Music: Gerry Mulligan meets Scott Hamilton - Soft Lights and Sweet Music – MFSL [UDSACD 2017] Audiophile recording

About this recording:
In the early part of 1986, Carl Jefferson called and asked me if I would like to record with Gerry Mulligan. He and Gerry were planning to make a series like the famous "Gerry Mulligan Meets ... records that came out on Verve in the fifties and I was to be on the first. I had met Gerry a couple of times at parties and festivals, but had never had the opportunity to work with him.
It was a busy time in my life - I was getting ready for two other record dates (one with my own group and one with Dave McKenna) and now on top of everything I was to report to Gerry's house in Darien, Connecticut for rehearsals. Gerry had written most of the material we were to record and because of my poor reading ability he had to teach the songs to me himself. This turned into a lot of work as he tended to change all of the songs after I took the train home each night. When I showed up the next day I would have to start again from scratch. While this was a little frustrating it was also a master class in song writing, and I learned a lot during those two weeks. Gerry chose the rhythm section after he heard them backing a singer in New York City. He told me he didn't want to use his current quartet for the date but still wanted a working group. Mike, Jay and Grady came out to Darien for the final rehearsal the day before we went into the studio and I got a lift back to the city that night. I've always kicked myself for not saving the music from this date - I should have kept more of these tunes in my repertoire (I still play "I've Just Seen Her" on gigs and have recorded it twice since this version.) "Noblesse" was dedicated to Ray Noble on the lead sheet and I believe he recorded it himself later on. "Do You Know What I See" is a joke on the first phrase of The Star Spangled Banner and based on the changes of "Oh, Look At Me Now!" "Ghosts" was just a sketch for blowing with very little in the way of a theme. The fact that I played almost everything in unison or in octaves with Gerry was at his insistence - I see now, years later that harmony wouldn't have been nearly as effective. I also see now just how good his solos were - I always admired his writing, but I needed twenty more years of experience to really appreciate his sax playing. (At the time I was pretty busy just trying to remember all my parts.)
I'm really pleased to see this album available once again - it has certainly been good to me over the years. Most of all, I think it's really good music and I'm really proud to have been involved with it.

Scott Hamilton
London, England December. 2005

By virtue of his talent, ambition, and intelligence, Gerry Mulligan long ago won for himself the kind of personal fame which settles on only a handful of jazz instrumentalists. Mulligan has been an important, protean figure in jazz for more than thirty years - this deems like fiction, given his exuberant youthfulness, but you know what truth is stranger than.
In the forties, Mulligan wrote big band arrangements for Gene Krupa which still sound fresh and was an essential member of the Miles Davis-Gil Evans circle in New York that produced the classic "Birth of the Cool" sessions. He must have been one of those charged young men everyone else can recognize as something special, on the way to unique destiny. He arrived in California in the early fifties and established an innovative piano-less quartet just in time for everyone to claim him as a leading figure in "West Coast Jazz." I often wonder what he made of that. When he hit upon the fleet, nimble-sound of his first quartet, I don't suppose he was thinking about geography. The music of that band just danced. Mulligan played the baritone as if the big, heavy horn presented no natural obstacles, which was startling in itself, and his and Chet Baker's solos flashed out at you from a moving background – the band filled the sonic hole usually occupied by a piano with weaving background countermelodies, hovering spaces, vocal lines and harmonic interjections that instantly created linear direction. It was music that supplied its own original ethos as it went along, and it found the success it deserved.
The various groups Mulligan has led since then expanded his original vision while keeping its values intact. He formed his first-rate sidemen - Bob Brookmeyer, Zoot Sims, Art Farmer - into quartets, sextets, tentets and Concert Jazz Bands in which coherence and a kind of crisp thoughtfulness were informed with Mulligan's passionate pleasure in making jazz.
Along the way he now and then paused for studio encounters with some of jazz's noblest players. He was smart enough not to confine himself to encounters with musicians of his own style or generation (though these days, his generation seems to have been particularly rich in talent.) Besides recording with Stan Getz and Paul Desmond, he "met" Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster and Thelonious Monk. All of these records are demonstrations of Mulligan's strengths. His unfailing sense of direction, his tuneful originals, and his ability to keep the pot boiling evoked brilliant playing from his guests.

Soft Lights and Sweet Music is a welcome return to this aspect of his musical life, and Scott Hamilton was a perfect choice for the other horn. Like Mulligan, Hamilton cannot resist rising to the challenge, and his playing here is some of the best on record. Maybe it's the Mulligan connection, but for me the warmth and joyousness of Scott's solos, especially on Do You Know What I See? and Noblesse are full of echoes of Zoot Sims. Mulligan always produced a handful of engaging new songs for these sessions, and here we have five more contribution to his library. Do You Know What I See? has a sound of a classic Mulligan tune like "Walking Shoes" or "Venus De Milo", and Noblesse is one of his best ballads ever. Mulligan is a natural melodist, and his ballads shimmer. Scott Hamilton gives a wholly involved, attentive reading of Noblesse's initial statement, turning it over meditatively and opening the way for Mulligan to expose the deep feeling just under the pretty notes. The blues jump and swing as if Baltimore were a suburb of Kansas City, and Scott levitates Irving Berlin's Soft Lights and Sweet Music from the first bar and effortlessly accomplishes one of jazz's essential miracles, that of transcending the melody by the simple act of playing it.
Mulligan exercises the usual care when he selected his rhythm section. Mike Renzi's experience with Mel Torme shows in his supportive comping, and Jay Leonhart is one of those strong, rock-steady bassists who plays interesting figures while he keeps things moving. And Grady Tate just swings and swings - you can hear his pleasure in making music at this level, in being inspired by the other musicians and whole-heartedly returning the favour.
It's a real please to see this latest chapter in the continuing adventures of Gerry Mulligan come to us through the courtesy of Concord Records and Carl Jefferson, its genial overlord. Jefferson has been quietly building the most impressive mainstream jazz catalogue of the decade, and one yardstick by which to measure his success is how thoroughly Gerry Mulligan could express himself throughout Soft Lights and Sweet Music. I hope a lot more music is to come from their partnership.
-Peter Straub
(originally written in 1986)

Tracks list:
01. Soft Lights & Sweet Music 04:10
02. Gone 06:24
03. Do You Know What I See? 04:23
04. I've Just Seen Her 05:04
05. Noblesse 07:40
06. Ghosts 07:14
07. Port of Baltimore Blues 07:44

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