Gerry Mulligan & Ben Webster – Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster

Two saxophones in conversation

Los Angeles, November and December 1959: Gerry Mulligan and Ben Webster meet for two quintet sessions. Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster places baritone and tenor saxophone side by side, instruments that share a lower register yet offer very different possibilities of expression. The personnel alone invites attentive listening. How do these two voices fit together, and where do they leave room for one another?

Mulligan was 32 and Webster 50. They had followed different paths through jazz; here they shared six pieces and one rhythm section. Norman Granz produced the recordings, released by Verve in 1960. The album belongs to a particularly appealing strand of his catalogue: musicians with individual languages are given a manageable setting and time to respond to each other.

A meeting sustained by five musicians

Jimmy Rowles on piano, Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Mel Lewis on drums accompany the saxophonists throughout all six selections. That continuity matters. Beneath changing melodies and solos, the same group works together across both recording dates. The names beyond the two featured artists deserve attention in their own right.

One rewarding listening thread is the relationship between the low saxophone voices and the piano. When does Rowles add a response, and when does the accompaniment leave space? How do bass and drums frame the soloists’ phrases? These questions need not turn listening into analysis. They can simply make a return to the record an opportunity to discover something that escaped attention the first time.

From “Chelsea Bridge” to “Go Home”

Billy Strayhorn’s “Chelsea Bridge” opens the album. “The Cat Walk” and “Sunday” complete the first side as a sequence of its own. After the record is turned over, “Who’s Got Rhythm”, “Tell Me When” and “Go Home” follow. Six selections give both saxophonists room while keeping the shared session at the centre of the album.

The November 3 date produced “Chelsea Bridge”, “Who’s Got Rhythm” and “Go Home”; “The Cat Walk”, “Sunday” and “Tell Me When” were recorded on December 2. The finished LP arranges material from these two days into an album sequence. That is part of the pleasure of the format: the shape of a side creates relationships that extend beyond the order in which the music was recorded.

The Verve Acoustic Sounds Series edition

Catalogue AVER 512459 belongs to the Verve Acoustic Sounds Series. This single 180-gram LP is pressed at Quality Record Pressings. The publisher credits Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound with mastering from the original analogue tapes. A tip-on gatefold jacket from Stoughton Printing completes the presentation.

The edition brings the original six-track programme together with carefully considered manufacturing and packaging. It invites us to meet Mulligan and Webster on equal terms while keeping an ear on the rhythm section. Five musicians whose names are worth returning to on the sleeve after the final side has played.

You order from Michael 45 in Germany. We arrange the US import and dispatch from Hilden.

Series: Verve – all 34 records: voices, organ and bossa nova

Musicians

Participants and documented credit status. Track references correspond to the tracklist.

• Gerry Mulliganbaritone saxophone, co-leaderParticipation: Album personnel
• Ben Webstertenor saxophone, co-leaderParticipation: Album personnel
• Jimmy RowlespianoParticipation: Album personnel
• Leroy VinnegarbassParticipation: Album personnel
• Mel LewisdrumsParticipation: Album personnel

Gerry Mulligan (baritone saxophone), Ben Webster (tenor saxophone), Jimmy Rowles (piano), Leroy Vinnegar (bass), Mel Lewis (drums) – on all six tracks; recorded November 3, 1959 (Chelsea Bridge, Who’s Got Rhythm, Go Home) and December 2, 1959 (The Cat Walk, Sunday, Tell Me When) in Los Angeles, per later editions at Radio Recorders. Producer: Norman Granz. Liner notes: Nat Hentoff. This edition: mastered and cut by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound; pressed at Quality Record Pressings; jacket by Stoughton Printing; supervised by Chad Kassem. Composer credits for “The Cat Walk” and “Go Home” differ between sources.