Gerry Mulligan Quotes

#1. Then, of course, I played alto and tenor, wherever there were jobs.

Gerry Mulligan

#2. You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

Gerry Mulligan

#3. In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

Gerry Mulligan

#4. I've always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

Gerry Mulligan

#5. The baritone can serve functions that the alto and tenor cannot, in orchestral voicing.

Gerry Mulligan

#6. Life on the road is murder. It's as though life begins and ends when you have your horn in your mouth.

Gerry Mulligan

#7. You start way down on a low B flat on the tuba and you have a chromatic scale; you can match the colours all the way up, till you get to the top of the trumpet.

Gerry Mulligan

#8. Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones.

Gerry Mulligan

#9. This life of being a transient human being has gotten to a point when it's very hard to bear.

Gerry Mulligan

#10. What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

Gerry Mulligan

#11. People behind the Iron curtain have such an incredible image of America and jazz. I expected to find a Gerry Mulligan or Miles Davis on every corner ... I almost expected a Shorty Rogers to deliver the milk, a Bud Shank to be the mailman.

Gabor Szabo

#12. I've appeared on some other people's albums.

Gerry Mulligan

#13. Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

Gerry Mulligan

#14. The Russian composers, especially, tricked the symphony orchestra into the kind of dynamic, rhythmic thing.

Gerry Mulligan

#15. New York is still where I live most of the time.

Gerry Mulligan

#16. The other saxophones, except as solo instruments, really don't have much point in the orchestra.

Gerry Mulligan

#17. In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it's the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what's available, what somebody happens to play for you.

Gerry Mulligan

#18. Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker seemed so sophisticated and bad. I wanted to be like that.

Carla Bley

#19. It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

Gerry Mulligan

#20. People are approaching electronic levels in music; although not all of it happens to tickle my fancy.

Gerry Mulligan

#21. I like what I hear other guys doing, but the thing that really attracts me is melodic playing.

Gerry Mulligan

#22. Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

Gerry Mulligan

#23. Actually, when I was very young, first starting to play, I think I probably listened more to clarinet players than to saxophones.

Gerry Mulligan

#24. When we've finished the current tour I'm going to go back to Italy and see if I can do some more writing.

Gerry Mulligan

#25. People talk about innovations and evolutions and that kind of thing; I don't understand about that nonsense. It's like, all instruments are there to use all the time.

Gerry Mulligan

#26. I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn't have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that - except I couldn't afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.

David Bowie

#27. If you've only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.

Gerry Mulligan

#28. The first reason for starting to do the symphony concerts was to play this new piece of mine.

Gerry Mulligan

#29. I'm fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

Gerry Mulligan

#30. The recording industry has changed; they're enjoying such incredible success in the pop field.

Gerry Mulligan

#31. A very talented player and all around excellent musician. I love hearing his records on radio!

Gerry Mulligan

#32. Actually, it is a fact that I've been doing more writing than playing in recent years.

Gerry Mulligan

#33. Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

Gerry Mulligan

#34. So I played alto for quite a while until I saved up the money for the baritone.

Gerry Mulligan

#35. Eliminating the piano means that I've always worked closer with the bass than most players.

Gerry Mulligan

#36. When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

Gerry Mulligan

#37. We sailed to Italy on the Andrea Doria, a year before it sank, and Zoot (Sims) and I played a lot of ping-pong on deck during that trip. Zoot sparked that [Gerry Mulligan's] sextet in an extraordinary way, soloing with joyous abandon and infusing the ensemble parts with his special brand of swing.

Bill Crow