Kerry Strayer traces his love of jazz to the first time he heard Gerry Mulligan on record. What's more, Strayer has built his reputation by playing the same instrument Mulligan popularized in modern jazz, the baritone sax. So it's only natural that this Kansas City performer and educator would dedicate his first nationally released album to the source of his inspiration.
Yet Strayer has more on his mind than trying to ape his idol's unique sound and style. In fact, Strayer the saxophonist doesn't especially sound like Mulligan at all. Instead, the music on Jeru Blue pays homage to Mulligan the composer/arranger--one of the most innovative, prolific, and influential writers of jazz tunes. And having written about 300 charts of his own for the septet he calls the New Kansas City Seven, Strayer knows a thing or two about arranging.
Born in 1956 in Fairbury, Nebraska, a town of maybe 5,000 people, Strayer remembers there being "no jazz, no record stores, no anything; there was a supper club in town, and a neighbor of ours played clarinet in a Dixieland quintet, but that was basically it." The jazz records he bought came from Lincoln and Omaha, respectively 50 and 100 miles away, and the radio didn't offer much either.
Strayer started playing the flute at age five and was introduced to the saxophone at 16. In high school, he earned a spot in the Nebraska All-State and Honors bands, where he met his future wife, who was the first-chair tenor saxophonist. Kerry and Gailyn have been married now for nearly 20 years.
Strayer pursued classical saxophone at the University of Missouri (KC) Conservatory of Music, and studied composition with John Elliott, the renowned Kansas City teacher and theorist. He gigged with other KC musicians and briefly went on the road with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.
When it came time to start leading his own band, in 1989, he wanted something other than the standard quartet, but knew he'd have a hard time making a big band pay. "I wanted something in the middle," he recalls, a sort of "orchestrated combo." He finally decided on a septet format with four horns--the New Kansas City 7, which performs frequently around Kansas City. Strayer also teaches and leads several student ensembles at Johnson Community College.
In deciding to pay tribute to Gerry Mulligan's muse, Strayer set out to put together the best possible lineup. In this case, that meant an all-New York cast of players. Working with drummer and producer Ron Vincent--an alumnus of the KC jazz scene and an ex-Mulliganite--he contacted the entire rhythm section Mulligan was using at the time of his death in 1997. In case of any lingering doubt that this has been a labor of love for Kerry Strayer, he points out that in addition to the album's nine tracks, "I've got enough charts to do Volume Two right now."
Clearly the baritone and the composer's pen are in the right hands.
