Backgrounder: Gerry Mulligan - Jeru

"Jeru" is a nickname Miles Davis came up with for baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan in the late 1940s when they were rehearsing the Miles Davis Nonet. The recordings they made between 1949 and 1950 would eventually wind up on a Capitol compilation album entitled Birth of the Cool.

Jeru is also the title of an album that Mulligan recorded for Columbia in June 1962. Here's the personnel: Gerry Mulligan (bar), Tommy Flanagan (p), Ben Tucker (b), Dave Bailey (d) and Alec Dorsey (cga).

The tracks are...

• Capricious (Billy Taylor)
• Here I'll Stay (Kurt Weill, Alan Jay Lerner)
• Inside Impromptu (Taylor)
• You've Come Home (Cy Coleman, Carolyn Leigh)
• Get Out of Town (Cole Porter)
• Blue Boy (Gerry Mulligan)
• Lonely Town (Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, Adolph Green)

The album is one of Mulligan's snappiest and most lyrical. After listening to it a few times, you'll find yourself singing along with his baritone saxophone's improvised lines. Interestingly, Jeru was recorded in 1962 just months after the release of Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's breezy Jazz Samba album. Later that year, in November, Mulligan would meet Antonio Carlos Jobim, who was in New York for the famed bossa nova concert at Carnegie Hall. They appeared together on TV in December (here).

Here's Gerry Mulligan's Jeru, without the interruption of ads...