Gerry “Jeru” Mulligan Transcends Time & Space w/ 1963 Classic :: “Night Lights”
Before eccentric environments and local watering hole ecosystems became sterile, pretentious and simplistic with barriers both overpriced and living out this narrative of being an important afterthought in a world of flawless freedom, there was still durable dignity and poetry in the air. Where people came to spill their radiating guts into the rustic sky, while occupying a small, unique place in time, while this leveling, yet sacred trust remained in the hands and balance of the musicians that kept their little secret alive for decades and generations without so much as a whimper, or bombastic sell out. During a time when people were ascetically classy, yet moved to occupy a radical, social statement with unparalleled prayers towards infinite expression for hope and holy connection, a young musician emerged from ground zero with a captivating engagement in composition, arrangement and, above all, his boundless love for all things jazz. We're talking about Gerry “Jeru” Mulligan and his absolutely astronomical career in music that spanned half a century.
Mulligan’s first introduction to music was when the family hired a maid, Lily Rose, to help take care of him and his four older brothers, and it was here he gravitated towards the certain complexities and vibrations of the piano as he grew older and more independent in his artistic desires. The Mulligan family got around a lot during the young, aspiring musician’s life. From Queens to Ohio, to Jersey, Chicago, Detroit and Pennsylvania, Mulligan’s extensive travels seem to only fully his radical vision of what music could bring him as he saw the country via his parent’s car window. There’s a whole world out there brimming with culture and people doing marvelous things and once Mulligan neared completing his high school run, he ducked out to join a touring band earning $100 a week to write arrangements before eventually relocating back to New York, where he would reconnect and begin rooming with the great Gil Evans.
Just a few years after the Second World War came to a heroic end, a young man by the name of Miles Davis was strategically putting together a nine-piece band and brought on Mulligan, Evans and Modern Jazz Quartet’s founder, John Lewis, in on action to help establish what would eventually be considered the West Coast Jazz scene during their “Birth Of Cool” years from 1949 to 1951. Both influential and devilishly inspiring, Mulligan was a shape-shifting apparition that moved from one body to the next. Joining the mighty Chet Baker during their “pianoless quartet” period, Mulligan, like many of the greats of his time, succumbed to a feverish heroin addiction that brought on a painful disconnect from his work for nearly six months, while he spent 6 months in prison.
Upon his epic return, the young musician picked up right where he left off and in the spring of 1960 he established his first “Concert Jazz Band” and released an enormous body of work leading up to his soft, cool masterpiece, 1963’s “Night Lights”. A spectacular moment in Mulligan’s career and a devastatingly dark time in American History, “Night Lights” reflects the challenges of humanity and its core values in a swift, romantic way like that of Hemingway, or Kerouac. Its flawless narrative depicts the spiritual silence that occupies every man’s heart as he further plunges himself into the depths of life and existential entertainment. Mulligan brought in jazz alumni Jim Hall, Art Farmer, Dave Bailey, Bob Brookmeyer and the only surviving member from the album’s sessions, Bill Crow, Mulligan’s longtime bassist from 1956 to 1996, to help bring the album to life in the fall of 1962.
Though it doesn’t seem like the album was most received in the ultimate light of praise and worship like many of his past and future works, “Night Lights” undeniably stands out as this enormously well polished collection of musical mantras produced by a composer that has been through the unsteady and success of monumental motivation. Blending fatal fantasy and the currency of poetic privacy that steadily captures the unique atmosphere across the album’s 6 tracks, Mulligan leads his listeners down these gorgeous Cobblestone alleyways and historic side streets with lush swells of sound, which perfectly embodied a time and place in American culture that was both sophisticatedly sensitive and socially sedating. While the imaginative properties of the album portray both the loveless nature of free expression, its legendary contents are bound to the estate of loneliness and esoteric isolation. Mulligan is a master of these phenomena and has passionately explored this during his career, as well as with others, like Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk, Ellington, Dave Brubeck and countless others. As a new decade neared and a new life both in music and in universal memory, Mulligan found himself often collaborating with the great Charles Mingus before his more orchestral period in the 1980s leading up to his untimely passing. With titles like “The Age Of Steam”, “Mulligan Meets Monk”, “Jeru” and, of course, “Night Lights”, Mulligan transcended the drama, lifestyle, sound, and genre of jazz and has securely placed himself as one of the greats among so many.
