Why let the East Coast have all the fun when it comes to jazz? Perhaps thanks to the ways of the world, I don't have a whole lot of West Coast/cool jazz. Frankly, some of it is just a little too cool, and I don't mean as in for school. What little I have is either something like Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section (which is actually a West Coaster moonlighting in New Jersey) or the seminal Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. However, the album that these recordings are probably closest linked to is Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool, not a pure West Coast recording, but the music itself paved the way for a West Coast scene.
There is a formal link to that album through Gerry Mulligan's involvement as the baritone sax player on all of those tracks. I think he may be a little disloyal to the barry sax on this collection, which covers 1952 to 1957 (not long after that landmark album), but the distinctly low-down instrument is still sharing the spotlight on most of these songs with Chet Baker's trumpet. As I'm sure with numerous others, I'm more familiar with Chet Baker as a singer, but he doesn't utter a word here (and an instrumental "Darn That Dream" was almost too much for me!). Another unusual thing about this collection is that there is no piano. It's fairly played down on Birth of the Cool (John Lewis is on the keys for those sessions), but it is just plain gone here. While artists like Ornette Coleman excluded piano as part of a "no-chords" policy, I think Mulligan and Baker did it more out of convenience, making the quartet a more mobile touring unit. It also allowed them to handle all the lead parts in all of the songs. There is very little in the way of bass or drum solos here and the absence of piano eliminates the only other feasible competition.
As I am still growing my jazz collection, I'm sure I'll be coming into contact with Mulligan, Baker & Co.'s music again fairly soon.
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