Jeru's Journey by Josephson Sanford;

Author:Josephson, Sanford;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: biography
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Published: 2015-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

12

‘I Forgot He Was Famous for a Reason’

In 1978, Mulligan decided to revive a version of the Concert Jazz Band. “I wanted to have my own band again,” he said. “Franca was really the prime mover, because she realized that’s what I wanted to do, but I was hesitant to take this on again. She realized how hard it was for me to sell myself to agents and promoters and, as a consequence, I was usually taken advantage of. When Franca started dealing with these people, my whole relationship with agents changed. They didn’t have me, the easy pushover.”

Franca knew where to draw the line, though, between business and music. “I didn’t want to make any decisions that dealt with the music,” she emphasized to me. “I had nothing to do with the hiring and firing, the quality of the musicians. Those were all Gerry’s decisions. He knew the pace on the road: ‘Yes, we can do that. No, we can’t do that.’ So it was like a family. But I was always talking to the businesspeople. I would say, ‘This is the way we have to do it. Take it or leave it.’ Musicians will play no matter what, because they feel the responsibility of the audience. They always need to find a solution, but they have to put their foot down, and I was the one putting the foot down for him.”

When Mulligan was in the process of assembling musicians for his new big band, he received a unique opportunity for a rehearsal venue. “We were on the porch of our Rowayton cottage with the chief of the Club Mediterranean village in Guadeloupe,” Franca recalled. “A musician himself, he was in touch with jazz musicians because he was inviting people to go to Club Med and play there. “Gerry said he was putting together this big band, but he wanted to put them in a place for one week where they could wash [out] the other music they [had] in their heads and just rehearse and be ready for a tour in Europe. But he told the chief—his name was Bernard— ‘I cannot afford a studio in New York to keep them like that for a week.’ Bernard said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You come to Guadeloupe. I pay for everything. You come down there. You rehearse your band for one week. You don’t even have to perform. At the end of the week, if you’d like to make a performance, it is up to you. But just for me to advertise that Gerry Mulligan is coming down to put together his new big band and is rehearsing down there—it’s enough.’ He paid for the transportation and for everything, and also gave beads to the musicians so they could have some drinks. So we went. It was a holiday for the musicians. The people were outside this big room, listening to the band rehearsing. The last night, the band performed. It was great. The musicians were absolutely together.”

The new big band was an expanded version of the original ’60s Concert Jazz Band.

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