.

Gerry Mulligan was born in Queens Village, Queens, New York, the son of George and Louise Mulligan.

Gerry Mulligan's father was a Wilmington, Delaware, native of Irish descent; his mother a Philadelphia native of half-Irish and half-German descent.

Gerry Mulligan was the youngest of four sons with George, Phil and Don preceding him.

When Gerry Mulligan was less than a year old, the family moved to Marion, Ohio, where his father accepted a job with the Marion Power Shovel Company.

The young Gerry Mulligan occasionally met such musicians staying at Rose's home.

The family's moves continued with stops in South Jersey, Chicago, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Gerry Mulligan lived for three years and attended Catholic school.

Gerry 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.

Gerry Mulligan 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 wrote arrangements.

When Gerry Mulligan was sixteen, he approached Johnny Warrington at local radio station WCAU about writing arrangements for the station's house band.

Gerry Mulligan dropped out of high school during his senior year to pursue work with a touring band.

Gerry Mulligan contacted bandleader Tommy Tucker when Tucker was visiting Philadelphia's Earle Theatre.

Gerry 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.

Gerry Mulligan moved to New York City in January 1946 and joined the arranging staff on Gene Krupa's bebop-tinged band.

Gerry Mulligan next began arranging for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, occasionally sitting in as a member of the reed section.

Thornhill's arranging staff included Gil Evans, whom Gerry Mulligan had met while working with the Krupa band.

Gerry Mulligan eventually began living with Evans; this was at the time that Evans' apartment on West 55th Street became a regular hangout for a number of jazz musicians, working on creating a new jazz idiom.

Gerry Mulligan wrote and arranged three of the tunes recorded, and arranged a further three.

Gerry Mulligan was one of only four musicians who played on all the recordings, with Davis, Konitz and Barber.

Gerry Mulligan arranged for and recorded with bands led by Georgie Auld and Chubby Jackson.

In early 1952, seeking better employment opportunities, Gerry Mulligan headed west to Los Angeles with his girlfriend, pianist Gail Madden.

Gerry Mulligan's compositions "Walking Shoes" and "Young Blood", stand out as embodiments of the contrapuntal style that became Mulligan's signature.

Gerry Mulligan's first recording sessions in Los Angeles were produced by Bock for Pacific Jazz.

Baker's melodic style fit well with Gerry Mulligan's, leading them to create improvised contrapuntal textures free from the rigid confines of a piano-enforced chordal structure.

The recordings included singles such as "Motel" labelled as 'The Gerry Mulligan Quartet Featuring Chet Baker'.

However, while Gerry Mulligan was in prison, Baker transformed his lyrical trumpet style, gentle tenor voice and matinee-idol looks into independent stardom.

Gerry Mulligan continued the quartet format with valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer replacing Baker, although Gerry Mulligan and Brookmeyer both occasionally played piano.

Gerry Mulligan studied piano with Suezenne Fordham, who was a member of the inner circle of jazz players in New York.

Gerry Mulligan was sought out by jazz musicians of the era to coach them to improve their piano technique.

Gerry Mulligan performed as a soloist or sideman with a variety of late-1950s jazz artists: Paul Desmond, Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Witherspoon, Andre Previn, Billie Holiday, Marian McPartland, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk, Fletcher Henderson, Manny Albam, Quincy Jones, Kai Winding, Miles Davis, and Dave Brubeck.

Gerry Mulligan appeared in Art Kane's A Great Day in Harlem portrait of 57 major jazz musicians taken in August 1958.

Gerry Mulligan formed his first "Concert Jazz Band" in the spring of 1960.

Gerry Mulligan resumed work with small groups in 1962 and appeared with other groups sporadically.

Gerry Mulligan continued to work intermittently in small group settings until the end of his life, although performing dates started to become more infrequent during the mid 1960s.

In 1971, Gerry Mulligan created his most significant work for big band in over a decade, for the album The Age of Steam.

In 1974, Gerry Mulligan recorded in Italy the album Summit with Argentine tango musician Astor Piazzolla.

In 1973, Gerry Mulligan commissioned composer Frank Proto to write a Saxophone Concerto that was premiered with the Cincinnati Symphony.

In 1984, Gerry Mulligan commissioned Harry Freedman to write The Sax Chronicles, which was an arrangement of some of Gerry Mulligan's melodies in pastiche styles.

In June 1984, Gerry Mulligan completed and performed his first orchestral commission, Entente for Baritone Saxophone and Orchestra, with the Filarmonia Venetia.

In 1987, Gerry Mulligan adapted K-4 Pacific for quartet with orchestra and performed it beside Entente with the Israel Philharmonic in Tel Aviv with Zubin Mehta conducting.

In June 1988, Gerry Mulligan was invited to be the first Composer-in-Residence at the Glasgow International Jazz Festival and was commissioned to write a work, which he titled The Flying Scotsman.

In 1991, Gerry Mulligan contacted Miles Davis about revisiting the music from the seminal 1949 Birth of the Cool album.

Gerry Mulligan's final recording was a quartet album, Dragonfly, recorded in the summer of 1995 and released on the Telarc label.

Gerry Mulligan gave his final performance on the 13th Annual Floating Jazz Festival, Caribbean Cruise, November 9,1995.

Gerry Mulligan died in Darien, Connecticut, on January 20,1996, at the age of 68, following complications from knee surgery.

Gerry Mulligan performed numerous times on television programmes during his career.

In 1974, Gerry Mulligan collaborated on a musical version of Anita Loos' play Happy Birthday.

In 1978, Gerry Mulligan wrote incidental music for Dale Wasserman's Broadway play Play with Fire.

Gerry Mulligan married Jeffie Lee Boyd in 1953, but the marriage was annulled.

Gerry Mulligan spent the next six years with actress and singer Judy Holliday, with whom he recorded an album, Holliday With Gerry Mulligan.

In 1974, Gerry Mulligan met Countess Franca Rota Borghini Baldovinetti through their mutual friend Astor Piazzolla, although they didn't marry until 1982.