ABSTRACT Title of Document: THE BIRTH OF JERU: GERRY MULLIGAN‘S EARLY COMPOSING/ARRANGING CAREER (1945-1953) Richard Samuel Fine, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Directed By: Professor Richard Wexler School of Music Gerry Mulligan (1927-1996) is undoubtedly the most celebrated baritone saxophonist of all time. For decades, both popular and critics‘ polls consistently recognized him as the best on his instrument. He took first place for forty-three consecutive years (1953-1995) in Downbeat‘s Readers‘ Poll for best baritone saxophonist, and his reviews by critics and fellow performers were, for the most part, laudatory. He performed with such jazz icons as Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Ben Webster. Perhaps as a consequence of this recognition as a performer, Gerry Mulligan‘s contributions as a composer and arranger have been overshadowed and therefore less recognized. This is despite the importance of his writing and its influence on the history of modern jazz orchestration. It was as a composer/arranger that he first made his mark, and he would preoccupy himself with writing throughout most of his career. The purpose of this dissertation is to study the history of Gerry Mulligan‘s composing/arranging career starting with his earliest professional writing projects as a teenager (ca 1945) and ending with the dissolution of his first pianoless quartet with Chet Baker (1953). To date, despite the availability of a huge collection of primary sources that Franca Mulligan, Gerry‘s widow, has donated to the Library of Congress, no scholarly study has been undertaken to examine this material, particularly in the context of Mulligan‘s development as composer/arranger. A particularly invaluable source has been made available to me for this project through special permission by Mrs. Mulligan. In 1995, Gerry Mulligan recorded his oral history by way of a series of interviews. The memoirs address such topics as his childhood; his associations with Gil Evans, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Gene Krupa; his pianoless quartet with Chet Baker; his ideas about counterpoint; and his heroin addiction. The dissertation draws particular attention to Mulligan‘s unique creative and intellectual processes, their context in his collaboration with other musicians, their effect on the evolution of his style throughout his early career, and their influence on other modern jazz composer/arrangers. THE BIRTH OF JERU: GERRY MULLIGAN‘S EARLY COMPOSING/ARRANGING CAREER (1945-1953) By Richard Samuel Fine Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2010 Advisory Committee: Professor Richard Wexler, Chair Professor Robert Gibson Associate Professor Richard King Associate Dean Charles Rutherford Professor Chris Vadala © Copyright by Richard Samuel Fine 2010 Preface In the spring of 2004, as a graduate student at the Peabody Conservatory, I began visiting the Performing Arts Reading Room of the Library of Congress to make use of the Aaron Copland Collection in support of my master‘s thesis research. On my first visit to the Library, as I turned the corner to enter the foyer to the Reading Room, an object came into view that that stopped me in my tracks. In the center of the room, enclosed in a glass case, stood Gerry Mulligan‘s gold-plated Conn baritone saxophone, the instrument he played in public performances the last decade of his life. I learned that in 1999, this room had become an exhibition of the life and works of Mulligan thanks to the generosity of his widow, Franca R. Mulligan. Being a life- long admirer of Mulligan and a baritone saxophonist myself, I reveled in the objects that were displayed in cases and on the walls around the room. The exhibition featured numerous items drawn from the Library‘s Gerry Mulligan Collection (also donated by Mrs. Mulligan), including photographs, manuscripts, scores, record album covers, the Grammy award he won for his album Walk on the Water (1980), and miscellaneous artifacts such as reeds, mouthpieces, and ligatures. On each subsequent visit to the Library for my Copland research, I doubt whether I walked through that foyer once without stopping to examine something in the Mulligan exhibition that I hadn‘t noticed before. When I became a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland School of Music in 2008, I began investigating the feasibility of using the Library of Congress‘s Gerry Mulligan Collection as the basis for my dissertation. The Collection consists of almost 1500 items including scores, lead sheets, sketches, individual parts, ii photographs, sound recordings, correspondence, and other writings. In the process of my investigation, I learned that the Collection‘s website features a section entitled ―Jeru: In the Words of Gerry Mulligan, an Aural Autobiography.