Friday, February 15, 2008

Moonlight in Vermont

From 1959, Gerry Mulligan with Art Farmer, Bill Crow and Dave Bailey. The sides with Chet Baker are better known, but there are plenty of folks who would take Farmer over Baker in a second (if jazz were like sports and there was a draft for that sort of thing, anyways).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was fortunate enough to see both Mulligan and Farmer, separately, in Cambridge; Mulligan as part of a Harvard jazz program, and Farmer at the Regattabar, with Clifford Jordan on tenor sax.

Mullign had mellowed but still diplayed touches of feistiness; Farmer was as alwys compelling while remaining understated and urbane. The highlight of Farmer's performance was a sublime interpretation of Strayhorn's "Isfahan," which had been a Johnny Hodges vehicle.

Farmer lies somewhere between Clifford Brown, with whom he played in Lionel Hampton's trumpet section, and mid-fifties Miles Davis; more fire than Miles, more laconic than Brownie. He has a beautiful sound.

While Mulligan had great empathy for his co-soloists (something he really brought back to jazz is that polyphonic improvisation that the boppers dropped), my favorite running mate was neither Farmer nor Baker, but Paul Desmond. Their "Two of a Mind" disc was perfectly titled -- one of my ten favorite albums ever -- and the one they did for Verve with tunes names that tipped you off to the underlying chordal structures is not far behind.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.

Chris said...

Being a trumpeter myself (at least back in the college days) I'll take Farmer over Baker but not by a whole lot. Brownie is still the gold standard, in my opinion, and Blue Mitchell is definitely in my top three.