‖ It consists of a series of hyperlinked sound recordings of Mulligan speaking on such topics as his childhood; his pianoless quartet; his drug addiction; his approach to counterpoint; and his relationship with other jazz musicians, including Gil Evans, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Chet Baker, and Thelonious Monk. I also learned that these recordings were excerpted from a much larger oral history that Mulligan had produced during various sessions in 1995, just months before he died. I requested access to the entire oral history and was referred to the Mulligan Publishing Company, Inc. of Darien, Connecticut. To my delight, when I called the company‘s offices, Franca Mulligan answered the phone. After I introduced myself, she was happy to share with me little-known facts about Gerry—for example, that he was a talented painter, and that he and actress Judy Holliday were a songwriting team who even composed a musical theater work entitled Happy Birthday. This was the first of a series of pleasurable communications between Mrs. Mulligan and me that eventually led to an agreement whereby she granted me access to the entire twenty- six hours of the oral history to be used solely for my dissertation research. Plunging headlong into this invaluable primary source, I soon uncovered a personal chronicle that educated me, enlightened me, entertained me, charmed me, and at times even dismayed me. In the process of virtually living with the oral history over the next two years, I eventually began to feel as if I personally knew Gerry, and could actually iii imagine being there as his life unfolded. As a result, this project became quite personally rewarding for me. While this dissertation is based largely on the contents of the oral history, it focuses on only one aspect of Mulligan‘s career, his composing and arranging during an eight-year period. But the oral history is potentially a valuable source for original research on numerous additional topics about Gerry Mulligan‘s world. It is my hope that my work encourages others to pursue these opportunities. iv Acknowledgements Without the support and assistance of numerous individuals, the completion of this dissertation would not have been possible. I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. Richard Wexler, who has given generously of his time and attention. He has interacted vigorously with me since the beginning of the project, guiding me, encouraging me, and providing meticulous readings of each and every draft. His enthusiasm for my topic has given me the confidence to ambitiously pursue this project to its completion. I also am grateful to Professors Robert Gibson, Richard King, Charles Rutherford, and Chris Vadala, who have agreed to serve on my dissertation committee. I am especially thankful to Franca Mulligan, who graciously allowed me to use Gerry‘s personal recorded memoirs, my most important source. I have been inspired by Franca‘s undying devotion to Gerry‘s memory and her enthusiasm for my project. I would also like to thank Larry Appelbaum and Tom Barrick of the Music Division of the Library of Congress who helped facilitate my research by guiding me through the Gerry Mulligan Collection. Whenever I had any questions about the Collection, I could always count on Larry and/or Tom‘s prompt response. I want to recognize the tremendous effort of Erin Cook, who transcribed for me all twenty-six hours of Gerry Mulligan‘s oral history. The result was an extremely useful 500-page searchable document. A special thanks goes to my son Jonathan Fine who set up his Apple PowerMac G5 in my office and taught me how to use Final Cut Pro to convert and edit the original oral history DAT tapes to a digital format suitable for CD generation. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. v Joseph Briscuso, former Towson University saxophone professor, who, when I was an undergraduate student concentrating on alto saxophone, persuaded me to switch to baritone; and Dr. Mark Katz, my master‘s thesis advisor at Peabody Conservatory, who convinced me that it was perfectly acceptable for musicologists to write about jazz. I want to thank all of my friends and relatives who encouraged me throughout the entire effort. Finally, I want to express my deepest appreciation to my wife Andrea, who is the most loving and supportive person I know. Over the past eleven years, she has read every single word of every paper I have written. Her editing has been superb, and she has never failed to give me honest feedback. Her faith in me has been a true inspiration, without which I could not have finished this project. vi Table